-- In an electrifying series of episodes of In-The-Grill, Kelvin Tan, CEO of Audax, sat down with Laksh Gangwani, Founder of Digjanus, to dissect the evolution of Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS)—from a five-slide pitch inside Standard Chartered to leading a high-growth B2B fintech that’s rewriting banking infrastructure across Asia.
The Birth of BaaS: 5 Slides That Changed Standard Chartered
In 2017, before “BaaS” became a buzzword, Kelvin posed a simple but powerful question to Standard Chartered’s CEO, Bill Winters: How can a global bank scale without building 10,000 branches?
Armed with just five black-and-white slides, Kelvin laid out the entire vision—scaling ROE without CapEx-heavy models, embedding banking into lifestyle platforms, and turning SC into the world’s largest hidden retail bank. That conversation marked the Day 1 of Standard Chartered’s BaaS journey, with a six-month sprint of technology reviews, talent acquisition, and early partner conversations.
Early Challenges: From SC Nexus to Audax
The first challenge? SC’s legacy platform wasn’t built for elastic, on-demand scaling. Kelvin’s early review revealed that to onboard millions via digital platforms, the bank needed to rethink its core infrastructure, scalability, and compliance workflows.
Building SC Nexus, Kelvin’s team faced hurdles in hiring product & tech leaders, securing partnerships, and overcoming internal inertia. Yet, partnerships with Bukalapak and Ola in Indonesia proved transformative—showing how BaaS can drive financial inclusion by banking rural, unserved populations. Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand became natural launchpads, combining market scale with digital adoption.
Audax: The Spin-Off & Reality Check
Seeing an opportunity to commercialize Nexus technology beyond Standard Chartered, Kelvin spearheaded Audax’s spin-off—a Bank-in-a-Box platform designed for banks across Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
But Day 1 of Audax came with a stark reality: the B2B fintech sales cycle is a 600-day marathon. Despite early wins with Tier 1 banks like Maybank Islamic, the slow decision-making pace of banking clients became Audax’s "Batman vs. Bane" challenge—requiring a balance between fintech agility and enterprise-grade trust.
What is BaaS (and Why Synapse Failed)
Kelvin emphasized that BaaS is the ability for a bank’s products and balance sheet to become native to another platform’s ecosystem. But not all models are built equal. The intermediary model, popularized in the U.S. by firms like Synapse, collapsed due to lack of direct control, compliance failures, and fractured accountability between banks, intermediaries, and front-end partners.
Kelvin’s belief: Only banks can run BaaS properly. Direct bank-led BaaS models, as seen in Asia, are more sustainable and less prone to systemic risks.
BaaS Beyond 2025: Data Ecosystems & Digital Transformation
Looking ahead, Kelvin sees BaaS as the precursor to data ecosystems, where banks not only offer financial services but also monetize insights across e-commerce, ride-hailing, and payment platforms.
But talent is key. Building next-gen products requires a 50-50 blend: seasoned banking compliance experts and non-bank technologists who challenge the status quo.
Kelvin also called for regulators to enforce stringent standards on security and cloud governance, ensuring BaaS models remain robust while fostering financial inclusion.
The Digital Transformation Imperative
Laksh and Kelvin explored why legacy digital transformation fails:
- Vendor sprawl (30-40 vendors per project) inflates costs and coordination.
- The obsession with building “best-in-class everything” delays outcomes.
- Kelvin’s advice: Focus on what truly impacts ROE—not vanity features. For Audax, the North Star is reducing banks’ cost-to-serve and enabling scalable ROE through pragmatic tech choices.
He also outlined how to improve transformation success rates:
- Start with the business outcome.
- Choose a modular yet comprehensive platform (like Audax).
- Prioritize security, compliance, and data architecture.
- Avoid over-engineering for edge cases.
Leadership & The Fintech Ecosystem: Kelvin’s Playbook
On Singapore’s fintech leadership, Kelvin shared:
- What’s Working: Strong regulatory frameworks and a progressive digital strategy.
- What’s Not: A risk-averse culture that slows intrapreneurial innovation.
- Non-Replicable Advantage: Singapore’s ability to act as a regulatory sandbox for Asia.
His advice for intrapreneurs: “Focus on solving your own ‘exam question’ inside your firm before chasing shiny innovation titles.”
For entrepreneurs: “Validate product-market fit before scaling.”
To bankers eyeing fintechs: “Understand that fintech’s speed comes with operational trade-offs.”
And to VCs: “Invest in B2B fintechs solving core infra problems—not just front-end UX plays.”
Kelvin also discussed funding challenges, emphasizing that capital is drying up for vanity metrics-led fintechs, but will flow to infrastructure players delivering hard ROE impact.
From Guinea Pigs to Industry Transformers
By 2025, Kelvin believes fintechs are no longer guinea pigs for banks—they are the “testing grounds that push banks to modernize faster.” However, the AI hype cycle is a distraction unless firms solve their data infrastructure problem first.
Leadership & Gen Z: Bridging the Gap
Reflecting on his leadership style, Kelvin stressed:
- Gen Z isn’t lazy or entitled; they need purpose-led leadership.
- CEOs need to listen more, micro-manage less, and lead by showing outcomes.
- Continuous learning and staying uncomfortable are what differentiate successful leaders.
- His one wish? Change the mindset in banking leadership to stop jumping on buzzwords and start listening to the actual problem.
About Audax
Audax is a digital banking infrastructure provider spun out of Standard Chartered, offering a comprehensive Bank-in-a-Box solution that enables banks to rapidly deploy BaaS, embedded finance, and digital banking models across Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Audax is redefining scalability, reducing total cost of ownership, and enabling banks to rewire their business models for the future.
You can watch all 4 Episodes on Digijanus' Youtube channel.
Laksh Gangwani serves as Global Managing Director (Growth, Solutions, and Marketing) for a global financial institution. As the first exec hire in the region, he has played an instrumental role in expanding their footprint to APAC and Middle East, including setting up of offices in Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Dubai, and India (IFSC).
Previously, Laksh built and scaled Symphony’s award-winning wealth management proposition from scratch helping wealth managers save millions of dollars lost to inefficient processes and communication.
In 2021, for his work in the Wealth Management industry, Laksh was recognized as the Leading Individual by WealthBriefing Asia.
As a passion project, Laksh also hosts Digijanus (Asia’s largest chatshow focussed on Digital transformation), where he invites fellow industry leaders to discuss ways to transform & grow the financial industry. The chat-show is followed by 80,000 people across social media platforms.
Prior to this, for over a decade, Laksh has launched and scaled businesses in APAC for firms such as Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, Threatmetrix, and Symphony.
About Us: Digijanus is named after Janus - the Roman god of Transformation. Digijanus was founded in 2020 by Laksh Gangwani with the aim to expedite the transformation of the financial industry. Digjanus with 80,000 followers, across social media platforms, has now become Asia’s leading platform for conversations reshaping the financial industry.
Contact Info:
Name: PR Team
Email: Send Email
Organization: Digijanus
Website: http://www.digijanus.com
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/@digijanus
Release ID: 89166339
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