November 7, 2019
A Bank of Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs
North Channel Bank Repositioned
North Channel Bank is pursuing new, forward-looking strategies. It has evolved from a specialist bank in US Life Settlement financing to an institution that also offers progressive services and middle market support. Expanding to four new business areas, North Channel Bank offers its customers tailor-made solutions for their financing and investment needs.
In addition to US Life Settlements, the bank also offers structured finance, digital banking, financial concierge services, and individual services for institutional investors.
Innovative Merchant Bank
“Our goal is to create significant added value for our business partners with the classic merchant bank concept and a small but highly efficient team of experts,” says Gunnar Volkers, Managing Director of North Channel Bank. His management colleague Harald Zenke adds: “We are a bank of entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. We are engaged in transactions and projects because we believe they are worth implementing. We enable our customers to find innovative and cost-effective solutions to the challenges of their business ideas by involving partners from our network at an early stage. We also enable our customers to use and build new networks themselves”. Stefan Rensinghoff, Managing Director: “All three of us started almost three years ago in order to eliminate high-risk, low-profit business segments that did not fit the bank’s DNA and to develop a business model based on the strengths of the bank and its employees. I am convinced we have achieved this and I see a great advantage for our customers in the fact that we can respond to their individual requirements with expertise, flexibility, and agility”.

Pioneer, Implementer, and Quality Financer
North Channel Bank intends to be perceived by its customers as a pioneer, implementer, and quality financier. It remains one of the very few banks in the world to have a significant market position in US Life Settlement financing. With its structured finance division, the bank is concentrating primarily on renewable energies and aims to help entrepreneurs implement their visions with intelligent financing solutions. Institutional investors benefit above all from opportunities to invest in asset classes that do not correlate with the capital markets. In digital banking, North Channel Bank plans to support FinTechs in order to integrate their visions into a regulatory environment and assume the role of a fronting bank for them. With its financial concierge service, the bank offers international medium-sized business partners assistance in entering the European market.
Engage, Connect, Enable
The bank’s new guiding principles should not be empty phrases. The banks committed and intensive support in addition to its extensive network should enable its customers to achieve their goals. “We are interested in a value-based business approach. Together with the customer, we develop solutions for their needs, requirements, or challenges and we consider them individually, without pursuing any standard approach,” state Zenke, Rensinghoff, and Volkers. “It’s about a business relationship at eye level, based on trust and honesty with the objective to develop a long-term sustainable partnership”.
In five years, the managers agree, they want North Channel Bank to be known as an innovative and reliable entrepreneurial bank that deals with issues that are relevant to both its customers and society setting standards in the industry. It also aims to attract young talent as an attractive employer.
North Channel Bank GmbH & Co. KG was founded in 1924 as the privately owned bank Bankhaus Oswald Kruber, located in Berlin. In 2009, a group of North American investors with expertise in the US Life Settlement sector acquired the bank and renamed it North Channel Bank. In the following years the bank developed into one of the leading institutes in US Life Settlement financing. 2013 with the acquisition of its affiliate NorthStar Life Services, LLC, Irvine, California the bank gained direct access to and influence on a reliable, experienced, and renowned service provider. Today, in addition to financing, the bank also offers investments in US Life Settlements. In the structured finance division the bank focuses in particular on financing in the renewable energies sector, (especially equity interim financing), capital goods and growth financing.