The future of embedded banking: What comes next?

**Tony Clark** (0:03)
This is the London Fintech Podcast, bringing you practical insights and approaches, stories and inspiration from the innovators who are building the new world of financial services.
Welcome to London Fintech Podcast. The UK embedded finance market is expected to reach $35 billion in value by 2030 And today's conversation is about two high street names coming together in a major embedded banking deal that's bringing new financial tools and opportunities to UK consumers.
Following NatWest's acquisition of Sainsbury's Bank, personal loan, credit card, retail deposit portfolios in 2025, the two organizations have announced a new embedded finance partnership. Nectar members will access preferential rates on savings and personal loans, alongside a co-branded Nectar credit card, all distributed through Sainsbury's digital channels, and powered by NatWest Boxed, the bank's banking as a service platform. My guest today is Andy Ellis, CEO of NatWest Boxed. Andy, great to have you on the show.

**Andy Ellis** (1:03)
Thank you, Tony. Thanks for having me.

**Tony Clark** (1:06)
So, tell us a bit about yourself, Pabst. Career journey, I think you started out in consulting, but there have been a number of tech aligned roles, and then a number of senior roles with NatWest leading up to Boxed.

**Andy Ellis** (1:17)
That's right, yeah. So, I'll immediately age myself. So, I joined Anderson Consulting London Office in 1994, January, and spent five or six years kind of at the coalface of technology development. So, software development, testing, running overnight batch mainframes, so the really kind of gritty stuff. That was in COBOL language for further dating myself. So, yes, I have a real grounding in technology, albeit my degree was in law and I didn't have a natural. I never actually turned on a computer until January, 1994 Did my dissertation on a word processor. But anyway, that grounding turns out was incredibly important in my career. But I kind of moved on, evolved into business strategy, technology based strategy and operation strategy, then into business strategy. So, kind of by the 2010s, I'd made this transition from ABN AMRO Bank into Royal Bank of Scotland. We all know how that happened. But I got myself a job as the head of strategy for the mid corporate bank at RBS.
And then for a number of years, covered most of the segments in corporate institutional banking from a strategy perspective. So, I really understood how a bank worked. And then about 2015-16, I think the Fintech kind of hype had reached us, and there was need for kind of executives that understood not only banking, but technology. So, I kind of unpacked the first few years of my career and got it up to date. And I was given really, really fortunately, the job of leading the bank's response to the kind of Fintech wave. And yeah, I've gone from running ventures, which is effectively a kind of a portfolio of capital that I put to work on building businesses and I'm doing that hands on to effectively running Metal, which is a business bank for NatWest, which is one of the ventures. And out of that, we developed NatWest Box, which is our banking as a service operation.

**Tony Clark** (3:19)
So great journey. I'm interested in unpacking your early career technical skills.

**Andy Ellis** (3:26)
Oh gosh, Tony.

**Tony Clark** (3:27)
Hopefully that wasn't the COBOL programming, or maybe it was. I think those skills are at a premium these days.

**Andy Ellis** (3:33)
They are, I know. If it all goes wrong, I think I can go in and update some COBOL code.

**Tony Clark** (3:39)
And we share something in common there. I started with Anderson Consulting, shortly become Accenture, and on the COBOL training program, and writing things in focus. I think it was some sort of 4GL language for Barclays Bank back in the day. That was my first project. So I'm curious, we may have a separate conversation. We may have almost overlapped at some point.

**Andy Ellis** (3:58)
Oh, right. What year did you start?

**Tony Clark** (4:00)
I think I was there in 89 Oh, okay.

**Andy Ellis** (4:03)
So yeah, you got a few years of me there.

**Tony Clark** (4:05)
Yeah. Anyhow, so we're not here to talk about Tech Consulting 30 years ago. We're going to talk about something a bit more modern and current. Just before we get into that, Andy, when you're off duty, anything you do particularly to reset and rewind?

**Andy Ellis** (4:21)
I live in central London, and I have three kids. One is 19 at university up in Edinburgh.
One is a lower sixth form, and one is 12 I have a Swedish wife with a full-time job. So it's kind of management and house management. But yeah, it usually involves tennis and golf if I'm really lucky.