WEIGHING ANCHOR: MAKING A SUCCESS OF A SPEEDBOAT

Successful speedboat launches tend to share tell-tale characteristics.

They focus on new or underserved customer segments; they adopt a customer-experience-led model; they strive for simplicity and low cost at scale; they use agile ways of working with an ability to pivot at pace; and they have an entrepreneurial culture and talent pool.

Here are some notable examples:

CHASE – JPMORGAN

JPMorgan is showing patience with its first retail banking presence outside of the US, despite making a thumping $450million loss in its first year.

Digital bank Chase, which already has 50 million users in the States, attracted half a million customers, more than $10billion in deposits and processed 20 million payments in its first 12 months of operation in the UK.

The bank shuttered its US digital-only neo Finn in 2019 after just a year of operation. However, it remains bullish about Chase’s future. In September 2022, it announced that it’s doubling the size of its European workforce to at least 2,000.

Sanjiv Somani, UK chief executive of

Chase, maintains: "We want to be international, starting with the UK. You have to look at a 10-year view. If you look at anything shorter it will not lead to the right conclusion.”

WEYAY – NBK

In November 2021, the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) launched Weyay, the country’s first fully digital bank, aimed at its young, tech-savvy demographic. Weyay’s services and products are tailor-made for young people’s lifestyles and followed lengthy research with its target audience, particularly around the user interface.

At the end of 2022, head of consumer banking group at NBK, Mohammed Al-Othman, said Weyay Bank had exceeded its customer acquisition goal by 300 per cent in its first year. One of its biggest draws is fast, simple onboarding, achieved by limiting the number of data fields users are expected to enter.

MOX – STANDARD CHARTERED

In September 2020, Standard Chartered’s app-only Mox hit the Hong Kong market, promising ‘all the advantages you’d expect from a bank such as a robust regulatory, financial, compliance and risk modelling frameworks, security and reliability, together with many of the strengths you’d expect from a fintech such as speed, innovation and client experience’.

A joint venture with PCCW, Hong Kong Telecom and online travel agency Trip.com, Mox is expected to break even towards the end of 2023 or early 2024.

BankMD – TransPecos Banks, SSB

Launched by a 100-year-old, mid-tier Texas community bank in 2019, this neo is an extreme example of niche banking.

Focussed on serving a single professional class – the state’s physicians – its mission is to connect them to ‘finances and opportunities by doing things others said could not be done’, offering tailored flexible financing and banking solutions.

The parent bank’s total assets grew 110 per cent between 2018 and 2020 – an increase BankMD’s founder attributed to the neo. Its model of ‘picking up the highest value customers at the lowest acquisition costs’ by leveraging technology and partnerships could, he said, be a $3billion business.