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Business Breakdowns - Episode 123: Nubank: David vs Goliaths
Episode Overview In this episode of Business Breakdowns, hosts Matt Reustle and Zack Fuss dissect Nubank, a Brazilian neobank that has rapidly scaled to serve 46% of Brazil’s adult population and is now the largest fintech in Latin America with a market capitalization of $37 billion. Joined by Daniel Bakalarz from Unison Asset Management, the discussion explores Nubank's origins, business model, competitive dynamics, and future opportunities.
Key Themes and Discussions
- Introduction to Nubank
- Definition of Neobanks: Digital banks operating without physical branches, providing traditional banking services through online platforms.
- Uniqueness of Nubank: Launched in 2013, Nubank offers customer-centric products, emphasizing a user-friendly mobile experience.
- Company Origin and Growth
- Founders: Launched by David Vélez, Cristina Junqueira, and Ed Wible with initial funding from Sequoia Capital.
- Rapid Expansion: Nubank grew from a single credit card offering to a comprehensive financial services platform over eight years.
- IPO Achievement: Successfully went public in 2021, raising $2.8 billion at a valuation of $37 billion.
- Market Dynamics in Brazil
- Oligopolistic Banking Environment: Historically, the Brazilian market was dominated by a few large banks, creating poor customer experiences and high interest rates.
- Opportunity for Disruption: A large unbanked population and high credit costs provided a fertile ground for Nubank's entry.
- Nubank’s Business Model
- Revenue Streams:
- Loan Portfolio: Approximately 50% from interest on loans.
- Fees and Commissions: About 20% from interchange fees and other service-related charges.
- Investments: Nearly 30% from interest on excess capital and investments.
- Customer Economics
- Average Revenue per Customer (ARPC): A mature Nubank customer generates approximately $24 per month.
- Customer Profiles: Typical customer demographics include individuals in their 30s, utilizing 3-4 Nubank products.
- Competitive Advantages
- Lower Operational Costs: Nubank's digital-only model leads to lower efficiency ratios compared to traditional banks.
- Scalability: High client-to-employee ratios, allowing for better service at a reduced cost.
- Brand Affinity and Customer Experience: A focus on exceptional user experience differentiates Nubank from established banks.
- Future Opportunities and Risks
- Growth Potential: Nubank has only captured a small percentage of the overall Brazilian financial services market and is expanding into new products like payroll loans and SME financing.
- Regulatory Environment: Supportive regulators in Brazil are crucial for Nubank’s ongoing development.
- Risks: Concerns about credit quality, liquidity, and market conditions remain, especially as Nubank's customer base includes many lower-income individuals.
- Insights and Lessons Learned
- Challenging Norms: Nubank's story represents the power of innovation and disruption in a traditionally conservative industry.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Nubank’s ability to leverage data for underwriting and credit risk management sets it apart from competitors.
Conclusion Nubank exemplifies a successful case of innovation in the banking sector, demonstrating how digital transformation can create a competitive edge in a traditionally oligopolistic market. Their growth trajectory and focus on customer experience indicate a promising future, providing valuable lessons for both investors and operators within the financial tech landscape.
For further exploration of Nubank and similar business breakdowns, visit [joincolossus.com](http://www.joincolossus.com).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:03This is Business Breakdowns. Business Breakdowns is a series of conversations with investors and operators diving deep into a single business. For each business, we explore its history, its business model, its competitive advantages, and what makes it tick. We believe every business has lessons and secrets that investors and operators can learn from, and we are here to bring them to you. To find more episodes of Breakdowns, check out joincollossus .com. All opinions expressed by hosts and podcast guests are sole their own opinions. Hosts, podcast guests, their employers, or affiliates, may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
0:45This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. This is Act of Us, the investor at Urbanic Capital, and today we're breaking down New Bank. The Brazilian -based digital bank has gone from a standing start to extraordinary scale in a short period of time. Just 10 years after its founding, the company counts 46 % of Brazil's adult population as customers. It's the largest financial technology firm in Latin America with over 80 million active customers and is meeting fully profitable with a market capitalization of 37 billion. It's achieved this in a footprint that is dominated by large income banks which makes its story all the more impressive.
1:28To break down the business, I am joined by Daniel Bacco -Rs, managing a partner at Unison Asset Management. Dan has a long history with this business and it shows in our discussion. We discussed the confluence of factors that made this business as possible, the economics of a typical new bank customer and the competitive dynamics of banking in South America. Please enjoy this business breakdown on New Bank. So, Dan, thanks for joining us to break down New Bank, a publicly traded company with a $30 billion market cap. Today, 80 million customer relationships across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, it's a big business, it's a neo bank, I think just to set the table, will maybe start and explain what a neo bank or digital bank is and why this one is particularly unique.
2:14Yeah, absolutely. So like the surface level, new bank is a Latin American predominantly Brazilian, I should say digital retail bank, new banks case, digital bank means that it provides the core products and services of a traditional retail bank. So customer loans and bank accounts, but in a completely digital way. So no physical branches, everything on a mobile app or online. There's also usually a technical distinction between neo banks and traditional banks, which can sometimes be important, not so much anymore in new banks case. And that is that many digital banks don't operate under a banking license, but instead they're designated by their regulators as some form of payment institution or financial institution, really depending on the type of activities they engage, which usually subjects them to a slightly different regulatory scheme, different funding and capital requirements, as compared to traditional banks.
3:13And in some cases, that could create advantages or disadvantages, depending on the regulatory and competitive landscape. But there are so many things that makes new bank a different digital bank. Maybe this is the place to start explaining the company's history. My understanding is that Paris is a bit of a counter -positioning and establishing its mobile new bank car business and then moving up the value chain over time. So can you flesh out the origin story and then explain to the audience how new bank has evolved its business over the past decade? The company was founded in Brazil in 2013 by David Vales, who happens to be a fellow Colombian.
3:53He's from the city of Medellin, along with two other co -founders, Cristina Junqueda, who was his local expert in Brazil when he decided to bring around board and then Ed Wibble, who's an American that he brought on to lead his tech direction. They got started with a $2 million seed check from Sequoia and from Kazakhstan, which is one of the preeminent VC firms in Latin America and in a span of just eight years in what was a spectacular and arguably perfectly timed IPO, the company went public. So this was December of 2021. They listed as a foreign company as a came -in holding on the New York Stock Exchange.
