The Fintech Report Podcast: Interview with Paul Apolony, GM Australia, Mambu
Banks and the Race to High Velocity
In this podcast we discuss:
● How does a lifelong banker end up running Mambu Australia?
● Discuss wider industry experience that crosses over to Mambu
What does Mambu do?
● Mambu is the market leading cloud banking platform – launched in Berlin in 2011, Mambu now operates globally. Series E funding round in December 2021 raised an additional €235m, taking total valuation to €4.9 billion (‘double unicorn’ status)
● Mambu provides the technological foundation – a SaaS based cloud-native banking platform – for banks, financial service providers and other fintechs to launch innovative digital banking products and services
● Think of the Mambu platform like the engine in a car – it provides a powerful core for digital banks, and enables other providers and services to ‘plug in’ to the platform via open APIs, so customers can build the digital bank or digital product that their customers want
● hundreds of customers all over the world have launched some of the most innovative and forward-thinking banking products and brands ever seen – full digital banks banks, digital arms of conventional banks, payment providers, ewallets, lenders, BNPL – any financial product or service you can think of can be built on Mambu
● Mambu’s cloud core banking platform replaces expensive and monolithic legacy core banking technology stacks – cloud native and soon to be cloud agnostic across(Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure,)
● Many banks in Australia, and in fact the world, have legacy technology stacks coming to the end of their life cycle – this on-premises core banking technology is expensive and time-intensive to run, and very slow to update or make changes. This is especially evident in the Mutual/Customer owned banking space. A cloud native core like Mambu brings speed, agility and flexibility, meaning traditional, old-school banks can start to operate like nimble fintechs, launching new products in weeks rather than years, and responding to changing consumer expectations on the fly
● Companies can launch an entire digital bank on Mambu, OR launch specific digital products
● A popular and effective way of transitioning to digital is by incrementally replacing individual components within a bank’s existing tech stack – reduces risk of a rapid ‘rip and replace’ approach and allows the bank to bring customers along on the journey
What’s the status of Mambu in Australia?
● AU entity established in Jan 2022
● Actively recruiting – current team is 22 FTEs working from Syd, Mel, Bris and Per
● Leveraging Mambu’s experience in Europe, UK, APAC
● Current customers include fintechs like Shaype (formerly Hay), ADIs such as Tyro, lenders such as Lumi, Bluestone, Prospa and Nimble, and soon to be announced tier 1 bank in Australia.
What is ‘composable banking’ and why is it gaining traction?
● Mambu coined the phrase ‘composable banking’ more than 10 years ago, and it’s recently been picked up by competitors in cloud core banking space - a compliment
● Composable banking is the rapid and flexible assembly of independent, best-for-purpose systems
● Mambu are now speaking to our customers and prospects about the “Race to high velocity” – Mambu’s ability to enable them to scale in a quick, flexible and cost effective way and meet the growing demands they are encountering on a daily basis.
● &nbs