Five years ago we set out to transform the way Kenyans experienced banking. In 2015 Viacom Media Group released a 3-year study, issued by Viacom Media called the Millennial Disruption Index, which looked at various industries and compared how they had been disrupted to satisfy the millennial. As the LOOP team, we acknowledged this giant need in the industry and felt it was our obligation to fulfill the opportunity. At the time, 1 in 3 millennials were open to switching banks in the next 90 days. All 4 of the leading US banks were listed in the top 10 least loved brands. 33% of millennials believed they do not even need a bank at all while 73% expected to see a new, modern form of banking emerge from the likes of Google, Amazon or Apple. Millennials believed that banking innovation needed to happen but felt it was going to come from outside the industry.
Back home in Kenya, mobile penetration was skyrocketing as more Kenyans embraced smartphone technology and started leveraging on Apps for daily life. Mobile money had also been accepted as a way of life and customers were increasingly moving towards banking through their phones, however banks were still slow to adapt.
LOOP saw this as an opportunity to service this undeserved demographic. We targeted the Millennial looking for a different way to bank. These were basically people born between 1982 and 1999. They have been brought up in an age of technology, mobile phones and Google search. They were ripe for a new way of banking and finance.
LOOP’s brand purpose was simple, “to create the most rewarding way to save, spend, invest and loan money” and we didn’t mean rewarding in the “here are a bunch of vouchers” sense. No, we meant a rewarding banking experience in a way that is simple to use, and without any of the red tape that normally accompanies traditional banking.
We anchored everything on four pillars namely:
- Save – Pay yourself first
- Invest – Money doesn’t grow on trees but it does with LOOP invest
- Spend – Enjoy little indulgences on occasion
- Loan – It takes money to make money
In the five years we have served customers, we have learnt many things both directly and indirectly. The COVID pandemic further enabled us truly understand how important our service was to our customers. It gave us the opportunity to connect deeper with them and get genuine feedback that encouraged us as well as called us out, challenging us to do better.
As we step into a new way of life, we want to re-look the LOOP service and re-engineer it to serve our customers better. Starting from the basics, LOOP is transforming into a financial partner that compliments your lifestyle connecting all your financial relationships under one roof to offer you seamless and central control. We understand that reliability is key, that is why we have developed a strong backbone core system that is more resilient and robust ensuring we are able to process more transactions, enabling faster service and platform level reliability that promises unmatched uptime.
We are excited to bring the new LOOP to life and expect to have the new app ready for your download soon. In the coming weeks, we shall walk you through the new LOOP as we begin the process to move you into the new experience.
Look out for our weekly blogs breaking down the new features and follow us on our social media pages to stay up to date on all things LOOP.
