ClearBank picked Microsoft Azure because it has 'the most investment going on in cyber security on the planet'

Nick Ogden, founder of the first new clearing bank in in the UK in 250 years, hopes to leave behind 'aging technology'

Worldpay founder Nick Ogden launched ClearBank today - the UK's first new clearing bank to open in 250 years.

He told Computing why the new bank decided Microsoft's Azure cloud's security credentials made it the place to run this new attempt at "open competition and transparency" in UK banking.

ClearBank, which will allow the clearing of cheques for customers regardless of which bank they originate from, is one of only five of its type in the UK - compared to 16 in 1960. It is hoping for a slice of the £82tn currently cleared by UK banks every year.

As well as stimulating competition, ClearBank explained at this morning's London launch how "aging technology that sits at the heart of the UK banking industry" has held it back. It said that ClearBank's Azure environment will be "free from the constraints of years of legacy IT infrastructure".

Operating via a closed circuit with Azure on MPLS (multiprotocol label switching), payments then go through dedicated connections to payment services at either BT or Colt, to payment services such as Faster Payments, Swift, Visa or Mastercard.

Ogden told Computing precisely why he picked Microsoft Azure.

"The answer's not what you'd expect," he said. "Cybersecurity is an increasingly massive problem for everybody in this room, and everybody we can see looking out of these windows," he continued, gesturing out of the 40th floor window over London.

"Microsoft are investing $1.5bn every 12 weeks in their Azure network for cybersecurity, and all the rest of it. As far as I know - and I'm not a Microsoft salesman - that's the most investment that's going on in a secure network, a cybersecurity platform, on this planet.

"It's why the Ministry of Defence sit next to us in the Microsoft datacentre in the UK. And so it was that security [that persuaded us to go with Microsoft].

Giving more details on how the service works, Ogden told us that ClearBank "uses Azure in the public cloud".

"We also use Azure across our private data centres. So our use of the product is hybrid. What it means is our data centres are divorced from access to the internet."

Ogden also believes ClearBank's current 'soft launch' status with no actual customers gives it an advantage to keep working on its security proposition.

"We still have the ability - as we have no customers yet - of being able to finish tweaking, tuning and developing this whole core without customer clutter. And I mean that in the nicest possible sense, because it means we can tweak and tune everything in the setup to make use of the best technological services possible, and then set it on the customers. So that's why we chose Microsoft."

Economic Secretary to the Treasury Simon Kirby was also present at ClearBank's launch, saying he could sum up ClearBank's advantage in one word: "Competition".

"It's fundamental that we want constant and continuous innovation if we want businesses to keep getting better and better, and the best possible deal for customers, then you want competition in the marketplace," Kirkby said.