4:36The price at nine boxes share raised $2 .8 billion at an equity valuation of around 45 billion, which was just a jaw -dropping number considering that Banquita -U, which is one of the largest and most profitable banks in Brazil, was valued at around the same price, despite having more than 27 times the amount of new banks is gross revenue. So 36 billion in Nita -U gross revenue versus 1 .3 for new bank at around the time that new bank IPO. And by the way, I say that the timing of their IPO was perfect because it happened essentially evil vlast year's bear market. I suspect that if they had waited maybe just a few months they go public the success of their listing may have gone differently and then new bank as we know it today may have been a slightly different company.
5:25But in terms of the brief product history that I wanted to walk you through, they took their first product to market in 2014, which was their flagship new that's NU credit card, which was this distinctly purple MasterCard branded no fee credit card. And importantly, it was the first card of its kind in Brazil because it had no annual fees. It ran as an end -to -end mobile first experience that was completely customer centric with simplicity as a theme that cut across the entire digital interface. In the span of only three years, so this was by 2017, that product, the new credit card, went from zero to three million clients, essentially generating sufficient scale that new bank then used to subsequently launch their banking and their debit card products which came in 2018 They're personal loan products which happened the year after that Insurance and asset management segments that debuted in 2020 and all of those under the same seamless design and customer Centricity playbook and then most recently they want to broaden they launched in Mexico in 2019 and in Colombia in 2020 with their credit card product, even though those are still very small businesses compared to the main business in Brazil.
6:41And so by the time that they got to their IPO, their business had grown from a single no fee credit card offering into this sort of sprawling money platform, serving over 52 million clients. This was by the time of their IPO, so a couple of years ago, and having presence across most of the financial ecosystem in Brazil, So including purchases or spending which really runs the gamut for them across payment methods So from credit debit and traditional wire transfers all the way to mobile formats like QR code Picks, boletos, WhatsApp pay which are three payment formats that are unique to Brazil Which we can talk about later on then they've got lending which they do via credit cards and personal loans Both secured and unsecured even though most the loan portfolio was unsecured They've got banking, which includes personal and business checking and savings accounts.
7:32The business side of their portfolio is still very small. That's why I describe them as a digital retail bank emphasis on retail. They've got investing, so that's the brokerage and asset management side of their business, which they bought into, by the way, by acquiring a company called EZ Invest, that they then rebranded into new Invest, which is a direct to consumer investment platform, and plus they've got a robot advisor product in there. And then finally life insurance, they sell life insurance, and a product to ensure your cell phone. And so fast forward to today, New Bank is unequivocally the leading Fintech company in Lat time.
8:09As you mentioned, they serve over 80 million clients across the three active geographies, the vast majority of which are based in Brazil, so about 75 million clients in Brazil, followed by Mexico, which this month should be approaching the 4 million client mark and then the rest are in Colombia. Like you said, they've got a $37 billion market cap, which is on par with the largest banks in Brazil despite generating one -tenth of their average revenue. In terms of number of clients, they're the fifth largest financial institution in Brazil and the sixth in Latin America. And they've recently become the fourth -largest card issue in Brazil with about 14 % of card payment volume in that country.
8:49He though remains that categor leader with about 23 % of payment volume. I think that was a fantastic and comprehensive overview. I guess as I sit here, I wonder, how do you go from a standing start in 2013 to becoming a major major player in Latin America with growth that's now still doubling year -to -year, I believe, profitable. They've accomplished a ton in a decade. I'm just trying to better appreciate how you do that. So I'm probably biased on this one because I grew up in Columbia and I've got a pretty good understanding of Latin American culture. And I just think New Bank's story is extraordinary.
9:26And I think it's difficult to appreciate New Bank as a business and to answer your question without first understanding the improbability of what they accomplished because it's a classic David and Goliath tale where David, funnily in this case, is represented by another David, David Velas, the founder of the company, who in his quest to improve the banking experience in Brazil after having gone through a horrible experience himself ended up going head to head against the largest and most profitable banks in Brazil. And basically, just by proving that it could be done, appended the entire LATAM financial ecosystem in the process.
10:07At the time of new banks founding, again 2013, the financial services industry in Brazil effectively operated within an oligopoly structure where the top handful of banks in the country controlled depending on what metrics you're looking at anywhere from 70 to 90 percent of the financial services market in the country. They have you some perspective on this. Brazil was a country at that time with about 170 to 180 banks serving a total population of 200 million people. So that's about 1 .2 million people per every Brazilian bank. The US today has about 5 ,000 banks serving 330 million people. So that's 65 ,000 people per every US bank.
10:50It's a factor difference of nearly 20 acts against Brazil, which is just insane if you think about it. To dive a bit into Lat time's banking history, these oligopolies can be traced all the way back to the mid -20th century during a period known as import substitution industrialization. So ISI, that began in the 1930s, really gained momentum in the 1950s and lasted through the 70s. And ISI was an economic policy whose aim was to reduce dependence on imported goods by promoting local industry. And so during that time, governments across Latin America implemented policies, mainly high tariffs and import restrictions to protect local industries from foreign competition.
11:35And these measures were so effective that they led to the emergence of a few dominant firms that not surprisingly developed very closely that relationships to policymakers and in key sectors across the economy. So mainly telecom, energy, transportation, and of course banking. And so not only did these few businesses benefit from those protectionist policies that I just mentioned, but they also had access to cheap government subsidized capital. And those things combined is really what allowed the banks in Brazil to grow very quickly, very powerful and to gain control of the super majority of the market share in that country.
12:10This dynamic was so profound that it actually hindered innovation throughout most of Latin America's post -industrialization era, so it stayed from the 1980s and well through the turn of the century. And there was this very deeply rooted conventional wisdom that this is the way things aren't Brazil. This is the way they will always be in Brazil and you would be a fool to try and change this. And by the way, you can hear David Vela has talked a lot about this prevailing mindset in interviews that he did during the earlier days of New Bank. Not surprisingly, by the time that New Bank was founded, Brazilian banks, as compared to their global counterparts, if you will, had been operating for decades with just exceptionally high margins and extraordinary profitability.
12:54And by the way, they still do. I mean, to put this into perspective, from 2018 through 2020, which was the year before a new bank IPO, the average net interest margin, which is the difference between the interest that banks earn on loan assets and the interest they pay on deposits as a percentage of their total loan balance, was 14 % for Brazilian banks as compared to 3 % in the United States. so higher by a factor of almost five. Return on equity, which is another fundamental metric in banking, was north of 20 % for Brazilian banks, as compared to 10 % in the United States, and less than 5 % throughout many parts of Europe.
