Delivering Exponential Results in Banking
This is Part 2 of an extended conversation with a veteran wealthtech founder who built one of Asia’s most recognised digital wealth platforms from scratch. Where the first episode diagnosed the illness, this one writes the prescription. The host puts his guest in the seat of a Head of Digital Transformation at a large bank, tasked with building a DIY investment platform, and challenges him to map — step by step — what a genuine 10x outcome would actually require.
What follows is one of the most honest and practically grounded conversations on wealth technology transformation you are likely to hear. Customer discovery on the street, build-or-partner decisions, the brutal reality of fractional share infrastructure, skunk works teams, pricing for humans rather than the industry, and managing the organisational resistance that kills every transformation project before it proves itself — nothing is held back.
What Does a 10x Outcome Actually Mean?
We are going to deliver the 10x Digital Transformation Playbook. You are head of digital transformation at a bank, building a DIY wealth platform. 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. All of them come together for a viable 10x revenue outcome. 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. I would gather a group internally and exclude anyone who didn’t speak honestly. Then I would find somebody who knows nothing about our system, give it to them, and record their face. No delight means we have an issue. Then I 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. What happens next?
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. Open the box, take it out, it works. Why is ours not like that? That is the only first-principle question.
One Button. Two Outcomes. That Is the Product.
Step two: are we going to build it, or is someone helping us? 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. The Robinhood founders were gamers, not finance people — that’s exactly why it worked.
Why go to a partner before analysing your system dependencies? When a wealthtech comes in, half your tech doesn’t support fractional shares. Your custodian doesn’t. Your middle office cannot handle a fractional number. Now we are talking about open-heart surgery.
Because you’ll build crap if you start with dependencies. Your systems have no relevance to what a customer wants. People are trading fractional crypto right now — do not tell me you cannot do fractional equities. Your dependencies create half-assed tech and then you justify it. That’s why it’s not 10x and that’s why it fails.
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 — ignoring the infrastructure limitations but not ignoring the bank. Go into another room, shut the door, and ask: how do we achieve? I plug in a modern fractional broker and custodian. 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, then turn around and show them: this is what customers want.
The Shackleton Advert: Who Do You Want in That Room?
Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 advert: men wanted for long, hard, arduous journey — 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. That divides people — and the ones who raise their hands are exactly who I need.
Transformation leaders often arrive on a pedestal looking down. You have to start from respect — ask why those decisions were taken, under what constraints. That changes everything.
With love, kindness, and belief. Nobody wakes up wanting to create confusion. Give me a month. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. The bank that chose the wrong broker chose it because at the time it seemed right. Totally fine. We move forward from there.
Price for Humans, Not for the Industry.
Every month we produce one feature, one button only. Month one: one client. Month two: two clients, or we shut it. 2, 4, 8, 16 — any month it doesn’t double, we close it cold-heartedly. On pricing: ignore AUM percentages, trailer fees, wrap fees. Our industry has made itself incomprehensible. Go into the street. 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 and guide them toward the right KPIs?
The RM is a dying business — make a choice. Robinhood charged zero for brokerage. Everyone laughed. They redefined an industry. I say to the CEO: that superstar RM is playing cricket and I’m playing football. My singular job is 10x revenue. If the CEO can’t get behind that — I’m out. You cannot fix a problem if the person above you doesn’t want it fixed.
The answer is radical internal honesty before a single line of code. Assemble people who will say exactly what is wrong — exclude anyone who arrives with a feature pitch — then give the existing product to a complete stranger and record what breaks. In Singapore fintech and APAC wealthtech, the products that fail are almost always the ones that skipped this step.
Go into the streets yourself. Stop real people and ask them directly why they do not use the bank’s wealth offering. No survey will give you the truth. The rare customer who does use it and loves it is the only voice that matters — everything else is noise. This approach applies whether you are building for Singapore digital wealth or scaling across APAC wealthtech markets.
The skunk works model is the answer for any wealthtech founder facing bank infrastructure constraints. Build in a vacuum using modern fractional brokers and digital custodians. Prove the customer thesis with real adoption data. Then use that evidence to move the oil tanker. Waiting for the bank’s middle office to be ready before shipping is not a strategy — it is how digital transformation projects fail.
Write the Shackleton advert: be explicit that the project may fail, participants may be ridiculed, and the pay is not better. The people who still raise their hands are who you need. For Singapore fintech and Head of Digital Transformation roles alike, conviction precedes skillset — every time. The team that answers the Shackleton advert will build something the consensus team never could.
Abandon AUM percentages, trailer fees, and wrap fees — they are incomprehensible to the retail customer you are trying to reach. 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. Then apply the doubling rule — if user count does not double every month, shut the product down and rebuild. This is how B2B fintech sales strategy in Asia actually proves ROI to a bank CEO.
Laksh Gangwani is Founder of Digijanus and a C-level executive at a global financial institution. He has driven market expansion across Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Dubai, and India. Recognised as WealthBriefing Asia’s Leading Individual in 2021, he brings two decades of capital markets and wealthtech expertise across the Asia-Pacific region. Digijanus reaches over 80,000 followers and growing.
Ned Phillips founded Bambu, one of the world’s foremost digital wealth technology providers — delivering cloud-based, algorithm-driven platforms that made saving and investing accessible for institutions of every size. A veteran builder who has sat on both sides of the transformation table, Ned is known for his radical customer-first philosophy and his refusal to accept legacy infrastructure as an excuse.