City of London Group plc (LON:CIN) remains on track to submit its banking licence application to UK regulators before the end of this year.
The finance house is in the process of building a new UK bank, Recognise, which will focus on lending to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
READ: City of London Group raises £15.2mln to support launch of Recognise bank
Bosses have been working on ticking the various boxes for some time now, including beefing up the board and setting up the necessary IT infrastructure.
City of London hopes to be invited to apply for its licence later this year, with the aim of being allowed to accept deposits by “the latter part of 2020”.
“This has been another year of considerable progress for the City of London Group,” said chief executive Michael Goldstein.
“We have built a very high calibre NED team for Recognise, and we remain confident that we will be able to submit an application to the regulator by the end of 2019, after which we will embark on an institutional capital raise.”
Losses for the year rose to £3.6mln in the year ended 31 March (2018: loss of £1.1mln), which included licence application costs of £1.7mln.
Shares were up 3.4% to 150p on Monday morning, valuing the company at £58mln.