13:33And so, as it relates to New Bank's opportunity, these consolidated revenue pools produced two very unique conditions that became the crucial access point for the company. The first condition that emerged, Not surprisingly, he was a dearth of legitimate competition that led to some of the worst customer experiences imaginable. And this is another story that David Vell is frequently refers to when talking about how he got motivated to create new banks. So he was saying that he was a fresh expat living in Brazil for the second time in his career. And he was attempting to open a bank account at the branch of one of the largest banks in the country.
14:12So he recalls going to the bank and being greeted at a bulletproof door that was flanked by armed security guards And so he's thinking you know what the heck is going on and then he goes on to say that after a few months not days months of Spending multiple long hours in lines being on the phone with customer service and having to go back to the branch several times He finally got his account open. So that's a sort of experience that Brazilians had been dealing with for decades And the second unique condition that emerged is that the Brazilian population was increasingly growing either unbanked or underserved.
14:51And so what I mean by that is that when New Back was conceived, over a third of Brazil's 15 and over population was unbanked as compared to less than 5 % of total U .S. households. This is because banks were effectively disincented from taking credit risk outside what they people leave to be their most credit worthy constituents. So in other words, they had no reason to extend loans to people with no credit history, or for that matter to people without a stellar history, because they already had enough to eat with the size of the pie that they were serving. The point that I'm trying to make is that by the time David first came up with the idea of creating new bank, it's not like he had spotted early on an opportunity that would later become obvious to the rest of the world.
15:37Quite the exact opposite. It's enormous profit pools in Brazilian banking had long signaled the potential for someone else to step in and provide better, more affordable, more accessible financial products for consumers. The problem is that nobody was brave enough to take on the Goliath establishment. So, enter David, who has a born and bred Colombian non -native Portuguese speaker with a Stanford MBA and a venture capital pedigree from Sequoia, by the way. He was essentially an outsider in Brazil. And because of this, he was self admittedly, quote, unquote, naïve enough to challenge the conventional wisdom.
16:15So it's with this setting in mind that you understand how new bank came to be. The summary you provided regarding everything in the context of the competitive landscape makes it seem like they obviously have the right product, but the timing was right as well, right products, right time. And what was the backdrop of the tailwind that caused this opportunity to present itself? It was really a confluence of forces that came together at the right time to create Fintech's big bang throughout the region. And so obviously there was this attractive market opportunity that I just described that had existed for a long time, not only in Brazil, but across Latin America.
16:56And the math on this had always been easy. banking was a proven business model, so there was no business model risk. And Latin America is one of the largest regional economies in the world, $6 trillion worth of GDP with 650 million people. So the total addressable market had always shown incredible promise to both entrepreneurs and investors. I think less obviously at the time was some of the stuff that was brewing in the background. And I'd outlined three secular trends that were somewhat making a crescendo right around the time of New Banks founding. So first, smartphone adoption had become widespread throughout Brazil.
17:36They had 70 % penetration rates, which was attributed to a quickly growing middle class and a very large 30 and under cohort of the population. So about 45 % of the population was under 30 years old. They had a month's the highest mobile app usage rates in the world. Brazilian spend nine hours a day on their cell phones versus six and a half in the US and the rest of the world. So overall remarkably mobile forward demographic. It has the fifth largest population of social media users worldwide and the largest outside of the US and Asia. It's WhatsApp's second biggest market with 120 million users.
18:13So that really started to paint the picture in terms of why this was the right time for new bank. Secondly, consumer expectations for shifting. So remember, this was 2013, and momentum was building behind the Web 2 .0 wave. So think Uber, Instagram, Spotify, Netflix, those were all emerging businesses at around that time. And millennial is across the world. We're coming of age and proving to be the most commercially influential and homogenous generation ever. And as we've now come to learn, a millennial in Brazil with a lot like like one in the US or in Europe or in India, they were all digitally native.
18:49They all used apps for their daily productivity utility and they had no patience. They'd actually pay money for the privilege of using an app in place of walking into a branch to do their banking. And then third was the regulator, New Bank benefited by the Central Bank of Brazil, the CBB, that had in its years turned incredibly pro -fintech progressive and benign. We can talk more about the CBB later, but as I was eluding to earlier, 60 million adults in Brazil didn't have a bank account by the time New Bank was founded. And by the way, that number is now down to 40 million in terms of number of adults that don't have a bank account.
19:27The financial economy had essentially bifurcated as a result of these unintended oligopolis, and it had become clear that the CBB was just fed up with the amassment of power within a handful of banks in Brazil. And this turns out to be relevant because whereas regulatory capture many times tends to widen the mode for traditional banking by making it to honor us for non -regulated entities to provide services, the CBB has and had collaborated closely with neo banks and fintechs in Brazil to provide crucial points into the ecosystem. So one example is they sponsored the regulation that allowed the transition of the account opening process and future account matters administrative to be from physical to completely digital without that new bank would not exist nor would many of the other fintechs or digital banks that are in Brazil.
20:22On another occasion, and this was in the earlier days of new bank, Fediraban, which is the bank guild in Brazil, tried to bring forth a regulation that would have increased the working capital requirements for New Bank to just an unsustainable and fatal level. But the regulator quickly shut that down. So those are the three secular trends that I wanted to highlight. And then the last thing I'd say is that the CBB has really stood out as a beacon for progress in Brazil, in contrast to the other government institutions. It's managed to attract top to your talent and really fostered an environment of innovation And so some of the innovations that I think are important to highlight are the pioneered picks which stands for Agamintos y instantanios Which is an instant transfer platform that works 24 -7 for payments purchases and money transfers It's been fully functional since 2020 and maybe besides indias It is arguably the most success for real -time mobile payment system in the world 140 million Brazilians use it, so that's two thirds of the population, and it's used more than debit cards as a form of payment.
21:35So they currently run at around $245 billion worth of monthly volume. And so compare that to United States where the dominant platform is a CH, the automated clearinghouse, where it still takes one to two business days for funds to settle, and it doesn't even work on the weekends or outside business hours. Another example is in 2018, they changed the law to allow Fintech companies to lend the money without intermediation of a traditional bank. This was already later in New Banks trajectory, but before that happened, banks essentially could elbow out competition or at least bully competition by charging high fees for intermediation services.
22:16And then another, I think, know where the development that came from the CBB is that they created open finance, which is a data sharing model that allows consumers to see a consolidated view of their financial picture on an app that uses an API to connect across financial institutions to gather that data. I understand that the backdrop of this business was built in. If you look at the charts that they provide in their investor presentations, striking the growth trajectory of the business over the course of the last even 24 months, we're Where is the largest contribution of that growth coming from?
