You have to hand it to the guys at Aldermore, the new bank which launches today, they must have some cojones!

Borne from the merger of two finance institutions that, frankly, I have never heard of – Ruffler Bank and Base Commercial Mortgages – Aldermore enters the banking game at a time of unequalled uncertainty. But it seems they've given a lot of thought about the type of bank they want to be.

The chief exec of Aldermore, Philip Monks, is spot on when he says that consumers and businesses do not buy into the belief of many banks that being big is best. Take note Santander. For some reason, that Spanish mega-bank seems to think that customers from the Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley are delighted that their accounts have all been swallowed up by one, big global brand.

So good on Mr Monks for saying what other banks wouldn't dare. And maybe the timing isn't so bad after all when you give it a bit of thought. While Lloyds TSB and others struggle to retrieve their pre-credit crunch positions and face increasing pressure from the public and the Government on how they should run their operations, Aldermore has none of these worries as it can hold its hands up and claim "I wasn't even there, guv!"

The new bank is free of arrears, free of bad debt and free of angry customers. And they probably want to stay that way. Tthey're not even trying to compete with the big players, and claim they want to specialise in banking the way other businesses specialise in their sectors.

For regular customers, that'll be savings bonds and Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) initially but that's enough to attract some attention when you can offer a rate of more than 5%.

So welcome to our world Aldermore and good luck! Today is the first day of the rest of your life as a bank.