Delivering Exponential Results in Banking
With Ned Phillips — Founder, Bambu
Laksh Gangwani is Founder of Digijanus and a C-level executive at a global financial institution. He has built and scaled capital markets and wealthtech businesses from scratch across the Asia-Pacific region, helping institutions connect to global markets faster. He does not just ask the questions — he has been in the rooms where these decisions get made. Recognised as WealthBriefing Asia’s Leading Individual in 2021.
Ned Phillips founded Bambu, one of Asia’s foremost digital wealth technology providers. He has sold to banks, built for banks, and watched banks resist the very products their customers needed. That dual perspective — founder and operator, builder and seller — is what makes this conversation different. He knows where the bodies are buried, and he is not diplomatic about it.
What Does a 10x Outcome Actually Mean?
We are delivering the 10x Digital Transformation Playbook. You are now head of digital transformation at a bank. How would you define a 10x outcome?
The revenue that we receive from wealth goes up ten times. That is the 10x.
Let’s structure this in four parts: customers, capabilities, talent and resources, and business. You are head of retail now. How are you going to identify the customer segment first?
Go Into the Streets. No Survey Will Tell You the Truth.
Most of us know what piece of our technology sucks. Gather a group internally — exclude anyone who didn’t speak honestly. Find somebody who knows nothing about our system and record their face using it. Then go into the streets myself. No survey. Stop people. Ask them why they don’t use the bank’s wealth offering. Done in one week. No longer.
Build a team of Avengers who tell you what you need to hear — not what you want to hear. Then raw one-on-one feedback from real people.
Great technology is like a good joke — if you have to explain it, it wasn’t good. Give it to a normal human. Say nothing. If they cannot open it and use it, we have a problem. When you buy an Apple iPhone there’s no mystery. Why is ours not like that?
One Button. Two Outcomes. That Is the Product.
I want one killer feature — a button with two outcomes. Invest or don’t. Nobody wakes up wanting a balanced equity portfolio. They want a better financial life.
Why go to a partner before analysing system dependencies? When a wealthtech comes in, half your tech doesn’t support fractional shares. Your custodian doesn’t. Now we are talking about open-heart surgery.
Because you’ll build something mediocre if you start with dependencies. Your systems have no relevance to what a customer wants. Your dependencies create half-built tech and then you justify it. That’s why it’s not 10x.
Jump Off the Oil Tanker Into a Speedboat.
What started as a frontend project has become a rip-and-replace of the middle office, back office, custodian, and broker. How do you solve it?
Skunk works. A band of rebels who build in a vacuum. One screen, one button — Invest Now. Every bank has APIs to customer accounts; I just need that access. If the oil tanker bank is moving slowly, you scale down the side on ropes, jump in a little boat, get ahead of it, and show them: this is what customers want.
The Shackleton Advert: Who Do You Want in That Room?
Shackleton’s 1914 advert: minimal food, minimal pay, great danger, successful return doubtful. He got thousands of applicants. Today I would write: you see that dusty room no one’s in? Come in, I’m locking the door for a month. Will it probably fail? Yeah. Could you get fired? Absolutely. You want in? Let’s go.
You have to start from a place of respect. Why did you take the decisions you took? That completely changes the equation.
With love, kindness, and belief. Nobody wakes up wanting to create confusion. Give me a month. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.
Price for Humans, Not for the Industry.
Every month we produce one feature, one button only. 2, 4, 8, 16 — any month it doesn’t double, we close it cold-heartedly. On pricing: ignore AUM percentages. Our industry has made itself incomprehensible. If a hundred people all understand what they are paying and you still make margin, you have found your model.
Your wealth team will say one RM could put this volume through. How do you manage the CEO?
The RM is a dying business — make a choice. If the CEO can’t get behind 10x revenue — that’s cool, I’m out. You cannot fix a problem if the person above you does not want it fixed.
Assemble people who say exactly what is broken — exclude anyone who arrives with a feature pitch. Watch a stranger use the product without comment. In Singapore fintech and APAC wealthtech, every product that failed skipped this step.
Go into the streets yourself. Stop real people. Ask them directly why they do not use the bank’s wealth offering. The rare customer who loves it is the only voice that matters — when you find them, listen to almost nobody else.
The skunk works model. Build in a vacuum using modern fractional brokers and digital custodians. Prove the customer thesis with adoption data. Then use that evidence to move the oil tanker — not arguments, data.
Write the Shackleton advert: the project may fail, participants may be ridiculed, the pay is not better. The people who still raise their hands are who you need. Conviction precedes skillset — every time.
Abandon AUM percentages. Price in plain English. If a hundred people on a street corner all understand what they are paying and you still make margin, the model works. If user count does not double every month, rebuild.