22:54What's the revenue split of the business and how has that changed over the evolution of it since it's founding in 2013? One of the interesting things about following a business like New Bank is that if you look at their financial statements from one quarter to the next and you don't know what company you're looking at, it's almost like you're looking at two different companies. And that's because business is growing so quickly and is evolving at such a rapid pace. When I look at economics, I think that analyzing yearly run rates off for most recent quarter ends up being the most accurate way to understand the current state of the business.
23:32And so with that caveat in mind, there's three ways that New Bank generates revenue from its platform. So about half is through their client portfolio of loans. So that's interest earned on loans that are made to their clients either via their credit card product or through their consumer loan product Then about a fifth comes from fees and commissions So those are the fees that they charge on the various products that they sell and so this is made up of interchange fees Which by the way is the bulk of it. It's about three quarters of the total fees and commissions and Interchange fees. That's the big that new bank takes from the fee that master card charges to merchants for transactions that happen on their network So on average in Brazil mastercard charges around two and a quarter on transactions of which new bank gets to keep roughly half So 1 .1 % and then the rest of those fees and commissions are late fees on overdue balances Card recharge fees and then commissions from securities brokerage AUM on asset management from insurance brokerage and just miscellaneous small stuff and then the last piece of the revenue you about a third comes from interest and gains outside their client portfolio.
24:46So loosely speaking, this is basically a form of flow. It's excess capital that gets invested in financial assets, so short -term government bonds, short -term corporate bonds, interbank deposits, that ends up generating income for the business. And I think it's interesting to spend some time on this line item because it tells you a lot about the state of their business to your question. So let me clarify, it isn't typical for retail bank in Brazil or elsewhere to generate a third of their revenues this way. Usually it tends to be lower than that. And the new bank's case, it has to do with the fact that their capital structure is not yet normalized because it's still a very fast growing company.
25:28So if you look at the right side of new banks' balance sheet, their equity and liabilities, They've got about $15 billion worth of capital that is not yet deployed through their loan products, but instead sits in the form of cash, cash equivalents, and the financial assets that I just mentioned. So that's about half the book value of their assets, which for any bank is suboptible because they could be generating a lot more revenue by deploying that into loans, which are higher yielding assets. There are several reasons why so much capital sits undeploied. The first one is regulatory. So a portion of that balance about a billion and a half is the capital that they're legally required to keep on their balance sheet as a buffer for down cycles.
26:11And that's based on Basel III models. The second reason is growth. Obviously they're reserving some of that capital for future CapEx. They've got new products that are in the pipeline in Brazil. They're growing very quickly in Mexico and Colombia. And they haven't announced this officially, but I'm sure that they've got their site set on other countries in Latin America and also I wouldn't be surprised if there's strategic acquisitions that happen along the way. Beyond those two, here's where it gets nuanced. Credit card receivables, which is a $10 billion balance, are financed by merchants in Brazil, which ends up freeing a lot of capital for them.
26:49So let me explain. There's this quirky regulation in Brazil that gives credit card issuers about a month to make good on their payables to merchants. So for example, if a card holder uses their credit card to buy a hundred dollar pairs of shoes at a retailer, that consumer now has 30 days before they need to send those hundred dollars to New Bank. But on the flip side of that transaction, New Bank also has 30 days to pay the retailer. So by the time New Bank needs that money, in most cases, they've already received it from the card holder. In the US, it doesn't work that way. Card issuers usually pay merchants within two days.
27:24And so even though New Bank carries the credit risks of these credit cards, they don't finance it. And so they end up with a bunch of additional capital that you typically wouldn't find at a US retail bank that issues credit cards. The other nuance reason, and I think this is probably the most interesting driver of their underutilized capital structure, is that since creating their bank account products, so they're checking in savings accounts, they've attracted a lot more deposits than they've been able to responsibly deploy through their money platform. And the reason is interesting because, well, first of all, it shows the popularity of their bank account, but it also speaks to the level of prudence that they've been using to manage their loan portfolio.
28:08So their management team always talks about their low and grow strategy, which means issuing credit with low limits and then slowly growing those limits as the clients risk reward profile begins to clarify and so the result of this of course is suboptimal capital structure. They've done a great job acquiring customers. I think they have almost 40 % of the adult population in Brazil as a new bank customer. There are multiple consumer touch points whether it's credit cards, debit cards, personal loans. What does it generally look like? I'm a acquired as a customer, perhaps I need a credit card. No, that relationship grows and matures.
28:44Can you take us through the archetype but what a customer looks like and how that maybe revenue per customer translates? Absolutely. So, I'm going to tweak your assumptions. I'm going to assume that you as a client that you've been with them for five years because it's important to highlight what a mature client for them looks like. Sure. And I'm also going to say that you use them as your primary banking platform because the monetization right there is also different. But I think it's the truest expression of where they currently are. and it also provides some indication as to where they could be going.
Read the full transcript
29:18Most likely the client's going to be in their 30s, early to late 30s. They're going to use three to four products, which are going to be the core product, so credit card, personal loan, bank account, and then maybe an investment account or an insurance product. And in most cases, so 40 % of their client base, they are going to earn anywhere from two to five times the minimum wage in Brazil, which is 1200 to 6000 rails. So in dollar terms that translates into 250 to about $1 ,300 in income per month. So if you look at New Banks latest fiscal quarter, you can do some crude approximation to come up with a hypothetical monthly revenue stream for that client that I just described.
29:58So on average, they're going to have an outstanding credit card balance of about $285 of of which 65, so a quarter that is revolving and or interest earning in installment balance. So in other words, just the portion that earns interest. And this interest earning balance will generate about $4 per month in credit card interest for new banks. So that's about a 7 % monthly yield on the revolving balance, which is an APR of 80%, which happens to be about a quarter of the average APR for credit cards in Brazil, which is 260 percent. And so part of that is of course, New Bank is pricing lower, and that's one of their value propositions.
30:42And another part of that, and much smaller, is due to the fact that their product mix is also across other geographies, Mexico and Colombia, that have much lower average APRs than Brazil. So the ones in Mexico and Colombia are trending towards 50 versus 260 in Brazil. Then from there, there's about $120 worth of purchases that were made on that card during the prior month that would have generated almost $3 of credit card merchant fees, which New Bank would get a buck 35, or about 1 .1 % before sending the rest to master cards. So those are New Bank's interchange fees. They may have a personal loan.
