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Britain’s first new high street bank in over 100 years, Metro Bank, opened their flagship store opposite Holborn tube station with an extravagant display that signalled a seismic shift in the staid world of British banking. Jugglers, waitresses with ice-cream, corgis and poodles were all in attendance at the bank’s launch in July 2010. It was the man behind this opening that delegates came to this London Business Forum event to see - American billionaire and banking revolutionary, Vernon Hill.

Hill’s vision for Metro Bank is quite simple; he wants customers to love their bank. Shockingly, in the UK more people actually recommend against their friends joining a bank than they recommend a bank. This, Hill told the London Business Forum, means that some of Britain’s top high street banks actually have a negative net promoter score. “I had never seen a negative net promoter score until I came to Britain,” he exclaimed.

Inversely, Metro Bank’s aim is to create a brand that people love not loathe. Of course, making money is also part of the plan and to do this Metro Bank want to build a growth firm but they had to ask themselves “how to build a growth company in a slow growth world?” Hill suggests that banks should look to the retail sector: “We don’t like to think of Metro as a bank, we like to think of ourselves as a power retailer that happens to be a bank.”

Great firms in the retail sector have three common elements, said Hill:

1. A business model that is completely different and the consumer sees as adding value.
2. Build a culture that matches the model.
3. Fanatically execute that model.

Metro Bank, like Apple he told the LBF, are in the “business of building fans.” Hill wants Metro Bank’s customers to recommend their bank to all their friends meaning that they have successfully built a brand that people love.

Like other banks, Hill explains that Metro Bank also “love making loans” but their core business is deposit driven. Drawing from his experience in the US where he founded Commerce Bank, which he built into one of the largest banks in America, Hill is clear that accepting deposits is a bank’s unique advantage. Too often, he argued, “big banks look at their business from the top down” whilst retailers “look at the business from the store up.” Hill is certain that “customers care much less about the rates you pay on deposits than they do about the retail experience”; for Hill, it’s his customers that build the business so a negative net promoter score is surely something that the big banks should be deeply concerned about.

Currently, 84 per cent of Metro Bank’s customers would recommend them to a friend. How then, are Metro Bank ensuring that their customers love their bank? First and foremost, said Hill, they “over invest in people and facilities.” Metro Bank must be in the best locations and with the best, friendliest staff, who exude the company culture.

Hill doesn’t like rules: “I am on a never ending quest to kill every stupid rule you can find.” Britain he suggests is rife with stupid rules and he wants his bank to put an end to rules that build barriers against customers. Metro Bank has longer opening hours, “we’re open whenever the customer wants to come,” said Hill. Banks, he suggests, don’t seem to like accepting customers’ loose change so Metro Bank have coin counting machines and you don’t have to be a Metro Bank customer to use them! In addition, Hill told the London Business Forum that they won’t see any pens “anchored to the counter.” Pens he sees as another way to get the brand out there, why stop people from taking them?

Another one of Metro Bank’s more unusual broken rules is that “Dogs rule!” Customers can take their dogs into the branch with them, where their pampered pooch will be offered free dog biscuits and their very own dog bowl to go home with. A dog lover himself – Hill’s dog is a Yorkshire terrier called Sir Duffield, Duffy for short – Hill believes that if Metro Bank loves their customers dogs then their customers will think “Metro Bank […] must love me.” Hill wants to drive customers into the stores whilst other banks are “trying to drive customers out.”

Metro Bank already has branches in Holborn, Earls Court and Fulham Broadway and their vision is to have 200 stores by 2020. Hill is definitely someone that gets things done, so it seems we should all watch this space because Metro Bank will soon be coming to a street near you.