Like any catch-all term, “challenger bank” covers a multitude of business models. Some are actually very big, some very small. Some are very new and some are actually very old. The one unifying theme is that you can walk down most high streets without seeing one of their branches, though with the big lenders shutting sites at a rate of knots this is not perhaps the distinguishing feature it once was.
Virgin Money is at the larger end of the challenger spectrum. With a mortgage portfolio close to £34 billion and a little over £3 billion of credit card balances, backed up by £31.1 billion of customer deposits, the business is not merely a small start-up. It also is among the older challenger banks. Virgin