31:22So say this person is earning five times Brazil's minimum wage. So I'll go to the top end of the range in the example that I gave. So that's about $1 ,300 per month. So I'd expect their loan size to be around $360 on which they'd pay about $15 per month in interest to new banks So that's about a four and a half yield per month of 50 % APR of course personal loans are yielding less than credit card balances Then you've got a bank account balance that's gonna be about $300 across checking and savings account deposits end up making about 75 % of the capital deployed across non -client financial assets.
32:05So if that bank balance, those $300 generate about $2 per month in market -based revenue for new bank from its bank accounts. And that's before netting out the cost of deposits, which is about 80 % of the interbank rate. And then finally, they generate about 50 cents worth of non -interest income. So between late fees and other forms of permissions say transactions, AUMs on their investment account or buying insurance through the platform. So you add it all up. That's about $23, $24 in revenue per month for the average client that's been with the company for five or more years. Let me ask a question.
32:46It's a little bit more specific about the business, but stood out to me. The APR should seem pretty extreme. What is it that that allows them to price the loans to such an aggressive return. It's a combination of where base rates are in Brazil and the nature of the credit market in Brazil. The Interbank rate is at around 13 .8%. Everything will then just base from there. That explains a large part of the difference. But the other part is that the Brazilian market and the credit market is so underdeveloped, it's such a small part of retail financial services that essentially get to gouge. And so I also want to take this opportunity to compare and contrast the revenue model of New Bank versus that of a traditional bank holding company in the US and the lack of similarities between them.
33:45It's not too difficult to loan money. It's getting it back, which is the hardest part. They overindex it seems like to consumers versus small and medium -sized businesses. Perhaps it's part of the opportunity for growth here, but I'm just curious how you think about a consumer -focused bank versus one that uses consumers for deposits and provide services versus one that's a very, very deep integration into consumer finance throughout Brazil and then broader Latin America. A good way to showcase new bank's profitability is to take traditional banking profitability metrics and then use those to compare against the large incumbents and then see how new banks stack from a classic Wall Street point of view.
34:28I'd argue that the metrics that matter the most are net interest margin efficiency ratios and ROAs. Net interest margin is the strongest indicator of pricing power, right? it speaks directly to the spread of the banks can generate between what they pay on their deposits versus how much they can charge to lend their money, which by the way in most places in the world, including Brazil, is kept by user laws. So the only way that a bank can generate above average nims is by either getting depositors to take below average rates on their savings or checking accounts or by lending out to clients that are willing to pay above average rates on their credit cards or loans.
35:11You're generally going to see the bigger banks having an advantage here and particularly when it comes to their cost of deposits because they offer bigger networks of branches and ATMs which is usually a valuable amenity for a lot of consumers. They've got a wider breadth of products. So in other words, they become a one -stop shop for all your financial needs, convenience, which is another important amenity or simply because they're perceived to be safer than smaller banks. Despite having deposit insurance And by the way, we lived through that here in the United States with a regional banking crisis that we saw.
35:43A lot of these banks were solvent, were steady, they were FDIC insured, and nonetheless, people moved their deposits into the bigger banks because there's this perception of safety, which many cases turns out to be true. One example that really exemplifies this competitive advantage that the larger banks tend to have is that here in the United States, the five largest banks paid an average interest, the 40 basis points on savings and money market accounts during the last quarter of last year versus 214 basis points for the highest yielding ones. Yet those largest bank accounts collectively still hold half of all the money kept in those types of accounts.
36:24So the conclusion is if your new bank and EW and you want to attract deposits to provide credit, you generally have to price very competitive. The products are just not as commoditized as many people expect them to be. And so relating that to New Bank, as you scroll through their history, you can see their pricing power improve as their brand begins to gain affinity with consumers. When they first started taking deposits, their names were trending at about half that of the incumbent average. So 7 % versus 14 % for the incumbents, but his time went on and their brand gained affinity They caught up and so as a last quarter on an annualized basis their names are at 15 % Which is in line with the current average of the consumer segment of the incumbent banks now to be fair And this is an important caveat on average about 60 % of the consumer loan books for the big banks in Brazil are mortgage, auto, and payroll, which earn much lower rates.
37:37And those are segments that new bank has no presence yet. So there's product mix queue when I say that new banks' names are aligned to the big banks. If the big banks were disclosed their names on a per -product basis, I'm sure that it would still be higher than new banks. But it's still an impressive feat because at first as new bank was growing they were offering cheaper loans And higher deposit rates to attract clients which of course part of the competitive advantage of a digital bank is you could afford to do so because you don't have the overhead of branches But the fact that they've been able to narrow that gap so substantially is evidence that their user experience and their design is providing customers just strong value proposition that's feeding into their profitability.
38:25So that's meant, then there's efficiency ratio, which is just OPEX expressed as a percentage of net interest income. And this is really a way to quantify operating leverage. That's why it becomes important for banks. So obviously selling money is one of the most scalable businesses in the world. And with enough scale, you're eventually going to get to a point where marginal costs become a function of the number of clients that can be served for employee branch office. And so this is why for banks, compensation will usually make up most of their operating expenses. It's because people are the least scalable part of their value chain.
39:01And so as you grow your revenues, the incremental cost to producing those revenues comes almost exclusively from additional front, middle, and back office personnel that's required to service those new clients plus branches and offices or whatever real infrastructure that they're going to need. So not surprisingly, New Bank has the lowest efficiency ratio amongst the established banks in Brazil. It's about 20 % lower on average. So theirs came in at around, I want to say, 39 % last quarter versus over 50 % for the incumbents. And this one's obviously very easy to understand. I mean, it's the premise of the digital banking model, but you don't need physical branches to open accounts or process transactions.
39:42The scalability of each employee will improve. the person sitting in Sao Paulo can provide service to a client there just as proficient me as it can to a client based in Rio. But I think the KPI on the efficiency front that strikes me the most about new bank is its client to employee ratio. So on average new bank has 8 ,000 active clients per employee. Whereas the top incumbents have about 400 active card clients per employee. So more efficient than the traditional banks. New bank generates about $100 ,000 more in revenue per employee than the big banks, despite generating a tenth of their total average revenue, which is just a pretty wild stat.
