Coolest Brands 2016: BankMobile
There’s an Emoji for That
The other day, BankMobile posted a video of people-on-the-streets-of-New-York getting interviewed about bank fees.
“If bank fees were an emoji, what emoji would they be?” the interviewer asks.
“The sh** emoji,” one person responds.
BankMobile is cool because it is specifically looking to avoid the sh** emoji. The brainchild of Jay Sidhu, the former CEO of Sovereign Bank, and his daughter, Luvleen Sidhu, BankMobile’s chief strategy and marketing officer, the banking startup is looking to do everything differently, from avoiding branches, to guerilla-ing its marketing, to avoiding the crack cocaine of bank fee revenue.
And it seems to be working. Last December, BankMobile said it exceeded its Year One goal from a factor of four, signing up 100,000 users. By the middle of this year, BankMobile wants to be at 2 million accounts — a reasonable goal considering that its parent, Customers Bank, recently announced that it was acquiring Higher One, a student lender that has 1.2 million accounts.
From there, BankMobile is aiming for 1 billion users. No one ever accused the Sidhus of settling for modest goals. But, in truth, that’s what we admire most about BankMobile: that is aiming not just high, but with great altruism. There’s got to be an excellent emoji for that.
