ClearBank Hires Visa’s Neil Drennan as New CTO

ClearBank, the UK-based real-time clearing and embedded banking infrastructure provider, has announced the appointment of Neil Drennan as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) — a bold strategic hire underlining the bank’s commitment to technology excellence and rapid expansion.

Drennan joins ClearBank from Visa, where he spent the last three years as Chief Technology Officer for Visa Cross Border Solutions and Currency Cloud. At Visa, he was instrumental in creating the Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) to embed cloud-native practices across the business — expertise he will now bring to ClearBank’s API and payments infrastructure.

His career spans more than 15 years in media and financial technology, including senior technology roles at 10x Future Technologies, Amazon and global payments systems — making him a seasoned technologist with both strategic and operational experience.

Strengthening Cloud-Native Foundations

ClearBank operates API-first real-time clearing and embedded banking services that enable fintechs, financial institutions and corporate partners to integrate banking and payments functions directly into their platforms. The appointment of a CTO with deep cloud and API experience reflects the bank’s priority to enhance resilience, scalability and product innovation as it grows its footprint.

At Visa, Drennan’s leadership of the Cloud Centre of Excellence was focused on standardising cloud-native best practices across technology teams and accelerating cloud transformation — skills clear to be valuable as ClearBank expands both its technology stack and market reach.

Mark Fairless, CEO of ClearBank, commented that Drennan’s experience will be “invaluable in streamlining and scaling our cloud-based platform,” adding that as the bank explores new offerings and geographical expansion, technology differentiation remains key.

Supporting Expansion Across UK and Europe

ClearBank’s platform serves as an infrastructure backbone for a growing number of fintechs and embedded banking partners, offering real-time payments, virtual accounts, clearing, and API-driven banking functions.

In recent years, the company has expanded its footprint into Europe, launched embedded banking services, and introduced a channel partnerships model to make its regulated banking infrastructure accessible to a wider set of partners.

With Neil Drennan now leading technology strategy, ClearBank aims to further scale its API and platform capabilities, aligning its cloud-native engineering practices with global standards. His role on the Group Executive Team will also position technology strategy alongside business strategy as ClearBank pursues broader market penetration.

Innovation, Resilience and Market Leadership

ClearBank’s evolution reflects a larger trend in modern banking infrastructure: the convergence of banking, real-time payments and cloud technology to support embedded financial services. By integrating banking functions directly into product experiences via APIs, ClearBank enables partners to offer modern, seamless financial services without building their own banking platforms from scratch.

Drennan’s appointment marks a clear institutional investment in cloud architecture, platform engineering excellence and scalable payments infrastructure — attributes critical to competing in embedded finance and real-time financial services markets.

“ClearBank has shaken up the payments and banking sector with its blend of innovative cloud technology and trusted regulatory processes,” Drennan said, noting his eagerness to contribute to the bank’s growth and leadership in this space.

Strategic Technology as a Competitive Advantage

In a landscape where embedded banking, fintech innovation and API-first platforms are increasingly defining competitive advantage, ClearBank’s choice of CTO signals its intent not just to maintain operational excellence, but also to lead in technological sophistication.

Under Drennan’s leadership, the bank is expected to prioritise:

• Cloud-native platform optimisation for performance, security, and scale
• API reliability and extensibility for partner integrations
• Payments infrastructure enhancements to support new rails and global flows
• Engineering culture and best practices rooted in modern software development
• Continued alignment with regulatory and resilience frameworks across markets

As ClearBank continues to be a key partner for fintechs and financial institutions, this strategic hire may shape how the bank differentiates itself in embedded finance, banking-as-a-service (BaaS) and real-time clearing markets.

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