40:30And so what this shows to me is that the runway for additional operating leverage as their business continues to grow is still very strong. And then the last metric that I wanted to highlight was return on equity. So ROE tends to be the most relevant metric for bank that's as opposed to ROIC by virtual of how banks get capitalized. So since a large portion of their funding comes from deposits over 50 % to new bank's case, about 40 % from a large incumbents. And since the cost of these deposits is much lower than the cost of equity or debt capital, So it would be misleading for an investor to look at ROIC for a bank if they wanted to compare the profitability across other different industries.
41:13So R .E. just ends up being a much pure metric. And in the new bank's case, if you look at their consolidated operating business, so including Brazil, Mexico, and World Columbia operations, their annualized ROI in the latest quarter was 11 % as compared to Itaou and Banquilo Brazil, which are two of the largest and most profitable banks in Brazil. Those are hovering at around the 18 % mark. But here's where it gets exciting for investors. New banks' consolidated business ROE, unadjusted, tends to be misleading because it includes a capital position that's three times in excess of the regulatory requirement.
41:57That's what I highlighted as I was walking through the revenue split. And so this gap in R O E, the 18 % for large banks versus the 11 % for new bank, is driven by a low on the numerator side. You've got Colombian and Mexico operations that are still losing money, but that's a very small part. Last year, they only lost 30 million. But on the denominator, as I referenced, New Bank's capital's position is three times in excess of their regulatory capital requirement. So if you were to isolate New Bank's operation in Brazil, so you take their total net income and exclude losses from Colombia and Mexico, which like I said are still insignificant, and then apply that income as a return over there, what is called prudential regulatory capital.
42:41So it's the type of institution that they're referred to as prudential. New Bank, Brazil's annualized ROE increases to over 40%. So that's nearly twice that of itau and Banco de Brazil. I have a pretty strong appreciation for how the business makes money, how it compares to its peers. But I guess beyond further penetrating their user base, what are the other opportunities that you think the business has and it's kind of product for a map going forward here? There's a lot of ways to approach this answer. Maybe a good way is to start by going through their unit economics, because I think that's gonna help visualize the future opportunity better, because a lot of it is based on cross -sounding and upselling, and then looking top down to see what segments and Geos, they're still not participating in.
43:38Analyzing contribution margin, and per client tends to be unconventional for a traditional bank. But in NewBank's case, it's really helpful for highlighting the platform scale, which is going to go to answer your question, and then their key value drivers. And by the way, this happens to be the key metric that NewBank uses to articulate their strategy. So contribution margin per client. And so under this framework, the earnings power of their business really gets premised on foreign inputs. So it's the number of active clients on their platform. The cost to acquire those clients, CAC, which in NewBank's case has been remarkably low amongst the lowest for Fintech companies in the region.
44:22And that's because 85 % of the customers historically have come through word of mouth. So this member -get -member program that they have where on the app it's the one tab feature that gets you client referrals immediately. And then there's R -PAC, which stands for average revenue -peractive client. So that's total revenue divided by the number of active clients and then finally cost to serve each client Which is really just the opx attached to the customer experience and then adding transactional expenses to that To put it all together our pack minus cost to serve gets you profit contribution per client That's before the costs of the overhead to run their platform and so their strategy essentially focuses on adding and activating as many clients to their platform as they can for the lowest possible acquisition cost of course, driving R -PAC by increasing engagement per client through cross -selling and upselling and then leveraging the scale of their technology so that their cost to serve customers remains constant on an absolute basis as they continue to add new clients.
45:29And it has been extraordinary to see the evolution of those metrics for new banks. So when they first started reporting them, so 2018 is the earliest data that we have. Their monthly contribution per client was about $3 .40. So they had about 5 million active clients with an average monthly R pack of 480 and a cost to serve of about 40. Today, that's up to 780. So from 340 to 780 today, they've got 64 million active clients on their platform with an average monthly R -pack of $8 .60 and a cost to serve of 80 cents. So that's a 20 % Kager in profit contribution per client across four and a half years.
46:13Their CAC last year was $6 .50. Like I said, amongst the lowest in the space of which marketing spend was $2, so about 30 % of that, which tends to be a fraction of what you spend in marketing in the US. And the remainder, 450, was what they spent on credit and data costs. So what they pay the credit bureaus and then the printing and shipping costs. Which means that if you put all that together, they're able to recover their acquisition cost in less than a year. Then depending on the inputs and assumptions that you use to come up with your LTV, your customer lifetime value, you can figure out the amount of net present value that every dollar towards customer acquisitions generates.
46:56And so in new banks case, internally they use a 12 % discount rate with a 10 -year assumption for the life of the client, which gets you to an LTV -Cock ratio that's over 30 times, which is just exceptional by any standard, even compared to tech companies in the United States. I mean, I think it's better than Facebook during the time that Facebook was transitioning to mobile. So, very long way to answer your question, but their future opportunity, I mean, there are one way for growth and profitability is just incredibly attractive. From the macro view, retail financial services in last time is about a $200 billion revenue pool.
47:30New Bank currently has 3 % of that. Brazil, Mexico and Colombia combined are a $122 billion revenue pool. New Bank has 5 % of that. Brazil alone is 90 billion of which New Bank has 7 % of that. So, as you can see, the runway is very long. So, in Brazil, they only have products for about 70 % of that 90 billion dollar revenue pool. So, on their consumer side, they offer no mortgages, auto loans or payroll loans yet. and they're just now starting to go after the SME space, small and medium -sized enterprise, which is about $17 billion in revenue. They're currently in beta testing for payroll loans, which is the largest on one of the lowest risk asset classes in the consumer finance space in Brazil.
48:21It's a $14 billion revenue pool on $120 billion worth of loans. So, Newback has a very good shot at achieving high penetration in that market because they're existing customers already account for 31 % of the entire payroll market in Brazil. So, they don't really have to fish outside their pond. And I'm only talking about Brazil. If you then think about Mexico and Colombia, those are still very early markets for them as well. They're less than three years in. And despite their age, the performance there has been more positive than what they experienced in Brazil's first three years. New Conta, which is their bank account in Mexico, launched in May, and they reached a million clients within a month.
49:04It took Brazil closer to six months. So the virality that we're seeing in these new geographies is much stronger than what it was in Brazil at the same time. And to finish off the top -down view, all of Latin America is a $1 trillion market cap opportunity of which new bank currently has less than 4%. So seeing that way, it's just extraordinary. Now from the bottom up, the potential of their cross sell and up sell opportunities only about a fifth of the way realized. So their average monthly R -PAC is $860, as I mentioned, whereas the average monthly R -PAC for their mature cohorts is at around $24.
