In an interview with Specialist Banking, Nick Fahy, chief executive at Cynergy Bank (pictured above), revealed that the bank’s loan book was currently around £2bn.

It aims to grow to have a private bank book roughly between £1bn–1.5bn, with its business banking arm to have a similar amount, and the remainder of the £5bn–6bn total coming from the property space.

Some 70% of the bank’s lending customers are believed to be first-, second- and third-generation Cypriots, following its acquisition of Bank of Cyprus UK from the Bank of Cyprus.

However, while it would continue to look after these customers, it wants to become a bank for medium-sized business owners.

Nick also claimed that it wanted to diversify across the country, with its current loan book being biased towards London and the South East.

“We've historically had offices in London and Birmingham, [and] last year we opened [in] Manchester, Bristol and then Brighton in terms of the south England corridor.

“So, what we're trying to get is to have coverage across the country,” he added. 

Nick said that Scotland was also in its plans for early next year.

This national growth would be accompanied with a scaling of the team.

Some 250 employees are currently employed by Cynergy Bank, with this figure set to grow to around 400 over the next three years.

Cynergy also has its eyes set on a new fintech hub — which is currently heading to its pilot phase — and plans to work with fintechs to provide services to its customers.

The hub would allow customers to access a range of services, including payroll, HR and advisory.

“Our research [shows that there’s] an openness from medium[-sized] business owners to use other non-banking services from a trusted provider.

“So, we're heading into a pilot on this … the plan over the next six to nine months is to pilot the concept with selected services, so this could be payroll, and things that will support the entrepreneur growing their business.”