CASE STUDIES

Atom Bank

CLIENTS

Atom Bank

Job

Lansons has handled external communications on behalf of Atom Bank since it was granted its banking licence in 2015. In the run up to the licence being granted, Lansons dealt with the pre-launch of the bank, communicating the intention to launch, the appointment of the management and wider team, as well as partners and the ongoing plans for the Atom products and corporate journey.

In April 2016, Lansons brought the next step of the Atom Bank journey to its key stakeholder groups by executing a tightly controlled launch. This announced the lifting of banking restrictions and Atom's official “door opening”. With tailored messages for different media and stakeholder groups, the launch activity drove pre-registration customers to the Atom site, detailed the business lending proposition and established the future journey for the first app-only bank in the UK.

Lansons managed potential negativity from stakeholders regarding the staggered rollout of banking services (at the point of launch Atom Bank was only "open" to already pre-registered users), engaged with the critical early adopter and tech audiences, and managed all messaging across stakeholder groups, both internal and external. The launch activity was hugely successful, with coverage across all major national personal finance sections, tech media outlets, and business and trade press. 

Key areas of focus for Atom’s communications strategy are the tech and FinTech community, business banking, personal finance and SMEs.  Atom is committed to supporting the SME community through improving access to lending, and in July last year confirmed this as a primary objective in a response to the media following the withdrawal of Virgin Money’s SME proposition. 

In November Lansons worked with Atom to launch its Digital Mortgages proposition, with residential mortgages available via a panel of specialist intermediaries.  Key to this activity was communicating with broker and tech press, as well as consumer news and personal finance.  Following the launch, Lansons hosted a press event in association with experiential dining company Gingerline, engaging with consumer and intermediary press to celebrate the mortgages launch and provide access to the senior team at Atom.