Monument Bank Weighs $253 Million Fundraise Before IPO

Before it goes public, the United Kingdom’s Monument Bank is reportedly in talks to raise money.

The challenger bank is looking to raise 200 million pounds (about $253 million) in private funding before pursuing an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, Sky News reported Friday (Feb. 21).

Monument is targeting a listing on the Nasdaq by the close of 2027, with a secondary listing on a major Middle Eastern or Indian exchange possible for 2028, the report said.

Monument CEO Ian Rand confirmed the company’s funding plans without offering an IPO timeline, according to the report.

“We anticipate that this will be our final fundraise that will support our product and international expansion, and fund our path to listing,” he said, per the report. “We will explore all options for listing and make the final decision at the appropriate time.”

Other exchange venues are still in play, although marketing materials created in connection with the Series C funding round mention a desire for a Nasdaq listing, the report said.

Monument is a digital-first lender focused on the mass affluent market . Rand told PYMNTS in an interview in 2023 that this demographic of U.K. society is often underserved by major High Street lenders and digital startups.

“This community have lost a lot of the sources of advice that they used to get,” Rand said, adding that “they used to be able to go and talk to brokers and advisors, [but] they do very little of that now because the bar to be able to deliver that service has been set much higher.”

In addition to having unique financial advice needs, mass affluent banking customers often have complicated loan requirements, meaning a one-size-fits-all approach will invariably fail this group of borrowers, he said.

To meet this challenge, Monument Bank packages tailored lending services such as complex buy-to-let and bridge lending into an accessible digital format. Where a digital-only approach doesn’t work, the bank melds “both digital and human support to get complex lending over the line,” Rand said.