Monzo CEO Tom Blomfield started the bank in 2015 after a few stints at other fintech firms and a stop in Silicon Valley; his time in Silicon Valley helped to shape the entrepreneur with an infectious culture of sheer optimism and ambition; he first went there in 2011 to build GoCardless with two college friends and learned the banking system was not as complicated as he first thought, they were weighed down by bad technology; “All of the annoying processes that banks have — I assumed at least were there for a reason. There’s got to be some underlying complexity. And it’s just not true actually, most of them are relatively simple systems. They just don’t have good technology,” Blomfield said to CNBC; he was working at competitor Starling Bank when he thought of the idea for Monzo and was able to secure investment from Passion Capital to start the bank; “We are first and foremost a regulated bank,” Blomfield said. “We were once a start-up, we were once a fintech — we are now a bank. And I think, rightly, we are subject to stringent regulations.” CNBC
