Trust Bank hits 1 million customer mark; it is second digital bank with investment offering after MariBank

SINGAPORE – The digital lender Trust Bank is now the fourth-largest retail bank by customer numbers here with around a million customers on its books.

Trust Bank started operations in Singapore in September 2022 and had 411,000 retail customers by the end of that year.

Customer numbers rose steadily over the past two years to hit the one million mark “sometime last week”, said chief executive Dwaipayan Sadhu at a briefing on Feb 21.

The digital bank, which is 60 per cent owned by Standard Chartered Bank and 40 per cent by the enterprise arm of NTUC, had a total deposit base of $3.8 billion as at the end of 2024.

About 14 per cent of its customers – 140,000 – are under 25 while about 26 per cent are over 55.

Trust didn’t disclose its operating loss figures, but losses narrowed compared to 2023 as revenue more than doubled to $97 million and costs rose approximately 5 per cent to $157 million.

It is one of three digital banks serving retail customers here, alongside GXS Bank, which is backed by Grab Holdings and telco Singtel, and MariBank, which is wholly owned by gaming and e-commerce firm Sea Group.

Hitting the one million customer mark is “just the beginning”, said Mr Sadhu, adding that “the journey continues”.

He added that Trust will be giving back to the community by contributing $100,000 to 1,000 families in need in the form of $100 FairPrice vouchers and helping them improve their digital and financial literacy.

The bank also officially launched TrustInvest, its first investment solution, on Feb 21.

The product comprises five funds managed by abrdn Investments.

They are a money market fund that invests in Singapore government securities, one that targets dividend-paying stocks and corporate bonds, and three other funds that allow investors to grow their wealth according to their risk appetite.

TrustInvest is designed to “overcome the investing barriers that people often face”, Mr Sadhu said. 

Its research indicated that many customers were not investing because they have too much choice and end up confused about what to do or because they do not have significant amounts of money to invest.

That meant that money ends up sitting in low-yielding savings accounts.

“We asked how we can make investing easy and simple to get started,” Mr Sadhu added.

Mr Ian Macdonald, CEO for Asia Pacific at abrdn Investments, said the team settled on five investment portfolios to give Trust customers enough options without feeling overwhelmed by too many choices.

Trust Bank said the five funds do not charge platform fees or sales charges, just an annual fund management fee that ranges from 0.3 per cent to 1.45 per cent.

Customers who remain invested until the end of the year will get a rebate on the management fee of between 0.1 and 0.5 percentage points.

The new funds might be a hard sell.

Retiree Kevin Lim, 59, is not buying into them: “I generally avoid actively managed funds because of the fees.”

Mr Lim holds money market funds to get a slight pickup in interest rates compared with savings deposits and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Lab technician Dallas Goh, 34, is not keen either.

He checked out the details for one of the funds and noted that a “substantial weight of the fund is in S&P500 ETF and Invesco QQQ Trust, which track the markets in the United States”. 

Retail investors can buy these ETFs on their own, Mr Goh noted, adding that the “management fee of 1.45 per cent is too high”. 

Even if the 0.5 percentage point rebate is taken into account, a management fee of 0.95 per cent is still “much higher than competitors”.

Some investors also highlighted that there are similar offerings on other investment platforms.

The platforms collaborate with certain fund managers to launch their products, said SingCapital financial advisory director Shawn Yap.

“The funds are similar. It is just that they launch in different platforms. There is no real value-added,” Mr Yap added.

However, he likes Trust card because “it is one of the better cards for overseas spending”.

Trust’s foray into investments follows that of MariBank, which was the first of the three digital banks to offer an investment account – Mari Invest in September 2023.

Mari Invest started with a money market fund, Mari Invest SavePlus, and followed up on Feb 20, 2025, with Mari Invest Income.

Mari Invest Income is on an invite-only basis and will be gradually rolled out to more customers in the coming months.

This new fund gives investors the opportunity to buy into a global bond fund managed by fixed-income investment manager Pimco.

A MariBank spokesperson said it does not charge ongoing fees and transaction fees so 100 per cent of the money is invested. But there is an annual management fee of 1.05 per cent, which is charged by Pimco.

GXS Bank has not rolled out investment products yet but The Straits Times understands that it will be launching its investment arm in the next few months.

CEO Muthukrishnan Ramaswami told ST in December 2024 that the bank will start with one low-risk fund.  

Its offering will be simple and distributed in unitised form, so each investor needs to fork out only a small sum to invest, he said.

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, we said that Trust booked a net loss of $60 million. This is incorrect. Trust didn’t disclose its operating loss figures, but losses narrowed compared to 2023.