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Hello, I'm Rbert Harri, the managing
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editor of City AM and I'm here at the
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Growth 500 event with Business Leader
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with Peter King, the director of
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business banking at Up North. Thank you,
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Robert. Um, well, congratulations on
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being here and being one of the UK's
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fastest growing businesses. What what
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are you most excited about in in the UK
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business scene right now? I think what
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we're excited about is that we get to
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support. Not only are we one of the
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fastest growing companies, we also get
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to support them too. So, as a bank that
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is very much focused at scaling
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businesses, they are the biggest
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contributor and they punch above their
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weight in terms of their contribution to
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the economy and we get to support that
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uh in terms of their their growth
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ambitions with the funding aspect. Um
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but also as a founder business we we
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want to support them all the way through
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that journey as well. Do you think as a
1:00
founder business you're more in touch
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with the smaller businesses? I think so.
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Particularly in uh the industry of
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banking as well um in the fact that it
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probably doesn't have uh as many founder
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uh banks within that industry. It's much
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more traditional in that sense. Um so
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yeah we were built and born out of our
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entrepreneurs and our founders previous
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business uh and wanting to sort of
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disrupt banking in that sense. Um and
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yeah, we very much build our offering to
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be in touch with uh with founders. And
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what what do you think are some of the
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biggest challenges businesses in the
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small and mediumsiz space today? I think
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at an early stage access to capital uh
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to be able to and access to investment
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to be able to grow is the biggest
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challenge. Uh because uh I think we
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foster entrepreneurship very well in the
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UK. Uh but then actually getting from a
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startup to a scaleup is very difficult.
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um and getting that support not only
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from an investment point of view but
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that wider ecosystem to to to sort of
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get on that growth journey and then at a
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later stage I think we then lose a lot
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of uh great companies that maybe go and
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move uh geographies and and go
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potentially across the ponds to the US
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um where the market is bigger and
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therefore the opportunity is bigger so
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uh it's sort of retaining the later
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stage businesses at the same time. Okay.
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And then then coming back to open North,
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what what are you most excited about for
2:23
the business over the next 5 or 10
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years? Yeah, I think the the two big
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areas that we're growing into uh is our
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business banking offering for scale up
2:30
businesses. So supporting those scaling
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businesses that I talked about that are
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raising money that are contributing to
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the UK economy hugely um and need a bank
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that understands that journey and is
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there to support them all the way
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through. And then the other side of our
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growth journey uh as we continue to lend
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to businesses is now going to do that in
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the US. So in the last 12 months we've
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expanded into the US uh got our rep
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office license in New York back in
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August last year. We've already gone
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through a billion dollars worth of
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lending in 12 months. Um so it shows the
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appetite for the O North approach is
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very much there. Um and our expansion is
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is sort of going at pace. So um we're
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going through regulatory approval to buy
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a US bank. Um, and yeah, we're excited
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to continue our growth over in the US.
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Well, that's great. Very exciting. And
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Peter, thank you for your time. Thank
