Established international and UK private banks are under pressure from the emergence of tech-enabled challenger banking services providers like never before, the Spear’s 500 Live 2025 conference was told.
In the opening panel discussion of the conference – entitled ‘The rise of Alternative Banking Platforms: Customised solutions for UHNWs and family offices with expanding global demands’ – the audience heard that these new entrants to the banking sector would continue to challenge the dominance of traditional banks and ‘soon become the norm’.
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In making this prediction, Paul Fosse, Group Head of Banking and Treasury at JTC Group, noted that the emergence of alternative banking platforms was ‘making traditional banking up their game’, but that the newcomers were here to stay. He added: ‘They’re built with global wealth in mind and they’re challenging the way that traditional banking is working.’
Highlighting their more streamlined onboarding process and services such as in-country IBANs, Fosse said that often multi-banked UHNWs were turning to alternative providers. ‘The beauty of alternative banking is that they have been built on global platforms. They’ve been built on e-solutions, where traditional banks have that challenge of adapting due to legacy software. They also have the challenge of legacy approaches to compliance [and] cross-border policies. I think alternative banking platforms will help challenge the banks to work in a different way as well.’
Rishi Patel, CEO and founder of Interpolitan Money, an alternative banking platform and a Spear’s 500 Live partner, said providers such as his offered ‘much faster, much more efficient, tailored solutions’ for UHNW clients than the traditional sector and a ‘focus and priority on areas of banking and payments that banks don’t necessarily prioritise’ such as cross-border payments and foreign exchange services.
‘The banks today aren’t really set up for the globalised nature of the world,’ Patel told the audience at the Savoy, citing the difficulties and complexity of setting up bank accounts in foreign jurisdictions as well as the time it can involve. He said: ‘We are seeing significant movements of wealth from emerging markets, right across the Asia Pacific, and a lot of that is looking for diversification – and the biggest challenge they have as investors is really completing transactions. Without alternative banks being here today there would really be significant friction in that entire process.’
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Resigning a banking proposition for today’s world
Lauding the UK’s lead in global banking regulations, Patel pointed to the need for traditional banking providers to evolve their operations. ‘The real change we need to see is how institutions embed those requirements within their frameworks, how compliance departments actually process [them], that speed needs to change. It needs to be a cultural shift. It comes down to really trying to redesign a banking proposition for the world we live in today. Banking has to evolve to address these global issues.’
Stuart Wakeling, a managing partner at Henley and Partners, the residency and citizenship consultant, noted that in the past decade the number of HNWs relocating internationally was growing and now stood at more than 120,000. He said many of his firm’s clients were motivated by a desire to have a ‘plan B’ when it came to residency: ‘That extends to the banking world,’ Wakeling added. ‘They are needing alternative banking solutions. They’re needing fast solutions. They’re needing cross-border solutions.’
For all that the shift to alternative banking providers was real and would continue, Patel predicted that they would likely remain the ‘alternative’ for now, offering mainly niche services such as for cross-border transactions. ‘The goal here isn’t necessarily for alternatives to become mainstream,’ said Patel. ‘Alternative bank providers and banks can coexist very well. It’s not really a competition. It’s really about working within the niches, understanding the marketplace and designing tailored solutions for those issues.’
Spear’s 500 Live is the premier live event for private client professionals and leading figures from the private wealth and family office ecosystem. The 2025 edition took place at the Savoy in London and was attended by more than 500 high-calibre delegates.
Spear’s 500 Live was presented in association with our partners, Blacklane, the Charities Aid Foundation, CMB Monaco, HCA Healthcare UK, Henley & Partners, Interpolitan, Invest Barbados, Maddox, Mast Capital, Sentinel Resource Group and Stewardship.
For commercial enquiries concerning Spear’s events, contact shady.elkholy@spearswms.com.
