For most established SMEs, treasury is a problem they know they have but can’t afford to solve. Their businesses are complex enough to juggle payroll, tax bills, asset finance and surplus cash – but not large enough to justify a full‑time treasurer watching the numbers all day. What if their bank could quietly do that job in the background? 

That is the question Conrad Ford, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Allica Bank, is trying to answer – using AI to help the bank “think and act like a treasurer” for its customers. Many of the firms Allica serves sit in that “forgotten middle” of the SME market: established, multi‑million‑turnover businesses that face real cash‑flow swings and financing needs, yet often end up either sitting on idle cash or relying on expensive short‑term facilities that were never designed to be a long‑term funding strategy. 

Allica’s bet is that a digitally native, relationship‑led SME bank can change that equation. By combining AI‑driven insight with human relationship managers, it wants to both professionalise treasury for these businesses and fix how complex lending is delivered to them. Ahead of FTT Lending 2026 in London, Martin Wallraff, Director at Payments Consulting Network, spoke with Conrad about the bank’s AI‑treasury vision, why embedded SME lending is still more hype than reality, and how Allica plans to bring back “the right kind of finance” for established SMEs. 

Read the full interview below.

Building a bank for established SMEs 

Martin Wallraff: Conrad, can you briefly introduce your background and how you came to join Allica Bank? 

Conrad Ford: I started my career in big banks, including corporate strategy, and then found myself in a small subsidiary of a major bank that was building tech services for SMEs – effectively a fintech venture unit before such a thing really existed. That was my first serious exposure to digital when it was still a relatively early discipline. 

From there I founded one of London’s earlier fintech companies, Funding Options, a comparison site for small business lending that is now owned by Tide. I spent seven or eight years building that business before taking some time out and then joining the mission of building Allica alongside our CEO, whom I’ve known since our big‑bank days. 

For the last five or six years I’ve been focused on helping to build Allica Bank for established SMEs. 

A focused challenger in a “category of one” 

MW: How do you describe Allica’s proposition and position in the SME market? 

CF: We often get grouped with neobanks that serve micro‑businesses, but our segment is very different. Using UK numbers, around 90% of the business population are micro businesses – very small firms, often with tens of thousands in annual revenue, such as a sole‑trader plumber or a weekend home business. 

Our focus is the top 10–15% of SMEs by size. These businesses typically have multimillion revenues, sometimes tens of millions, and while they are only a tenth of SMEs by number, they represent a much larger share of the economy due to a strong power‑law effect. Things become more complex for this segment. You see lending secured on commercial property, buildings, machinery, trucks, invoices and stock, and a typical business will have a stack of facilities: long‑term debt for premises, and shorter‑term revolving facilities for working capital.  

The vast majority of SME lending by value sits in this established SME segment, and this is where Allica operates. We are very focused on that segment, and in the fintech world that puts us in a category of one: there is not another challenger doing exactly what we are doing, probably in Europe and certainly in the UK. 

A full‑service, digitally native challenger 

MW: How does that compare to other UK banks and challengers serving SMEs? 

CF: We share the same market as banks like Metro Bank or Handelsbanken, but our model is different. We are a fintech bank; Metro Bank, for example, is explicitly about bringing back branches, and Handelsbanken operates a very traditional relationship‑banking model through business centres. 

In specific lending verticals we do face fintech competition from specialist digital lenders, but we are a full‑service bank with both sides of the balance sheet. That means we provide not only lending products, but also the broader banking relationship, including current accounts. 

Our strategy is similar to what Monzo has done in consumer banking: instead of playing at the fringes or in tiny niches that the big banks avoid, we want to go head‑to‑head as a full‑service bank that can replace the big banks in our chosen SME segment. 

Embedded lending: hype versus reality for SMEs 

MW: There is growing interest in embedded finance for SMEs, especially around working capital, receivables discounting and platform‑based lending. How significant is that for your segment? 

CF: In the SME world, embedded lending is massively overstated. In consumer, players like Klarna are seen as potential replacements for credit cards, which is a big shift; in SMEs, embedded finance generally focuses on very small‑ticket working capital. 

To put it in perspective, there is about £250 billion of SME debt outstanding in the UK, yet only hundreds of millions of that are currently truly accessible through embedded finance channels. It is small, transactional and mainly relevant for micro businesses rather than the larger, established firms we focus on. 

For these firms, a strategic version of embedded lending would look quite different. In that world your platform – probably your accounting software – acts like a treasurer in the background, constantly talking to lenders, monitoring facilities and managing risk, rather than handing out a quick “sugar rush” of cash when you hit a bump. We want to help take the market in that direction, but it is fair to say we are still some way from that becoming reality. 

The overlooked opportunity: yield and SME treasury 

MW: You also surprisingly stress that many SMEs are cashrich. How does that shape your product priorities? 

CF: The average SME in the UK is cash‑rich, not borrowing‑poor. In aggregate there are more SME deposits than SME lending at any given point in time, which is why yield is an overlooked opportunity. 

Everyone talks about embedded payments and embedded lending, but embedded yield – or embedded treasury – is a really big prize. The core problem is helping businesses put money aside for tax bills, maintain reserves and earn a return on their cash in a structured way. 

