Financial technology company Mambu will introduce its new custom-built cloud-based banking platform at Finovate Asia in Singapore tomorrow.

The company began in the microfinance space and found the software offerings there limited. The high-end players used core banking platforms that inhibited them from moving downmarket, and the low-end players used spreadsheets and databases to track loans.

Mambu, founded in 2011, began building a product to fit the space between these two, and perhaps service both groups, what the company calls “a simple CRM, loan-tracking tool,” said co-founder and CEO Eugene Danilkis. With no marketing, Mambu already works with 100 companies.

The company saw further possibilities in the technology, and the product development continued building it out until it was a complete core banking platform, including task management and accounting functions.

This new product could move the company out of its microfinance sweet spot into a far broader market. David Hamilton, a veteran of SunGard and Fiserv, was brought on as Mambu’s president last September. He said, “The bank technology landscape is changing. Moving to the cloud is a great opportunity for both banks and vendors to reshape areas that are antiquated, particularly things like licensing models.”

Hamilton identifies three markets that are targets for Mambu’s new offering:

1. Small independent microlenders;
   
2. Global microfinance networks (“They already have a cloud mentality”); and
3. Financial innovators, particularly FIs and lenders in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Will financial institutions trust the cloud with customer data? “There is no question about security,” said Danilkis, pointing out that cloud-based accounts may be more secure than accounts stored where multiple users can access them or compromise them. “There is a question of data sovereignty rules,” he said.

GigaOm reported in 2012 that data-sovereignty laws — which may mandate, for example, that a customer living in Saudi Arabia should have his data kept in Saudi Arabia — were limiting factors in terms of enterprise adoption of cloud technologies. A common reason given for data-sovereignty laws is that a customer’s data should not be subject to subpoena by a foreign power (or the NSA, which may take a peek no matter where the data is). Mambu’s existing international infrastructure and footprint in its target markets gives it a headstart in sovereign cloud data.

Mambu is based in Berlin. The company received $2 million in series A funding in February 2013.