As The Digital Banker continues to honour women leaders in finance in celebration of International Women’s Month, Pei-Si Lai, Group CEO of GXS Bank, reflects on what it takes to scale a regional digital bank, from early momentum to institutional discipline while staying anchored in purpose, responsible innovation and customer trust.
When GXS Group launched its first digital bank, the focus was on speed — building technology, testing products and reaching customers quickly in markets where traditional banking often left gaps. With GXS Group expands in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, the challenge has changed. Momentum alone is no longer enough. What matters now is alignment, discipline and the ability to scale without losing the purpose that drove the bank’s early growth.
Southeast Asia’s digital economy is projected to exceed USD 300 billion in gross merchandise value by 2025, according to the e-Conomy SEA report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company. Digital financial services alone are expected to generate around USD 38 billion in annual revenue, driven by rapid adoption of digital payments, e-commerce and mobile banking across the region.
At the same time, financial inclusion remains a defining challenge. The World Bank estimates that roughly 50 million adults across Southeast Asia remain unbanked, while millions more rely on informal credit or cash-based financial services.
Digital banks have emerged as one of the sector’s most closely watched responses to that gap, combining mobile platforms, alternative credit assessment and ecosystem partnerships to reach customers traditional banking models have struggled to serve. Yet, digital banks across the region are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that their models can scale sustainably while maintaining regulatory trust and customer confidence.
For Pei-Si Lai, Group Chief Executive Officer of GXS Bank, leadership in this phase requires something different from the start-up energy that defined the early years.
“One thing that has amplified as we move from our build phase to having three operational digital banks across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore is ensuring that we are always moving as one team,” she says.
GXS Bank now brings together teams across multiple countries, functions and professional backgrounds. As the organisation grows, Lai believes leadership must focus on clarity—ensuring that employees understand not only what the bank is building, but why.
“As Group CEO, it is my responsibility to ensure that our people are clear about our strategic priorities, what problems we want to solve for the customers and why we want to do so,” she says. “Only then can our teams come together effectively to determine how we can improve the banking experience for our customers.”
At the same time, digital banks must guard against becoming weighed down by the very processes they once set out to disrupt. “As a digital bank group, we are built for agility, nimble and quick iterations,” Lai says. “This also means that we must be brave to make changes, even if it means a reset to avoid falling into the trappings of inefficient legacy systems and processes.”
Purpose before growth
Digital banking in Southeast Asia is entering a more competitive phase. New entrants continue to emerge, while incumbent banks accelerate their own digital investments.
For Lai, long-term success depends less on who launches fastest and more on whether institutions remain anchored in a clear purpose.
“For most of our people, the reason why they decided to join a young digital bank is because we have a very clear purpose at GXS Group,” she says. “We want to empower our communities across Southeast Asia as they live, work and pursue their dreams.”
That purpose shapes the questions the bank asks before launching any product or feature. “We start by asking: does this make banking better for our customers and does this solve an unmet need for them?” Lai explains.
From there, GXS Bank evaluates how its capabilities, including technology, artificial intelligence and credit innovation, can address those needs, supported by the wider ecosystem built around its shareholders, Grab and Singtel.
“Our primary goal is to deliver a banking experience, products and features that make sense for our customers,” she says. “Business growth is a by-product of achieving that goal.”
Early decisions that accelerated scale
Several early strategic decisions helped GXS Bank expand quickly across Southeast Asia. A significant move was investing in regionalised technology infrastructure rather than building separate systems for each market. “To ensure that consumers across the region can benefit from better banking, we invested heavily in regionalising our technology and product stacks,” Lai says.
Today, the GXS Group serves more than three million customers across Southeast Asia through its digital banking platforms in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The bank’s savings product illustrates that approach. Launched in Singapore in 2022, the GXS Savings Account introduced features such as daily interest crediting, no lock-in period and no minimum balance requirement. The product also introduced “Saving Pockets, sub-accounts within the main savings account designed to help customers manage multiple financial goals without juggling several bank accounts.”
“With many bank customers in Singapore holding more than one savings account as they prefer to separate their savings from their transactions, we built in a feature called Saving Pockets,” Lai explains.
The shared product architecture also accelerated the launch of GXBank in Malaysia. By leveraging the existing technology build rather than starting from scratch, the Malaysian subsidiary was able to become the country’s first operational digital bank.
The bank’s ecosystem partnerships have also been central to its strategy. “With the backing of Grab and Singtel, we are able to leverage their resources and regional network to achieve operational efficiency and create financial products that are informed by ecosystem data insights,” Lai says.
