NewTech Friday: audax – The building blocks of future finance

Digital Reinvention
01/12/2023Interview

Kelvin Tan, CEO of audax, discusses the company's journey from powering Standard Chartered's banking-as-a-service offering to providing comprehensive digital banking solutions for banks and financial institutions, with a focus on redefining the future of banking globally.


What led to the creation of audax?

We are at the beginning of a wave where incumbent banks are looking for alternative solutions to deliver scaled balance sheets without significant customer acquisition costs, such as digital banking, banking-as-a-service or embedded finance. This is aimed at shaping future business models for banking that will drive better returns on equity.

However, as these incumbents look to create these new digital business models and generate new revenue streams, legacy technology constraints remain a significant challenge to be solved.

The audax journey started by powering SC nexus, Standard Chartered’s global banking-as-a-service (BaaS) offering. audax’s solution allowed Standard Chartered to have a 24/7 scalable digital banking solution that can process millions of customers concurrently, which in turn allowed SC nexus to partner with large ecosystems with over 150 million users on their platforms, powering their digital banking offerings and driving scaled financial inclusion.

The vision was not merely to drive transformation within Standard Chartered but to rewire the DNA of banking. As a result, audax was spun out of Standard Chartered, with the aim of offering its capabilities to banks and financial institutions globally.

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