How Synpulse leveraged its deep banking expertise and track record of successful digital transformations to support Trust Bank – Singapore’s first cloud-native bank.
The global digital banking sector is growing and evolving rapidly. COVID-19 accelerated consumers’ adoption of digital services across various industries and both new entrants and traditional banks alike are driving the wave of digitisation through a slew of virtual banking offerings.
About Trust
In September 2022, Trust Bank (known as Trust), backed by a partnership between Standard Chartered Bank and FairPrice Group, became the first of the new wave of cloud-native banks to launch to the Singapore public.
Since then, Trust has seen an incredible response from customers. Over 100,000 people signed up in the first 10 days, with the app taking the first spot on both the App Store and Play Store within a week of launch. It has now reached over 400,000 customers, which is around 8% of the addressable market in Singapore. This growth rate is amongst the fastest of any digital bank globally.
The Seamless Trust Experience
Trust set out to build an easy-to-use, transparent, and rewarding digitally native bank specifically for Singapore. With its customer-centric design, Trust brings a new standard of banking to Singapore and enables significant savings on everyday expenses.
One key enabler of Trust’s rapid growth is its delightful and low-friction onboarding experience, which allows customers to fill in registration forms automatically and securely. With this, Trust is able to onboard customers in less than three minutes for a savings account and less than four minutes for a credit card – fast by any market standards.
With an emphasis on listening to and acting on customer feedback, Trust is focused on continuously improving its user experience. For instance, in the first week after launch, one of the top customer enquiries was on how to change credit card limits. Trust built and released an in-app feature for customers to adjust their credit limit in just 10 days.
Another driver of its success is its integration with the FairPrice Group ecosystem which includes the nation’s leading grocery retailer, and to Link Rewards, a leading rewards and loyalty programme in Singapore. To do so, Trust integrated its core banking platforms with card processors and microservices, which also allowed the integration of the Bank’s payment infrastructures with Singapore’s nationwide fund transfer services, PayNow and FAST, for seamless and secure transfers of funds. As a result, over six million Trust transactions were recorded in 2022 alone.
Trust was built to be compliant with the requirements of a digitally native bank in Singapore, where key credit data, internal Management Information System (MIS), and credit risk policies were developed jointly for regulatory reporting. Important cybersecurity processes, such as vulnerability management, security monitoring, as well as identity and access management were incorporated to achieve the level of cyber-resilience that is expected of a digital bank.
The journey with Trust
Setting up a bank is extremely complex and building a high-performing and efficient digital bank requires extensive specialist skills. Several factors need to be considered during the build, such as understanding virtual banking-specific processes, products, operationalisation approach, architecture definition, regulatory requirements, the right technology, and operating model to pull it all together.
Despite the multiple challenges that came with setting up a digital bank, Synpulse’s expanded service portfolio, in line with its strategy to become a leading digital banking partner and managed service platform (MSP) provider, allowed Synpulse to support Trust on its journey.
From requirements elicitation to its successful launch on 1st September 2022, Synpulse was able to help Trust achieve several crucial milestones within two years.
We’re honoured to be part of this journey from the beginning with Trust Bank. Our customer-centric focus formed the basis of our collaboration with the bank, and it was a key factor in allowing us to design and launch a world-class digital bank within a short period of time.
About Synpulse
Synpulse supports its clients in the financial sphere with tailor-made solutions, solving their biggest challenges and helping businesses evolve to capture their potential.
With its extensive experience and technical expertise in digital banking, from the conception of business strategies to the design and implementation of innovative operating models, Synpulse has become a partner of choice for Trust.
Meet the squad
The journey to help Trust build its digital bank began with a close collaboration between Synpulse and the Bank’s team. Dedicated to helping clients design the best products and the most robust platforms in the market, a diverse team of consultants, designers, developers, and industry experts was put together, bringing their expertise to the table. In particular, Synpulse supported Trust in various domains, including technology, product, compliance, security, and data governance.
Our journey started with our people across the Asia-Pacific – Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, India, and the Philippines – coming together with relevant expertise and knowledge, and stepping in to help set up Trust Bank. The success we’ve seen so far highlights one of Synpulse’s core strengths – our combined expertise and extensive experience in the market. And at the heart of it all, our people.
Synpulse has supported Trust Bank in many domains during its build and launch. Synpulse's regional delivery expertise has helped Trust to become Singapore's first digitally native bank, bringing tangible value to everyday people.
Synpulse helped Trust bring to life an innovative and modern banking experience for its customers – one that will support Singapore’s ambitions to further strengthen its financial sector for the digital economy of the future. Trust is already setting new digital banking benchmarks, not just in Singapore but also on a global level, and the foundations that have been laid through its build period position it well for the future.
