About Us
Our Journey
OakNorth Bank was created to help the UK's growth businesses and entrepreneurs reach their potential by providing them with bespoke, no-nonsense debt finance solutions.
Oak trees can live for 1,000 years, oak wood is one of the strongest and most durable of all woods, and having a “north star” symbolises knowing where one is headed. The name OakNorth represents strength, staying power, and clarity of direction. The entrepreneurs and growth businesses we support are characterised by these attributes.
For far too long, entrepreneurs and growth businesses in the UK have been underserved by their banks. In 2006, our founders Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman were trying to secure working capital to support their growth business, Copal Amba (now part of Moody´s Corporation). Despite having a good business with healthy cash flow, they found that banks were unwilling to help because the business had no property to act as security. As they built their business they came across many other entrepreneurs in the UK who faced the same challenge. That's why OakNorth was created.
OakNorth has been founded and is run by entrepreneurs not bankers. We therefore understand entrepreneurs and owned-manager's needs, and appreciate the fact that their requirements often don't fit into standardised models.
We believe that a funding partner needs to be able to understand the dynamics of a business and structure lending to suit that business as-opposed to the other way around.
We have an efficient credit process with early stage yes/no decisions to avoid wasting the borrower's time (and our time)
Borrowers meet the bank's Credit Committee (the decision makers) for face to face discussions
We provide flexible and bespoke funding structures, focusing on the specific business requirements and situation.
2006...How it all started
In 2006, Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman, our founders, faced and uphill struggle while trying to secure working capital to support their rapidly growing business, Copal Amba.
Their business was in a good shape with a healthy cash flow, and strong projections for the future, yet none of the banks were willing to lend to them because they didn't have any property to act as security.
As Copal Amba kept growing, Rishi and Joel realised that there are millions of other businesses in the UK facing the same struggles in securing growth finance.
The idea for OakNorth Bank began to form.
After scaling Copal Amba to almost 3,000 people and selling it to Moodys Corporation in 2014, the two set out to launch a bank for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs.