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British Business Bank appoints Co-Chief Banking Officers

Press release 19 November 2024

The British Business Bank, the UK’s economic development bank, has appointed Richard Bearman and Reinald de Monchy as Co-Chief Banking Officers, with a shared responsibility for all of the organisation’s banking activities for smaller businesses.

The Bank’s guarantee & wholesale and small business lending solutions increasingly rely on a common set of institutional relationships, and this reconfiguration will enable the Bank to offer better outcomes for those institutions, as well as the smaller businesses who benefit from their support. Richard and Reinald will jointly lead this new relationship-driven banking model, although each will have specific line-management responsibilities.

Richard Bearman will oversee a new Relationship Management function bringing together a number of existing skillsets across relationship management, account management and customer services. This will help to support a consistent, integrated and holistic approach towards the Bank’s delivery partners and enable them to create a seamless growth pathway for businesses across the Bank’s products.

Reinald de Monchy will oversee the Bank’s Product teams, which will develop products and manage transactions across the Bank’s Guarantee & Wholesale and Small Business Lending programmes.

The two functions will work closely in terms of originating new transactions and sharing market feedback.

Co-Chief Banking Officer, Relationship Management, British Business Bank

Richard Bearman has been with the British Business Bank since 2019. He was previously Managing Director, Small Business Lending at the Bank, which included responsibility for the Start Up Loans programme. Prior to joining the Bank, Richard Bearman was the Head of Small Business at HSBC UK and has more than 25 years’ experience in the banking sector. Under Richard’s leadership, Start Up Loans has been rated by Forbes as its top-rated Small Business Loan and Start up Loan for each of the last three years.

Louis Taylor, CEO, British Business Bank said:

Richard has a wealth of experience in positions focused on serving the needs of smaller businesses, both at the British Business Bank and prior to joining the organisation. I am delighted he will be bringing that experience and expertise to this important new role at the Bank.

Richard Bearman said:

Over my career I have developed a real passion for working with and supporting entrepreneurs. I am excited to be taking on this new role, which will enable us to build even stronger and more flexible relationships with our delivery partners. This will help them not only to navigate our offer more effectively, but also to find new opportunities to work with us to support the UK’s smaller businesses.

Co-Chief Banking Officer, Products, British Business Bank

Reinald de Monchy has been with the British Business Bank since 2013 and was part of the team who established the Bank. He was previously Managing Director, Guarantee and Wholesale at the Bank, with responsibility for the design and delivery of funding and capital solutions to help increase the flow of finance to smaller businesses.

Prior to joining the Business Bank programme team in 2013, Reinald was Head of SME, Corporate and Leveraged Loan Securitisation at Lloyds Bank and had 15 years’ experience securitising a wide variety of asset classes including SME Loans and Leveraged Finance. Before joining Lloyds, Reinald worked for MeesPierson (later ABN Amro Bank) and Rabobank in a range of securitisation, loan syndication and interest rate derivatives trading roles.

Louis Taylor, CEO, British Business Bank said:

Reinald has a considerable track record of managing the design and implementation of programmes that bring strong benefits to smaller UK businesses. During his time with the Bank, he has been responsible for the introduction of a number of creative solutions to weaknesses in the market, and I look forward to working with him so our product offering can provide even more benefit to businesses and the wider UK economy.

Reinald de Monchy said:

The British Business Bank has a strong set of existing products and programmes serving the UK’s finance markets for smaller businesses. In taking on this new role, I am looking forward to working with teams across the Bank and market participants to develop our suite of products further, so that more UK smaller businesses can access the finance they need to grow and thrive.

Reinald holds a Master’s degree in Econometrics from the University of Amsterdam.

Further Information

If you are a journalist and have a media enquiry, please contact mediaenquiries@british-business-bank.co.uk.

Notes to editors

About the British Business Bank

The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to drive sustainable growth and prosperity across the UK and to enable the transition to a net zero economy, by improving access to finance for smaller businesses. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.

The British Business Bank’s core programmes support over £17.4bn[1] of finance to almost 64,000[2] smaller businesses.

As well as increasing the supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the Bank works to raise awareness of finance options available to smaller businesses. The British Business Bank Finance Hub provides independent and impartial information to businesses about finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help make their application a success. 

The British Business Bank is also responsible for administering the government’s three Coronavirus loan schemes and its Future Fund, together responsible for delivering £80.4bn in finance to 1.67m businesses. These schemes are now closed to new applications.

British Business Bank plc is a public limited company registered in England and Wales, registration number 08616013, registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. Wholly owned by HM government, the Bank and its subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. They are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for the group can be found at british-business-bank.co.uk.

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