Anthony Thomson had co-founded Metro Bank. Then he left it, after, as press accounts put it, opposing its commitment to costly branches. That disagreement is where Atom starts.
Thomson has said the idea for a bank with no branches goes back to early 2012. Mark Mullen, who had been chief executive of First Direct, the original telephone bank, left his job in 2014 to join him. The company was incorporated in July 2013.
The stakes were unusual. This was not an app that moved money around. It was a bank that needed a licence, capital and regulators who had never granted one to a business without a single branch. The licence arrived in June 2015. In November 2015, Spain's BBVA agreed to invest a substantial stake before launch. Atom opened in April 2016 to people who had registered an interest, and widened out that October.
It chose Durham for its headquarters, away from London. By 2019 Beauhurst ranked it second on its list of 50 top UK fintech scale-ups, the only company outside London in the top twenty. In February 2022 it raised £75m at a £435m valuation and talked about an IPO. It also moved all 430 staff to a four-day week without cutting salaries.
The price came later. In November 2023 shareholders including BBVA and Toscafund put in £100m at a £362m valuation, below the 2022 mark. Then the turn: in June 2024 Atom reported a £27m operating profit, about seven times the previous year and its first annual pre-tax profit since launch. Borrowing rose 39% to £4.1bn. Revenue for 2024 was £99.1m.
FY2025 brought an operating profit of £25m, and Mullen announced his departure after more than ten years as CEO. Thomson, who stepped down in 2018, reportedly plans a new bank for the very wealthy.
The human lesson in this story is how long a stubborn idea can take. Thomson walked away from a successful bank because he disagreed with its model, and then spent about a decade proving the opposite. A founder's strongest asset may be knowing exactly what he refuses to build.