Publicis Sapient is helping businesses design, build, and launch neobanks and financial services in as little as 6 to 9 months through our adaptable methodologies, pre-built architectures, unique accelerators, and ecosystem of best-of-breed fintech partners.
With sustained growth on the horizon, the time to plan your strategy is now.
Neobanking transaction value (forecast) worldwide in trillion USD:
To succeed in a fast-evolving market, you need to build the right products and services, fast.
This guide is your roadmap to building products and services that will delight your customers, transform your business, and position you for success in a challenging market.
Digital transformation takes time. And in a changing market, this is time you don’t have. The Neobank Playbook helps you transform at speed—you could build a neobank from the ground up in as little as 6 to 9 months, with smaller projects taking a fraction of that time.
Inside, you’ll discover:
To get you on the right track, we’ve broken down the process into four clear steps. We’ll guide you through each of these in turn, outlining what you’ll achieve at each step, how we can help you get there, and the common pitfalls you’ll need to look out for.
So let’s get started!
The key to launching a successful neobank is to understand the market and define a path to profitability before you start building. This will provide early visibility of your OKRs and KPIs, focus your teams, and provide the north star direction for your neobank.
Many ventures fail by jumping straight into building out an idea before ensuring it’s the right one for their business. Great technology doesn’t always lead to a successful business, and neobanks are no exception. There are a wealth of opportunities for digital-first banking, but the perils of getting it wrong are clear in the number of high-profile market exits.
The purpose of this step is to ensure there is a profitable market with unmet needs that your neobank will serve.
Successful completion looks like:
Key activities:
Once you’ve found the right idea, you need to “get the idea right” by translating it into the right proposition, customer experience, and architectural and operational foundations for your business. The focus shifts to how you can attract your first customers while building the capabilities required for continued growth and regulatory compliance. A successful proposition will have the right products and features mix at launch to entice new customers.
It’s during this phase that you will build out your operating model by creating a model that supports the business while also managing costs through digital-first approaches.
The purpose of this step is to create customer journeys and an organization structure that deliver a successful neobank value proposition.
Successful completion looks like:
Key activities:
The Business Capability Model (BCM) captures 'what' a bank needs from a business perspective.
Now you have your idea and a plan of action, the next step is to build it. The build phase presents many challenges to be managed carefully such as scope creep, making timely and confident decisions, retaining the voice of the customer in designs, and not underestimating the complexities of an ambitious recruitment plan. This is the nerve-racking part and it’s where many banks stumble when trying to launch a new venture without blowing their budgets.
Building it right requires creating the critical capabilities for your new banking proposition, testing it, and getting your business and product ready for launch.
The purpose of this step is to create customer journeys and an organization structure that deliver a successful neobank value proposition.
Successful completion looks like:
Key activities:
Modern Engineering and Data Foundation are critical components at this stage.
So now you’ve built your new proposition, tested it, prepared your organization, and developed a market strategy that will have new customers pouring in. The next step is the big one—launching and scaling. It’s critical that a successful launch proposition meets commercial and customer targets and that all the hard work from the build phase is presented to the market in the most effective way. The operating model must be efficiently defined and embedded with all regulated capabilities in place, and the go-to-market strategy must be yielding results against OKRs to satisfy the commercial and growth strategy.
While launching is half the battle, you must now accelerate and start to capture further wallet share by launching and iterating the product set based on customer feedback.
The purpose of this step is to execute a successful launch and prepare for customer onboarding.
Successful completion looks like:
Key activities:
We at Publicis Sapient wish you well on your bank building journey. While the opportunity to create a new bank is rare and exciting, it is crucial to make every effort to ensure it is a success.
Although there are many challenges along the way, it’s important to stay focused on the big picture and retain enthusiasm and excitement in the team as this will sustain you through the hard days of the build phase. This culture is critical for your bank and will set the foundations for how you will operate after launch and will help you attract the top talent you will need.
Getting the right team will make all the difference. Experience creating digital banking services will help your team navigate the journey with confident decision making and a real appreciation for the opportunity that digital thinking brings to transform tired and inefficient banking models. Don’t underestimate the search for your team, particularly the regulated roles, as getting the right candidates in place will pay dividends with regulatory confidence and a more efficient delivery engine to launch and beyond.
You will never regret investing in your engineering capability. The ability to build innovative and automated solutions for complex activities that attract traditional operation risks will be vital in maintaining your speed to market and reducing your overall maintenance costs. A strong engineering capability will help you harness the creativity on which the global tech giants rely and help you realize the full benefits of being digital native.
We’re ready to help you redefine customer expectations by building a unique neobank with experienced professionals, stress tested methodologies, and accelerator toolkits that will position you for success in a challenging market.
To find out more about how Publicis Sapient can help you build a neobank, please get in touch with our team:
publicissapient.com/fs