OakNorth has secured authorisation from the Federal Reserve and the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) for a representative office in New York.
The digital bank said the authorisation will enable it to proactively market its products and services from the US whilst simultaneously investigating the potential to acquire a banking charter.
While the US has around 4,700 banks, OakNorth claims that many do not have enough assets or capabilities to serve mid-market businesses.
The issue is further complicated by the closure of several commercial banks over the past 18 months, which the bank says leaves a gap in the market.
OakNorth said hopes to fill the void after already having completed around $600 million worth of loans to lower mid-market businesses in the US since July 2023.
The bank added that scale-up businesses with a turnover of between $1 million and $100 million represent just 3.4 per cent of all SMEs in the US but account for a quarter of all SME turnover.
“Without doing any marketing, we've done about three times more business in the US over the last year than we thought we would have done by this point,” said Rishi Khosla, chief executive and co-founder of OakNorth. “This is a clear demonstration of the demand from the lower mid-market for a banking partner like OakNorth, which can provide the speed, flexibility, transparency and entrepreneurial approach these businesses need to succeed and scale.”
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