Castle Trust has announced it has been granted full authorisation as a bank by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

After being authorised with restrictions in March this year, Castle Trust had undertaken extensive testing of its new savings system and asked its customers to vote on proposals to convert their existing investments into bank deposits.

Castle Trust’s customers voted in favour with an overwhelming majority and the conversion is due to take place later this month.

Castle Trust CEO, Martin Bischoff, suggested that being granted a full banking licence signalled the “start of the next phase” of Castle Trust’s growth.

“Our first priority is to convert our 30,000 existing investment accounts into savings accounts, after which we look forward to launching our exciting new range of savings products in late July,” he said.

“The full banking licence opens up many new opportunities for the business, which we expect to benefit our specialist property finance and retail finance offerings. We already have 200,000 customers and look forward to helping even more in the future.

“We’ll be revealing details of our enhanced specialist property lending proposition shortly, which will build upon our existing offering to meet the needs of Buy to Let landlords and High Net Worth Individuals. Our new status enables us to work with a wider range of property brokers.”

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