Afin Bank

At a glance

Project year 

2024

Bank type 

Challenger Bank

Cloud partner 

AWS

Geography 

UK

Challenges

Afin wanted to build a new digital bank to address financial exclusion for underserved borrowers, such as the African diaspora and other foreign nationals living and working in the UK, as well as the self-employed and high net worth customers. Mainstream lenders’ rigid, automated systems often reject these borrowers due to their individual circumstances, such visa status or a lack of UK credit history for diaspora customers. This leaves a lot of people struggling to get a mortgage: for example, 87% of Africans living in the UK say that they have been turned down for a mortgage.

To solve this challenge, Afin Bank sought a technology partner that could enable it to create a new digital bank, moving beyond the limitations of traditional lenders and supporting a reliable, inclusive and human-centric underwriting process.

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The solution

Afin Bank chose the Vault platform to build its new bank. Vault’s modern, cloud-native technology gave Afin the flexibility to quickly design and launch tailored banking products using smart contracts. Unlike traditional lenders that rely solely on rigid, automated credit scoring, Thought Machine’s technology enabled Afin to embed a nuanced and inclusive underwriting process into its product design.

This meant the bank could assess borrowers based on a holistic financial picture — incorporating income flows, employment status, and alternative data sources — rather than excluding them due to limited UK credit history or visa constraints. With this adaptable foundation, Afin can rapidly iterate new products, ensuring inclusivity while managing risk responsibly.

Within just a few months, the bank built a suite of mortgage and savings products, ready to go live upon securing its banking license and full regulatory approval in July 2025.

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“Drawing on my extensive experience in the core banking market, I understand what defines a high-quality, next-generation platform. We selected Vault for its product excellence. It is cloud-native, highly configurable, and uniquely universal,” says Monica Velasquez, CTO of Afin Bank. “Its innovative use of smart contracts lets us develop differentiated products efficiently and quickly. The exceptional engineering support and comprehensive documentation equip our team to leverage this groundbreaking technology.”

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Our story

Afin Bank’s mission was to address a widespread industry challenge: the struggle to access mortgages for many underserved borrowers in the UK. For example, many people living in the UK with valid work visas were unable to easily access mortgages, despite having stable careers and strong earning potential. Mainstream lenders, constrained by rigid credit data, outdated risk models, and inflexible decisioning engines, often fail to recognise the potential of individuals from overseas who lack an established credit footprint.

Similarly, for self-employed people who might have multiple income streams, the rigid tick box approach of mainstream lenders is not able to cope with the individual circumstances of a borrower. This reliance on narrow data inputs leaves a significant and valuable market segment underserved.

To tackle this, Afin Bank recognised it had to overcome several structural pain points common to legacy banking technology:

Time to market and revenue: On traditional core systems, building and launching new products can take years due to complex integrations and rigid product engines. This lag makes it almost impossible to address emerging market needs quickly.
Operational efficiency: Legacy cores often depend on siloed architectures, batch processing, and heavy manual interventions. This increases costs and slows down onboarding, underwriting, and servicing — barriers to reaching underserved communities effectively.
Customer experience: Traditional banks often rely on slow, paper-heavy, and branch-centric processes. For a digital-native audience, this results in friction, poor transparency, and journeys that don’t meet modern expectations of immediacy and control.

Afin Bank, therefore, needed a core banking platform that could deliver both flexibility and speed. Vault’s real-time, cloud-native architecture and smart contracts enabled the Afin team to independently design and iterate on products, without waiting for vendor change requests. Crucially, the platform supported data-rich, human-centric underwriting, enabling Afin to assess a borrower’s full financial context rather than relying solely on credit files.

Within just a few months, Afin Bank built and tested a comprehensive suite of products — including mortgages for first-time buyers, home movers, and buy-to-let landlords, alongside savings offerings — ready for launch when regulatory approval was secured.

“We are thrilled to launch Afin Bank, which is dedicated to serving underserved borrowers in the UK. By partnering with Thought Machine, we are confident in our goal to provide important groups of UK borrowers, such as foreign nationals, the self-employed and high net worth customers with the financial support they need,” adds Jason Oakley, CEO of Afin Bank.

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Rapid time-to-market

With Thought Machine’s smart contract technology, Afin Bank designed and launched a range of mortgage and savings products in just a matter of months. This agility means the bank can continuously innovate, adapt to customer needs, and respond to market changes in real time — setting a new benchmark for serving underserved communities.

Afin Bank transitioned from receiving its Banking Licence AwR (Approval with Restrictions) to a fully operational bank in less than nine months — an exceptional timeline in a heavily regulated industry. By leveraging Vault’s cloud-native architecture, comprehensive APIs, and robust documentation, the team rapidly built, tested, and deployed a complete suite of products, proving the efficiency of a next-generation core platform.

Differentiated product development harnessing the power of data

Vault Core’s use of Python-based smart contracts allows Afin Bank to move beyond generic financial products and create tailored, highly configurable solutions. Thought Machine provides hundreds of pre-built templates which can be adapted or extended, enabling Afin to:

Embed human-centric underwriting that considers a customer’s full financial context, not just credit scores.
Launch inclusive mortgage products for first-time buyers, home movers, and buy-to-let landlords.
Rapidly iterate and scale new offerings based on customer behaviour and market trends.

This combination of flexibility, speed, and data-driven personalisation empowers Afin Bank to truly meet the needs of its customers — and to stand apart from traditional lenders.