How Trust Bank went from zero to a million customers in less than three years

The Singapore-based Trust Bank recently acquired its millionth consumer—a significant milestone for a digital-only bank operating in a market with a near six-million strong population. What makes this a particularly noteworthy accomplishment is that unlike most other economies in Southeast Asia, Singapore does not have a large unbanked or underbanked population, with 98% of adults having at least one bank account.

Behind Trust Bank’s success is a disruptive model that stood banking as usual on its head; an approach that can also be seen in its marketing.

In conversation with Trust Bank’s CMO Mira Bharin, Campaign Asia-Pacific finds out how jettisoning many banking advertising cliches advertising helped a newcomer challenge deeply entrenched competition with impressive legacies and several physical touchpoints—from branches to ATM machines.

Creating a digital bank for the masses

Trust Bank began operations in September 2022, backed by Standard Chartered and FairPrice Group. At the time of launch, the pandemic had shifted consumer expectations for many categories, including banking and the financial sector. Having no legacy technology or systems helped Trust identify gaps in the current offering. Trust focused on easy-to-use, transparent and rewarding banking services for the mass market, captured by its tagline ‘the digital bank for the everyday us’.

Bharin explained, “As a digital native bank, we built Trust to cater to a wide range of customers and improve their experience. For example, our onboarding time is less than three minutes for a credit card, a bank account or an instant loan—among the fastest in the world. We can zero in on what our customers want and deliver solutions very quickly.”

The offline path to online success

Trust Bank gained from the post-pandemic return to real-world shopping, with in-store promotions that leveraged the network of FairPrice, Singapore’s largest retailer. Bharin said, “One of the biggest myths about Trust is the assumption that our customer set is very young. With FairPrice, we targeted the masses in Singapore.”

Besides serving as a venue, FairPrice gave Trust valuable insights into its ecosystem of shoppers. An early promo saw the bank offering free rice to customers as an acquisition gift. Discussing the rationale behind the offer, Bharin said, “Having launched with the tagline of being a digital bank for the everyday us, what better way to highlight that connection than providing a grocery staple?”

How instant rewards helped boost customer acquisition

One of the biggest gamechangers for the bank in terms of acquisition and retention was instant rewards.

Being a digital-first bank, Trust soon realised that being able to offer instant rewards was a key differentiator. Every customer would get a referral code that could be shared with friends and family. If this resulted in a new customer acquisition, both the original referrer and the new customer would get a voucher from FairPrice.

Bharin said, “It became quite viral. It takes longer for rewards to appear with traditional banks. But here it was not $10 a month down the line, but appearing immediately, in app. It made our customers want to do more.”

To further seed the instant rewards programme, Trust used influencers and content creators who encouraged their followers to use their referral codes. There were also more spectacular rewards on offer in the launch phase—for instance, cars from Tesla in a promo involving Singaporean actor Ben Yeo.

Influencers are a key element of Trust’s marketing strategy. Explaining the rules of thumb for engagement, Bharin said, “Authenticity is non-negotiable. An influencer we work with must genuinely believe in what Trust stands for and speak credibly to their audience. It goes both ways and we in turn allow them to be authentic in how they address their audience.”

In terms of choice of partners, Trust gravitates towards mid-tier and micro influencers who have worked better at driving strong engagement than macro influencers. Bharin explained, “Despite being a new company, we prioritise relevance over reach.  We also cultivate a long-term relationship with our influencers. Consistency over time helps build deeper trust with the community. Quite a few of our influences continue to post about us organically.”

The referral programme remains a huge avenue for growth, even today. Bharin said that some 70% of customers have come in via the referrals programme, while word-of-mouth has been a key driver for growth since the brand’s inception.

She said: “Our customer acquisition cost is about 1/7th the traditional industry norm. The instantaneousness of the rewards is what drives people. They are comfortable getting a lower reward if it is instant.”

Moving past pure performance

While several digital-first brands have gravitated towards a primarily performance-driven strategy, Trust has embraced a full funnel approach combining brand-building, data-driven personalisation and a seamless customer experience.

Bharin said, “We have an outcome-focused approach. Every campaign, including influencer-led campaigns start with clear objectives: whether acquisition, engagement or brand building, or a combination of the above. We consider a mix of performance metrics: customer signups, acquisition, app engagement, and lifetime value. But we also do look at hygiene and important brand health metrics like awareness, consideration and trust. It's about balancing short-term numbers with longer-term brand-building and deeper relationships with customers over time.”

Apart from the referral campaign, digital performance channels like search, social and app store optimisation have delivered strong acquisition. But at a larger level, brand investments are paying off by creating an emotional connection to drive loyalty and advocacy over time. Bharin said, “Strong brands compound value—instead of acquisition, you retain customers for a long time.”

Creating innovative products and campaigns plays a pivotal role in this retention strategy, as seen in the brand’s campaign for the cashback cards [see below] which offered a million-dollar reward for signing up.

There was also a live event called ‘Catch the Cash’ in which customers could vie for a literal cash grab within a chamber mounted on a large truck that visited key locations within Singapore. The amount of money they were able to secure within a minute was added to their accounts. It is one of Bharin’s favourite campaigns for Trust.

She said, “It had a very strong call-to-action element where customers were asked to be part of a brand activation. There were long lines with people waiting to be a part of this. It was quite experimental, especially, for a bank which typically does not do such activations. But it didn’t just help with the launch of the cashback card but gave us a lot of visibility for the brand on ground.”

Moving ahead, the goal for Trust Bank is to build affinity, love and to further expand its million-strong customer base. Data will play a crucial role in this process as the bank continues to build on its base of personalisation.

Bharin said, “We prioritise data that offers us personalisation insights, because that's where we can be more targeted in our marketing. This could be through CRM channels like EDM and push notifications, or even on platforms such as Meta or Google where we can integrate with their systems to get lookalikes in terms of audiences.”

Asked about the role AI would play in this process, Bharin said, “It's had a positive impact, but just how positive is yet to be determined.” AI is helping Trust when it comes to the all-important speed-to-market, but she was clear that she would like to see more advances in cost optimisation while at the same time, remaining on the right side of IP laws.