We are very focused on solving that problem, even though it gets far less airtime than lending. In the US there are some players exploring similar ideas, but in the UK it is barely discussed, which we find strange given how important cash and liquidity management are for established SMEs. 

Using AI so the bank “thinks and acts like a treasurer” 

MW: What are you working on this year that you’re most excited about in that context? 

CF: One area I can talk about is the vision we are pursuing with AI. We are a five‑ or six‑year‑old digital bank and, halfway through our journey, something fundamental changed: the speed and impact of AI in the last couple of years has been extraordinary. 

The central problem we are trying to solve is that our customers are big and complex enough to need a treasurer, but not big enough to afford one. Imagine a haulage business on an industrial estate outside a remote town, with around £5 million in turnover – that is typical of our segment. A £50 million business can justify a dedicated treasurer; a £500,000 business doesn’t need one; but the £5 million business sits in a very awkward middle. 

Our thesis is: what if your bank could think and act like a treasurer for you? For example, what if we can see payroll is likely to be tight at the end of April and pre‑approve an overdraft in case we are right, or spot a large tax bill due in May and automatically set aside £250,000 while earning interest? 

By combining AI with tighter integration into the platforms our customers already use, we believe we can make the bank genuinely more helpful and proactive. Reinventing SME banking in this way simply was not possible when we started Allica five or six years ago. 

Relationship managers in an AI‑powered bank 

MW: If the bank starts to behave more like a treasurer, what does that mean for the role of the relationship manager in your model? 

CF: In our segment, the majority of customers not only say they want a relationship manager, they say it is extremely important. The big banks did not remove relationship managers because customers stopped valuing them, but because they could not make the economics work. Many businesses are still angry about that. 

At the heart of Allica’s strategy is the belief that with better digital we can make the relationship manager cost‑effective again. There are two main situations where customers want to talk to a relationship manager. 

First, when we drop the ball. In that case, customers want someone they can call who will say, “I’ve got this, leave it with me.” In a big bank they are likely to be bounced around a call centre, repeating the problem several times and being pushed toward chatbots that can’t solve it – exactly the experience SMEs dislike. 

Second, when something truly consequential comes up. For example, if an SME’s landlord is considering putting their business premises on the market and the SME needs to decide whether to buy the warehouse they have operated from for ten years. That is as significant for the business as buying your first home is for an individual, and it is when customers want to speak to a real person. 

Our bet is that with strong digital services, businesses will self‑serve for day‑to‑day banking and choose to pick up the phone only for these important moments. We use digital tooling – good CRM, robust self‑service – to make relationship managers more efficient and effective, and now AI can further enhance what they can do. Crucially, we see AI as a tool to make our people better at their jobs, not as a replacement for them, because our customers do not want those people to disappear. 

Making complex SME lending viable for smaller tickets 

MW: You mentioned more complex lending structures for your customers. How do you see AI changing what you can offer there? 

CF: We already have a product called Growth Finance, with a current minimum ticket size of £1 million, which is a good example of the complexity we deal with. It is a single facility that looks across the asset base and recognises that a business has longer‑term needs and shorter‑term revolving needs. 

It is essentially a sophisticated asset‑based lending product with a strong customer experience, but the minimum size means it is currently only suitable for businesses that can sustain £1 million of debt, often with tens of millions in turnover. We see a clear opportunity for AI to help deliver similarly sophisticated, better‑value products to smaller businesses. 

To achieve that, we will need a significant leap in technical capabilities, because having humans do all the structuring and underwriting is not economically viable at those lower ticket sizes. We don’t yet have a fully mapped‑out roadmap, but we do have conviction that it is achievable. 

A big part of the prize is correcting some of the negative consequences of big banks stepping back from SME funding over the last 10–15 years. Many businesses have ended up with high‑interest, short‑term debt and personal guarantees that undermine their limited liability. If technology can make it cost‑effective to offer better alternatives – better pricing, better terms, less personal liability – then we can bring back the right kind of finance for these firms. Right now, that part of the market is often being served by lenders that are not necessarily the best long‑term fit. 

Looking ahead to FTT Lending 2026 

MW: Finally, with FTT Lending coming up on 18 March, what are you most looking forward to at the event? 

CF: A lot of nonsense is said about SME lending, especially at fintech conferences. I am looking forward to setting a few things straight – which is something I tend to do at these events. 

For example, I often point out how small, short‑term unsecured SME lending is compared to the overall market – less than £1 billion out of £250 billion in SME debt outstanding – which is not as big a deal as some narratives suggest. Bringing the discussion back to data and to the realities of established SME lending is something I’m keen to contribute at FTT Lending. 

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Author: Martin Wallraff, Director, London, Payments Consulting Network   

Martin brings over 18 years of experience in financial services strategy consulting, both with external consultants and internal strategy teams. For the past decade, he has specialized in payments, fintech, and transaction banking, advising clients on strategy, market entry, product development, and cost management. His extensive international expertise includes leading projects worldwide and residing in various locations across Europe and Southeast Asia. 

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Payments Consulting Network is a media partner of FTT Lending happening on 18th March 2026 | London, UK.

👉 Check here for more information: https://bit.ly/4qiB9Yn

This event is co-located with Future Identity Finance and FID Fraud & Fincrime.

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