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Neil Chandler, CEO of Tandem Bank, joins Adclear's Between the Guidelines podcast to talk about customer-led banking, green finance, where AI should make decisions in a bank, and what the best compliance leaders do differently.
For founders and compliance teams building financial products people trust, it's a quietly persuasive case for the customer as the most underused input in financial services.
From engineer to bank CEO
Neil did an engineering degree and came out of it knowing he didn't want to be an engineer. He went into consultancy writing Visual C++, admits he wasn't much of a coder, and found his real talent was translating between technical people and everyone else.
He has relied on that skill ever since: a decade in consultancy, running Sainsbury's Bank through the 2008 crisis, then Shop Direct, Vanquis and Aion Bank, which he sold to UniCredit before joining Tandem.
Why every senior leader should run a fake M&A process
Selling Aion taught Neil something he now recommends to every senior leader: run a fake M&A process.
Explaining your business to a buyer forces you to see it from the outside, and few other exercises do that as well.
What a customer CEO looks like
Ask Neil what kind of CEO he is and he rejects the usual labels. He calls himself a customer CEO, shaped by watching his parents borrow just to get through life.
He still thinks banking is too arrogant and too product-led. His fix is to ask customers what they need and resist reinterpreting what they said. He keeps himself honest by reading escalated complaints.
Green finance as a cost-of-living answer
At Tandem, that customer lens shapes the product. The bank has financed nearly a billion pounds of solar panels, with the money paid straight to the installer, and offers cheaper mortgage rates for homes with better EPC ratings.
With diesel at £1.90 a litre, Neil sees green lending as a cost-of-living answer for households. As he puts it: nobody wants a loan, they want the car.
AI in banking: design versus execution
Tandem has seven AI pilots running. The most significant one mines complaint conversations for recurring themes.
Neil is frustrated that the industry stops at efficiency. His framework separates design from execution. Running a KYC check should be automated. Deciding what proportionate KYC looks like for your customers is a judgment a bank should never hand over.
He applies the same thinking to hiring, where the one judgment he makes is whether someone actually cares.
Working with the FCA and PRA
For a bank CEO, Neil is unusually warm about regulators. He has real sympathy for the FCA and PRA, and argues that firms who start customer communications from their regulatory obligations get things the wrong way round.
The best compliance leaders, in his view, balance regulation, customer need and commercial reality. Only the first is non-negotiable.
Advice for fintech founders
His closing advice to anyone launching a fintech: there are two words in it, and most people forget about the fin.
In this episode
- Neil's route from engineering and consultancy to bank CEO
- Why senior leaders should run a fake M&A process
- Being a customer CEO and reading escalated complaints
- Solar panel lending and EPC-linked mortgage rates at Tandem
- Tandem's seven AI pilots and complaint analysis
- Design versus execution in AI adoption and KYC
- Hiring for people who care
- Working with the FCA and PRA
- What the best compliance leaders balance
- Advice for fintech founders
Tune in here:
About Neil Chandler
Neil Chandler is CEO of Tandem Bank, the UK green digital bank.
He previously led Aion Bank through its sale to UniCredit and was CEO of Vanquis. Earlier in his career he ran Sainsbury's Bank through the 2008 financial crisis, worked at Shop Direct and spent a decade in consultancy.
Once you're booked in, we'll send you a free playbook on Financial promotions compliance for FinTechs.
