Atom, the UK’s first app-based bank, today announced plans to raise £40 million from existing shareholders as it moves to profitability from its mortgage and business lending within a year, and to IPO the year after.

Atom says its revenues are growing strongly and the bank is on course to achieve 100bps of Net Interest Margin (NIM) by the end March 2021. Atom will have grown lending to SMEs on its balance sheet to over £700m by the end of March 2021, a tripling of business loans in the last 12 months. This growth has been achieved both within the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme and also independent of government schemes.

Simultaneously, Atom has seen strong and profitable growth in its mortgage portfolio, having already added £362 million of mortgages in the second half of its financial year 2020/21. Since its launch, Atom has loaned £2.8 billion to UK mortgage customers.

Mark Mullen, Chief Executive Officer at Atom said:

“We turn to our shareholders for capital as and when we need it to drive growth. Despite it being a difficult environment for all companies that need to raise funding, this capital raise will allow us to continue to progress towards profitability and ever-improving levels of efficiency and engagement.

The team retains an IPO as our objective and we’ll take the business there when we and the markets are ready. After the year that’s just gone I’m not going to claim perfect foresight, but we’re looking at the financial year 2022/23 as our IPO target.”