GIC-backed Bank Jago sees wealth management as next growth engine as Indonesian investor base grows

[JAKARTA] Indonesia’s digital bank Bank Jago is betting that the country’s rising appetite for investing can become its next big growth story as it looks to deepen relationships with a young and increasingly financially savvy customer base.

The GIC-backed lender is expanding beyond everyday money management, giving its 14 million customers access to mutual funds, stocks, bonds and digital gold through partnerships with specialised investment platforms.

The push is gaining traction, with about 3.6 million of Jago’s customers connected to its investment ecosystem as at June 2026, up from 2.5 million a year earlier.

In an interview with The Business Times, Nicholas Tan, Jago’s retail banking director, said wealth management is one of three areas Jago is betting on for the next several years, alongside money management and lending.

“Wealth management will be one of the important engines of growth, but it will definitely not be the only one,” he said.

Jago’s push into wealth management comes as banks across Indonesia look to capture a broader share of the country’s growing household wealth.

As incomes rise and more Indonesians move beyond traditional savings into stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other investments, lenders are increasingly positioning themselves as gateways to a wider range of financial products.

Bank Jago’s strategy extends beyond its standalone banking app. The lender operates as a banking layer across a wider digital ecosystem, with GoTo Financial holding a 21.4 per cent stake and integrating Jago’s banking services into GoPay and Gojek.

Rather than building an investment supermarket of its own, Jago partners investment platforms such as Bibit and Stockbit, allowing customers to move seamlessly between saving, spending and investing.

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The bank is also trying to reduce the friction involved in investing, including the need to move money between separate bank and investment accounts.

Jago introduced Consolidated Asset View this year, allowing customers with a bank account to link investments and see stocks and bonds held across different brokers through the Jago app.

As customers invest through the platform, the bank expects them to keep more of their cash and other financial assets within its ecosystem.

“If you invest through Jago and see all your assets in one place, while also keeping your cash with us, you get a much more complete financial picture,” Tan said. “That is the type of retention strategy we are thinking about.”

That strategy is becoming increasingly important as Indonesian banks compete more aggressively for deposits in today’s higher-interest-rate environment.

Rather than matching the highest deposit rates offered by rivals, Tan said the lender wants to retain customers by providing broader financial services and increasing engagement.

“We want to remain competitive, but we do not necessarily want to offer the highest rates in the market because we believe we can deliver value in other, more sustainable ways.”

The approach has so far supported funding growth. Jago’s third-party deposit base grew 23 per cent year on year between June 2025 and June 2026, while the share contributed by digital banking users rose to 46 per cent from 36 per cent.

Financial performance

The lender’s business is also gaining momentum, with first-half 2026 net profit rising 49 per cent year on year to 189 billion rupiah (US$10.5 million), as lending grew 24 per cent annually.

Jago’s core revenue engine remains lending. In H1 2026, net interest income rose 28 per cent year on year to 1.49 trillion rupiah, while fee income climbed 41 per cent to 455 billion rupiah, reflecting a growing contribution from its broader digital banking ecosystem.

The bank has about 14 million customers, half of whom are active. Its active base grew seven times from end-2022 to end-2025, while transactions per active customer doubled.

About 83 per cent of customers are millennials or younger, giving Jago a young base increasingly looking beyond saving to growing their money.

Indonesia’s retail investing boom is accelerating, with capital-market investors reaching 31.1 million by August 2026, up 52.9 per cent from end-2025. Nearly four in five were under 40, highlighting the growing role of younger investors.

The bank’s challenge will be to convert that growing appetite for investments into longer-term customer relationships, particularly as competition intensifies among Indonesia’s digital banks and traditional lenders.

Tan expects stocks and bonds to remain among the key investment products as financial literacy and household incomes rise, while digital gold provides another accessible option for retail investors.

“Indonesia is approaching an inflection point similar to shifts in other emerging markets, where rising household incomes eventually push a greater share of wealth into capital markets,” he said.

“Money management, how people treat money and think about money, it’s very local,” Tan said.

“What’s important for us is really to try and understand that local nuance a lot better in Indonesia, rather than trying to force fit what has worked elsewhere,” he added.