This data advantage has been particularly important in expanding access to credit. “The power of our ecosystem has also been instrumental in enabling us to improve financial inclusion and credit access, especially for non-salaried workers and small businesses who may not meet the credit history required by incumbent banks,” she says.
By combining ecosystem data with traditional credit bureau information, GXS can assess creditworthiness with a broader set of signals. “More importantly, we do not close the door on them simply because they do not have or have a thin credit history,” Lai adds.
Responsible innovation in credit
The use of alternative data in lending has raised questions across the industry about fairness, transparency and regulatory oversight. For Lai, customer trust remains the central principle. “Our customers trust us with their savings and look to us for financial support to meet their aspirations and ambitions,” she says. “Their trust is something we do not take lightly.”
That philosophy shapes the bank’s product design. For example, many personal loans charge fees when customers repay their debt early. “We believe that good financial habits should be encouraged and that is why we do not charge an early repayment fee for our personal loan products,” Lai says.
Behind the scenes, GXS has built a risk culture intended to support innovation while maintaining regulatory discipline. “We have in place robust risk and compliance processes and frameworks to ensure that we are meeting our regulatory requirements and guide the way we use data and technology at the Bank,” she explains.
As generative AI gained traction across the industry, the bank also introduced internal guidelines for responsible use. “We put together a framework within the Bank on the ethical use of Gen AI to guide our initiatives,” Lai says. The bank has since joined Project Mindforge, a Monetary Authority of Singapore industry taskforce focused on responsible AI in banking.
Growth with discipline
As digital banks mature, the conversation inevitably shifts to profitability. Investors and regulators increasingly expect institutions to demonstrate that rapid growth can translate into sustainable returns. For Lai, the two objectives are not in conflict.
“As a Bank, we have a responsibility to grow steadily and sustainably so that we can serve our customers through the years,” she says. “Growth and profitability are not mutually exclusive.”
The key, she argues, lies in using technology strategically while maintaining a clear focus on customer needs. “The balance is in ensuring that we continue to use technology intelligently to deliver relevant products and services that solve real customers’ needs and leverage our ecosystem resources to keep banking affordable for them,” Lai says.
The results are beginning to show. In Singapore, where the population is heavily banked, GXS has still managed to expand rapidly. “Our revenue doubled year on year and our loan book more than tripled from 2024 to 2025,” she notes.
Leadership and culture at scale
For many fast-growing organisations, culture becomes harder to sustain as teams expand. Lai believes leadership behaviour is the decisive factor. At GXS Bank, the organisation centres its culture on four core values: stay curious, be brave, build with heart and own the mission. “But these are just words if we do not live them out in our day-to-day work,” Lai says.
She argues that authenticity matters more than slogans. “I believe that authentic leadership is an active practice of ‘doing’, not just ‘saying’. Very often, organisational culture falls by the wayside when employees see that their leaders do not walk the talk.”
That includes inviting feedback—even when it challenges leadership. “When I fall short, I look to my team to call me out on it,” she says. “That is in fact what being brave means to us—to be brave to speak up and to be brave to take in feedback and make a change.”
Problem-solving, she adds, should also be collective rather than hierarchical. “If there is a problem to be fixed, I do not believe in apportioning blame,” Lai says. “What I do expect is that everyone, regardless of seniority, roll up their sleeves and work together to solve the problem.”
The same philosophy extends to leadership advocacy, ensuring every voice is heard. “One way that I do this is by making sure that everyone at the table has the opportunity to speak,” she says.
“When our people are heard and know they are valued, they are also more motivated to raise their hand to lead and drive change.”
Purpose as a foundation for leadership
For Lai, leadership, particularly for women shaping the future of finance, begins with clarity of purpose. In an industry still working toward greater gender representation at senior levels, she believes authenticity matters more than conforming to a single model of leadership.
“Authentic leadership does not have to look the same for everyone,” she says. “But it starts from the same root—your purpose.”
That sense of purpose, she argues, sustains leaders through the pressures of building organisations, guiding teams and making difficult decisions. In sectors such as digital banking, where institutions are still defining their long-term models, it also provides the anchor that keeps strategy and culture aligned.
For Lai, the idea of “Give to Gain, the theme of this year’s International Women’s Month, reflects the importance of investing in others while building organisations that outlast individual leadership.
“That purpose, and the passion you have for it, is what will keep you going,” she says. “It shapes the way you lead your teams and drive your organisation culture.”