49:45Which by the way happens to be in line with Ibao's R -PAC that just for segments where our new bank still doesn't operate, which are the mortgages, auto loans, and payroll. And for reference, it does R -PAC including those segments where new bank still doesn't operate is $45, which if you wanna use a target for new bank's potential R -PAC in the future, I mean that could be one number. Another notable trend is that their younger cohorts are showing faster acceleration towards higher R -PACs. So whereas it took their oldest cohorts It's about 50 months to get to an average monthly R pack of 860.
50:20Their new cohort are getting there in almost half the time, so about 30 months. And then it takes about another 2 .5 years to get to $24. If you extrapolate all those trends forward, that represents an $18 billion revenue opportunity for new bank. Within five to six years, with zero acquisition costs and zero cost to scale. And if their cost to serve for client remains stable, which by the way they have over the last eight quarters, despite having grown their number of active clients by over 50 % in the same time period, that's $2 billion of profits before the end of the decade without factoring any operating leverage, any new product segments that I just described, and most significantly no new clients on their platform.
51:04So it takes us to the logical question, which is banking is a difficult business. There are meaningful tail risks, almost inherent in many financial institutions. And there's all that edge around investors that you never want to buy a rapidly growing financial institution. And so I posit to you the question then, what are the biggest risks of this story? Obviously, you highlight a number of incredibly positive attributes and the proof is in the achievements that they've accomplished thus far. But clearly there are risks inherent in any story. What keeps you up at night when you think about this business?
51:45Look, bank investors are always going to be concerned about credit liquidity and market risks. And to your point, credit is going to be probably on the priority of that list for a higher growing company. So let me tackle liquidity and market risks first because I think that in new banks case they tend to play muted roles and that's because well when it comes to liquidity bank deposits are in hypergrove mode they're up 63 % in last year so deposit flight risk really is low at this time and there's really no sign of that slowing down in terms of market risk there's some natural hedge because of the duration of loan assets that's in Latin America that tend to skew short -term.
52:29So in New Bank's case, 86 % of their personal loan book has a duration that's less than one year. 44 % of their credit card balance is due within 30 days. Now, FX risk when it comes to the market risk is always a consideration. And those can be hedged out, but New Bank has chosen not to. So that's something that I tend to think about. But when it comes to what my biggest risk is, yes, as a quality. And one thing that people forget is that it is not difficult to grow a loan portfolio, especially if you're selling unsecured loans, which is news main product. You're basically offering money to people who need it, and you're crossing your fingers hoping that they'll pay you back because no lender wants to negotiate a loan, or get into a collection process or write it off.
53:16And the same thing cannot be said for growing a high -quality portfolio of loans. I mean, this usually takes a long time because the quality of the underwriting depends on gathering data throughout time and then developing proficiency in analyzing that data. And so for new bank, the overwhelming concern had always been that the majority of their loan book was to a constituency that represented uncharted territory. 60 % of their clients earned less than three times Brazil's minimum wage, which by the way, it's the exact inverse for the established banks. But so far, new banks underwriting has really proven to be best in class.
53:57I mean, their 15 -90 -day NPLs on average have been better than the top three banks by 170 basis points. Their 90 -plus days have held really in line with those same banks. And my number can be negatively misleading the 90 -day NPL. I'm talking about the comparison because large banks tend to sell their delinquent loans, which creates a purging effect that new bank doesn't benefit from because they don't do that. Now, one question that comes to my mind is maybe the reason that they're not selling their 90 plus day loans is because there's not a market for that. That could be. But the point is that in terms of how they've underwritten, they are in line with how the oldest and best in the business are doing it.
54:40And so that was a proof of concept that was very important for me. Here's another interesting point about their long book. If you segment by income bands, those differences, so in other words, the lead that new bank has to the top income, it's on the 15 to 90 and then 90 plus become a lot more pronounced to new banks favor for lower income bands. I mean, not surprisingly, this happens to be their bread and butter. It's how they entered the space in the first place, but they're showing that they're doing a much better job in underwriting lower income or no credit type constituency. Now I want to say one more thing in terms of why I think New Bank has this edge on underwriting over the big banks and I think it's a structural edge on the fact that since everything is digital all touch points can be put into a credit algorithm them, which is a big disadvantage for the big banks that still have branches.
55:39Over time, as it continues to iterate on an autogra, the new bank, I mean, based just based on additional data, it's going to be a leader in its ability to provide credit because it turns out that if the time of day that you request a credit card or a limit or the way that you interact with the block and unblocked feature, if those happen to be meaningful variables, then it's very simple to incorporate them into the next iteration of the underwriting algorithm. NewVec also has a very rich historical data set. They have data for every single interaction of every single customer since the beginning of that customer's history.
56:15So it's very easy for them to act test for statistical significance and run a new algorithm. Based on conversations that I've had with people in the business, I heard it takes traditional banks anywhere from two to three months to iterate on their existing algorithms. I mean, I don't know that for a fact, but that's what I've heard from local people in the business. I guess on that particular point it invites the question around regulatory risk that they may run into. I think about it in the context of the CFPB in the US where there is big risks that lending algorithms become biased. And I'm just curious how the central bank or the regulator thinks about the growth of new bank in the context of its large established peers.
56:55Here's the thing about regulatory risk and it's one that I should have mentioned as I was going down through it. But New Bank has gotten to a point where its scale is so large and it's provided so much value to the Brazilian financial ecosystem constituency credibility for the CBB that they are now effectively on the same side as the big banks. And so there's a natural hedge when it comes to regulatory risk for New Bank because whatever New Bank today is going to hurt the big banks. And the big banks are an incredibly powerful constituency with a very strong lobby. And they tend to get things happen that is to their favor.
57:40In other words, they don't get handicapped too much because of the power that they have. I wouldn't know exactly how the CBB or the regulator thinks on New Bank per se specifically, But I do believe that it's become the one -sided thing as opposed to two -sided. I sit back and I see a business that's highly disruptive, growing in incredible pace. This entire conversation I feel like has touched upon some of the competitive advantages that this business has. What are the key takeaways when you study this business and enabling its incredible growth in market share games? I like to think of New Bang's competitive landscape as being too sighted.
58:23So you've got pressure coming from the top, from the large incumbents that are retrofitting themselves to adapt into a digitalized world where the consumer is now demanding a simple, seamless experience. And then from the bottom, you've got this sea of fintechs that are trying or hoping to get a bite of the apple. There's close to a thousand fintechs in Brazil alone as of last year. There's about 2500 in Latin America. And by the way, a few of those I think have legitimate wherewithal to become serious digital bank contenders. One of the oldest is Interbank in Brazil. They're also a public company.
