Guest Interview Highlights Nic Vrillaud (Head of Partnerships at Mettle Nat West)

Episode 28. On today's episode, Rob Brown of the Accountants Influencers Podcast interviews Nic Vrillaud of challenger bank Mettle on how they are filling the gap for small business banking. Nicolas Vrillaud leads Business Development & Partnerships at the challenger bank Mettle, with a focus on growing distribution via accountants. After 10+ years in consulting and banking, he has spent the last 5 years helping NatWest, one of the largest UK banks, adapt to the technological disruptions of the financial services industry. At Mettle, Nic works very closely with external partners as well as the product team to shape the product roadmap and continue delivering value-adding features to customers and accountants. Outside work, he enjoys reading about tech/innovation, investing in promising tech companies and spending time with his 3-year-old daughter. Key shownotes from the whole interview include: ➩ How the Mettle challenger bank fits into the wider Nat West business proposition ➩ Defining what a challenger bank is and does in the business sector ➩ The advantages for small businesses of working with non-traditional challenger banks ➩ The role of mobile technology, user experience and simplicity in challenger bank wallets ➩ How challenger banks are an international phenomenon, eg neo-banks in France ➩ The perfect storm of technology and lower regulation birth financial services companies ➩ The 2 factors that dictate whether a bank will be successful with business customers ➩ How an association with an established, trusted parent bank helps build a challenger brand ➩ An overview of the competitive landscape in the challenger bank space ➩ Why business customers have become unhappy with traditional high street banks ➩ What has changed in the business banking sector during the Covid pandemic ➩ Two reasons why so many new businesses have been created in the last 2 years ➩ How the younger entrepreneurs are shifting how banks and vendors operate ➩ Findings from Mettle research with YouGov about where people derive income from ➩ What contributes £125bn to the UK's GDP and why it presents opportunities ➩ Why it's critical that business banking is more integrated with cloud software ➩ How Mettle works with strategic fintech and software partners like Free Agent ➩ The benefits for accounting firms of working in partnership with Mettle ➩ The role accountants play in their partnerships with banks and how it serves their clients ➩ Shoutout to Free Agent, a loyal commercial partner of the Accounting Influencers Podcast ➩ The future of the fintech sector, especially challenger banks and their relationship with accountants Nic Vrillaud on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasvrillaud Mettle website: https://www.mettle.co.uk NOTE TO LISTENERS: This is a condensed highlights version of the full interview (usually 20-30 mins long), which you can catch as a bonus episode at the weekend. Martin and Rob love to hear from the show's 5000+ listeners in 138 countries around the world. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments or success stories, just type sayhi.chat/aip into your browser and leave us a quick and easy voice message. We may just feature you on the show!