According to Sunday Telegraph, the Metro Bank will be inaugurated by April.

Branches in Holborn and Earls Court are already built and Metro has raised £75m of capital from institutional investors.

The bank, lined up for approval from the City watchdog, will focus exclusively on the Greater London area and plans to have 200 branches in place by 2020.

Metro Bank Chairman Anthony Thompson and Vice-Chairman Vernon Hill told in an interview that their licence from FSA is now imminent after a 15-month process.

The Metro will offer consumer accounts, loans and mortgages and commercial banking services aimed at small and medium-sized firms.

The bank intends to open from 8am to 8pm six days a week, and from 11am to 4pm on Sundays. It will close only on Christmas Day, New Year's Day and Good Friday.

Furthermore, there will be a call centre which will answer all calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Mr. Hill said that it’s a difficult job to make people change their banks but we are going to make it easy.

“We're going to open accounts in 15 minutes”, he concluded.