SC Ventures launches ‘audax’ to boost digital banking capabilities

By Gloria Mathias

SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation, FinTech investment and ventures arm, launches ‘audax’ Financial Technology, a digital banking technology solutions provider.

The solution is designed to empower banks and financial institutions to accelerate their digital transformation, deliver new business models, serve new customer segments, and derive new revenue streams.

audax provides an end-to-end digital banking platform with modularised capabilities that are designed to efficiently handle millions of customer data concurrently. Its plug-and-play solution serves the entire client lifecycle from client and staff interfaces, to deposits and lending products, to client servicing and data reporting.

Built to complement incumbent banks’ core systems, audax’s infrastructure-agnostic technology also enables banks to pursue modern digital transformation without the need for costly and time-consuming in-house development or migration.

The FinTech is focused on accelerating the technology ecosystem starting with the APAC region. Its current mission is to empower banks and financial institutions to scale and modernise at speed with audax’s digital banking capabilities.

Kelvin Tan, the former Managing Director and Global Head of SC nexus, will lead audax as its CEO, together with most of his incumbent team. audax will continue to serve Standard Chartered in a commercial capacity by powering its BaaS proposition, SC nexus, for current and future partnerships.

“The meaning of audax is ‘courage’ – and that is exactly the defining characteristic of the team we’ve built and needed for what we are about to achieve,” Tan said. “We are excited to push the frontiers of what is considered possible. audax has showcased the potential of BaaS and how it has scaled the digital business for Standard Chartered, enabling them to acquire new-to-bank customers at a fraction of traditional customer acquisition costs. We are now ready to scale it for other banks and financial institutions globally, helping everyone create better value for their business without risking their existing estate.”