Brazil is a big country. However, the recent huge growth in individual digital banks’ customer acquisition points to a counting problem. According to report by Itaú BBA the country now has 600 million “banking relationships” for a population of around 200 million.
Much of the valuation of new digital banks is based upon the rapid growth of their client bases. However, closer scrutiny of other metrics can add context to the story. Nubank, a bank that reported losses for the first nine months of 2021, is now closing in on a $50 billion IPO that is based largely on the monetization potential for its 48-million-strong client list.
Is there now a bubble in Brazil’s neo-bank valuations?
We are always trying to balance growth, engagement and monetization. So we have a lot of KPIs, but we never get away from our ROE
Carlos Eduardo Guimarães (who is known in the bank as Cadu) believes so. Banco Pan is now winning around 52,000 new account or product holders per business day compared with Banco Inter’s 30,000.
