Trust Bank hits one million customers, launches investment products

SINGAPORE digital bank Trust Bank has hit the one-million-customer milestone, making up about 20 per cent of the adult population in the city-state.

It crossed the milestone in February, up from 974,000 customers at the end of 2024. It has more than 140,000 customers under 25 years old, and over 250,000 customers above 55 years old.

Dwaipayan Sadhu, chief executive officer of Trust Bank, said: “Quite unlike other digital banks in other parts of the world, we have a customer demographic which almost mirrors Singapore’s.”

Each customer makes an average of 21 credit card transactions a month, totalling more than S$4 billion in credit card spend in 2024.

Deposits doubled in 2024 to S$3.8 billion from S$1.9 billion in 2023. Revenue for the year rose 2.5 times to S$97 million. Costs in 2024 increased marginally, by about 5 per cent, to S$157 million from S$151.2 million the year before.

“This performance has placed us very strongly on the path to profitability,” said Sadhu.

After building out savings and loans, Trust Bank is launching its investment product, TrustInvest, rounding out its retail banking services. It is partnering abrdn Investments to offer products ranging from a money market fund to income, and a wealth portfolio with three risk appetites of cautious, moderate and growth.

The income and wealth funds are exclusively curated for Trust Bank by abrdn.

Investments are an unmet need for Singapore customers, said Sadhu.

The bank’s product lets customers invest with as little as S$100 across the five funds. There is no sales charge or platform fee. Customers who stay invested until the end of 2025 will get a rebate of 0.5 per cent of the management fee. They also earn a scratch card with a cashback reward of up to S$1,000 for a one-time investment of S$10,000, subject to a maximum of two such cards.

Customers know they should invest, but there is still a gap between what they know they should do and what they actually invest in, said Sadhu.

“That’s why billions of dollars are still sitting in very low yield deposit accounts, and not keeping pace with inflation,” he added.

There were multiple reasons why abrdn was selected as a partner for Trust Bank, with its global expertise being a reason, said Sadhu.

“(It is) their willingness to create bespoke portfolios that really meet the needs of our customers,” he said.

Ian Macdonald, Asia-Pacific CEO of abrdn Investments, said that in building these portfolios, abrdn avoided creating a range of funds so broad that it would be overwhelming.

“Across these range of five portfolios, I feel it does the job for the vast majority of customers,” he added.

Sadhu was tight-lipped about the amount of revenue uplift this new investment product could be expected to bring to Trust Bank. The metrics for success of TrustInvest range from customer engagement to amount invested, to getting people investing.

“Our focus is really on wanting to be a part of our client’s financial journey every step of the way – their savings journey, their transacting journey and, increasingly, their investment journey,” he said.