Here’s the ‘biophilic’ office in Liverpool that Cashplus is making its second HQ

Liverpool is gaining a new fintech with the arrival of Cashplus Bank, a neobank that is making the city the base of its ‘second HQ’.

Cashplus has signed a three-year deal to take 6,000 sq ft of office space at The Spine building in Paddington Village, which will give it space for over 70 desks.

According to Cashplus CEO Rich Wagner, the bank will base not only its “operation teams, but several other corporate functional areas” in Liverpool too.

In the next five years Cashplus is hoping to create "hundreds" of roles as it grows in Liverpool.

The Spine isn’t just any building however, it’s a 200,000 sq ft £35m development that has a ‘biophilic’ design that: “draws on the narrative of the human body and its abstract representation through architecture and biophilia”.

That starts with its impressive façade, a Voronoi pattern created by 23 million individual polygons on the building’s windows that are influenced by human skin.

“This building’s unique design was a big factor in us choosing this space as our new home in Liverpool,” Colin Webb, operations director of Cashplus Bank, told AltFi.

“It’s one of the first buildings in the UK to be WELL standard certified, meaning it's been designed to be a better environment for people's mental and physical health, from the quality of air right down to the way light is filtered through the windows, which is exactly what we want for our teams.”

Inside there are a series of double-height floors that act as vertical villages, filled with a mix of plants and trees that reduce carbon dioxide, produce oxygen and which the designers say represent the building’s “lungs”.

The building is in the process of being accredited at the Core Platinum level of the WELL Certification, a series of scientific and medical research principles for workplaces.