Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is to formally launch a retail bank in the UK next month, offering easy access to online savings accounts.
The lender has been named after the group’s founder – Marcus. It is currently available to employees and will be rolled out across Britain “in the coming weeks”.
The lender currently offers a high yield savings rate of 1.5 percent to employees as a tester rate. This is above the national average and would be an easy access savings rate if the same rate was launched nationwide.
The average interest rate in the UK is 0.55 percent, according to Moneyfacts.co.uk. On the higher end of the spectrum, Virgin Money (LON: VM) offers 1.3 percent.
In an internal memo, Goldman Sachs said: “the current interest rate offered may be subject to change for the nationwide launch, depending on market conditions.”
In the same memo, the bank said the rollout of the bank in the UK “represents an important milestone in the growth of Goldman Sachs’s consumer business, as well as continued diversification of the firm’s funding”.
“Our initial offering aligns to one of Marcus’s core tenets, offering transparent, simple and easy to use products that provide value,” the bank added.
Goldman Sachs employs over 6,000 people in the UK and employed a further 150 extra staff in London for the rollout.
Marcus UK will be led by Des McDaid, who was a director at TSB before joining Goldman Sachs in 2017.
In July, the veteran banker and DJ was named as the next chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs.
“I don’t know whether seeing a president of Goldman Sachs spinning tunes at a club is going to change the perception of the industry. We have got a lot of work to do on that front,” he said.
