Only way is up for online bank Up

Australia’s first neobank has just passed 100,000 customers, but Up co-founder Dom Pym’s plans are far bolder for the start-up.

‘Our big hairy goal now is to become the fifth-largest bank in Australia’ ... Up co-founder Dom Pym at Southbank in Melbourne. Picture : David Geraghty

Australia’s first neobank has just passed 100,000 customers, but Up co-founder Dom Pym’s plans are far bolder for the start-up.

Mr Pym says Up can one day be Australia’s fifth-biggest bank, picking up millennial customers en masse who are demanding a better digital experience, faster customer support and deep integration with the likes of Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Up’s journey tracks back to its days as a Melbourne-based tech company called Ferocia, where it started working with Bendigo Bank on its online platform six years ago.

Fast forward to 2018 and Ferocia used that experience to start Up — in partnership with Bendigo and Adelaide banks — and at the time it was Australia’s first fully ­licensed and all-in-app mobile banking platform.

One year later, Up is about to celebrate its first birthday and Mr Pym said his company was one of the fastest-growing digital banks in the world. Bendigo provides all the licensed financial products for Up, meaning it has been able to beat its neobank rivals to market.

“REA co-founder Marty Howell used to say REA was an overnight success 16 years in the making, and it feels like that’s what’s happening with Ferocia, and Up,” Mr Pym said.

“Back when we started Ferocia, iPhones were just starting to become a thing, and we decided to use technology to solve problems. We’ve done that with Up.”

Up’s “big hairy goal” was to build a bank with fewer than 30 people, and today has managed to sign up more than 100,000 customers while still having fewer than 40 employees.

“We’re the first and largest digital bank, and the power of being technology-led means you can deliver these amazing outcomes which we’ve been able to deliver,” Mr Pym said.

“Our big hairy goal now is to become the fifth-largest bank in Australia. We think there can be five big banks, and we think we can get there in the next three years.

“We don’t have an exit strategy here; we’re not looking to quickly raise money and exit.

“We want to be the fifth-largest bank and to get there, in the ­medium term we want to be the No 1 bank in Australia for under-35s. We want to get to 1.8 million customers.”

Mr Pym said Up’s method of acquiring customers was to “avoid the traps of the big guys”, for example, offering a public road map that customers can look at to see what products and features are in the pipeline. The company’s road map, dubbed the The Tree of Up, includes future features including a potential credit option, extra help with budgeting, and scheduled transfers.

At least for now, the company’s philosophy isn’t to ask people to switch banks altogether, instead encouraging new users to give Up a try in conjunction with their existing bank.

“In the UK, which has 40 or 50 neobanks, they gain new market share but what they gained is a share of wallet, rather than becoming the primary financial institution,” Mr Pym said. “That’s the same trend we’re seeing in Australia, where you might have your mortgage with one bank, then a credit card with another, and your debit card with another. Once you give us a try, you’ll see we have features that no other bank has and you’ll likely quickly become an advocate. We have tens of thousands of advocates on social media, who are just really enjoying what we’re doing.”

Up experienced the flip side of social media this year when its co-founder Grant Thomas was accused of transphobia, for appearing in a social media video with AFL personality Sam Newman, who was dressed up as a transgender woman. Mr Pym said Up treated that as a learning experience about how to better stand by its values.

“Openness, transparency, inclusion and diversity are all critical for us,” he said. “If something like that goes bad, we have to take it as a learning experience and deliver our answer through our actions, not a corporate press release. We’re not a bunch of bigots, we have a lot of gay and lesbian customers and we want to think about these things every day.”