59:01But there's Necki and Davi Plata in Colombia. There's Hay Banco and Glad in Mexico. But in any case, you're clearly not going to go from a zero to a $45 billion IPO in Latin America without turning a few heads in the process. And so that's what we're seeing. When you think about modes, I think new banks biggest advantage is that they provide a fundamentally different experience. And this really carries through in every single interaction that the clients have with the products throughout the app. I mean one example is at a large bank today in Brazil, if you lose your credit card you're gonna call and then you're gonna get somebody on the phone and they're gonna say, hey, here's your case number You're gonna need it for when you call back in three to four days and you're gonna have to fill out this form It's an a form and you're gonna either have to mail it back to us or fax it back to us That stuff still happens for the large banks versus new bank where you log on to the app and then in literally Two taps you're able to block your card Schedule delivery for the new one and then you get a message saying hey, are you okay?
1:00:08You lost your card do you need any immediate help? You know, we're here for you. So the borrow phrase from Jack Dugal, whose New Banks Chief Product Officer, the experience is not incrementally better. It is fundamentally different. And so even though traditional banks have improved their UX quite a bit, the differences are still profound because it is remarkably difficult to retrofit into a design -driven culture that's customer obsessed like New Bank. If you're having to deal with a massive legacy infrastructure that employs over 100 ,000 people has thousands of physical branches and I'm talking about one bank all the way.
1:00:49And uses this patchwork of back end third party IT systems that don't really speak to each other in their native language. Okay. So that's why I think New Bank stands pretty strongly against the large incumbents. Now, turning to the other side of that coin, the fight against the new entrance is on a completely different field. And that's because those businesses are building from the ground up. And so they have a much better chance to get the user experience right from the start. And so for this, New Bank is able to find a different type of higher ground, which is really predicated on their credit DNA.
1:01:31So let me explain what I mean by that. 70 % of the global financial services profit pool is made of credit, which means that if you are a FinTech that wants to grow and be profitable, eventually you will have to move into credit. The payment segment is a popular entry point for FinTech, but those profit pools will inevitably get computed away. I mean, it's a commoditized service where the barriers to entry are just too low. And there's other fintechs that are trying to get in by doing asset -like businesses, like going into debits or wallets or remittances or features like Bill Squid or budgeting.
1:02:09What the market has seen in its history and I'm talking specifically about Brazil right now is that if fintechs aren't born with that credit DNA, they tend to fail once they go in. I mean, a good example is Medecalo Liude or Stone or Gebble. So these are actually big companies that had the wherewithal to compete and they were unsuccessful. We've seen some successes outside of Brazil, two that come to minor tincoff in Russia and Cosby in Kazakhstan, but really besides that it's a low number to the degree that New Bank has achieved. And again that's because credit is hard to get right and it takes time to build the data set that's robust enough to feed an underwriting algorithm.
1:02:50And so New Bank has a structural data advantage over the new entrance that makes a big difference and the durability of that advantage is going to be prolonged, right? I think it's going to tend to be prolonged because as new entrance are focused on gathering data, new bank is focused on iterating data. And so the gap tends to widen because it becomes a bit of a virtuous cycle. New bank gets better so they get more market share because they're extending more loans that they feel comfortable with, which gets them more data, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so we typically conclude these conversations with two lessons.
1:03:28One for investors who are evaluating situations with parallels to this one and the other for operators. Candidly, I feel like we've touched upon a number of those lessons. And so I could do to you to offer us any parting wisdom about how you think about this business and what you want people to kind of way. One of the ideas that resonates for me about New Bank's story, which is really a common thread that cuts across all dimensions of the business, including the investors' point of view, including the origin story, including strategy of the business, is just this power of challenging convention, double clicking until there's nothing left to double click on, and then constructing based on reason and not by analogy.
1:04:12And like I said, we see it through New Bank's business, from the way that their customers are active the app to the way they articulate their strategy to how they define their core competencies, not as a lender, but as a tech first money platform. And so all those break convention in some shape or form. Banking is a business model that goes back thousands of years and that's been iterated countless times. Yet by asking the right questions and digging deep, New Bank managed to create a product and an experience that was profoundly distinct. Dan, this is a fascinating business. I think you did a wonderful job presenting us the founding story, the competitive advantages, where new banks sits today.
1:04:56A $30 billion market cap means that this business has to continue to accomplish a lot. Seems like the prospects are incredibly good and we'll continue to watch it. Thanks, Jack. To find more episodes of Breakdowns, ranging from Costco to Visa to Moderna. Or to sign up for our weekly summary, check out joinkolasis .com. That's J -O -I -N -C -O -L -O -S -S -U -S .com.
From the publisher
This is Zack Fuss, an investor at Irenic Capital, and today we’re breaking down Nubank. The Brazilian-based neobank has gone from nothing to extraordinary scale in a short period of time. 10 years after its founding, the company counts 46% of Brazil’s adult population as customers, is the largest Fintech in Latin America, and has a market capitalization of $37 billion. The fact that it’s achieved this in an environment that heavily favored the large incumbent banks makes its story all the more impressive.
To break down the business, I am joined by Daniel Bakalarz, Managing Partner at Unison Asset Management. Dan has a long history with this business and it shows in our discussion. We discuss the confluence of factors that made this business possible, the economics of a typical Nubank customer, and the competitive dynamics of banking in South America. Please enjoy this business breakdown of Nubank.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.
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Show Notes
(00:02:44) - (First question) - A background on neobanks and how Nubank is unique
(00:04:17) - The company’s origin story and how it moved up the value chain over time
(00:09:43) - Nubank’s rise to a becoming a market leader in just a decade since its formation in 2013
(00:17:04) - The backdrop in Brazil that led to the opportunity for Nubank to enter the market
(00:23:34) - A breakdown of Nubank’s revenue
(00:29:06) - The makeup of a mature Nubank customer and the company’s average revenue from that customer
(00:33:33) - Reasons for the business pricing its annual percentage rates so aggressively
(00:34:18) - The comparison between the business and traditional bank holding companies in the US and South America
(00:43:40) - Potential opportunities for Nubank in the future
(00:52:12) - The biggest risks to the company moving forward
(00:57:30) - Brazilian regulator's opinion on Nubank’s rise in the market in context of its large established peers
(00:59:54) - Lessons learned from studying the business
(01:05:06) - Dan’s parting wisdom on Nubank and what he wants people to take away from this breakdown




