Luvleen Sidhu, 34 Co-founder and CEO, BankMobile In the crowded field of financial startups, Luvleen Sidhu has stood out far from the pack since she launched BankMobile, a financial institution used by 1.1 million college students in the U.S. Last year her five-year-old startup become the backbone for T-Mobile’s banking app. BankMobile generated $85 million in revenue in 2019 and became profitable in the second half of the year. It holds $540 million in deposits. Few Silicon Valley–backed banking startups have broken through like this.  Sidhu doesn’t come from Silicon Valley, but from Reading, Pa. That’s where her father ran the local bank and, eventually, many others. Her parents wanted her to become a doctor; they were disappointed when she chose finance.  Lehman Brothers went bankrupt the...

Luvleen Sidhu Co-founder and chief executive officer, BankMobile Luvleen Sidhu co-founded BankMobile with a fully digital customer experience and multiple-partner “bank-as-a-service” distribution model. It has since become one of America’s largest and fastest-growing mobile-first banks. BankMobile’s disruptive business model earned recognition from LendIt Fintech, which named BankMobile the Most Innovative Bank in 2019. Sidhu was named Fintech Woman of the Year in 2019. She made her case for changing the way banks do business in a book she co-authored, Why Can’t Banks Be as Easy as Uber? The book landed her among Amazon’s top 100 authors in business and money within 24 hours of its publication. Through the BankMobile Foundation, Sidhu funds budding entrepreneurs and organizations promoting financial literacy. ...

Where Luvleen Sidhu is taking BankMobile now that she’s in charge Luvleen Sidhu, recently named CEO of BankMobile, one of the country’s first digital banks, says she is expanding it from a service for college students to a mobile bank that serves multiple segments. Along the way, she plans to pursue more banking-as-a-service partnerships as part of a cost-conscious growth strategy. BankMobile, the digital-only division of Customers Bank in Wyomissing, Pa., serves students at nearly 800 college campuses in the United States. It offers a digital checking account as a convenient place to store refunds of unused financial aid and other deposits. But other consumers are using products created by the digital bank, founded in 2014, without even realizing it. BankMobile is the white-label...

Luvleen Sidhu is co-founder, president and chief strategy officer for BankMobile. Fintechs frequently join forces with financial institutions to strategically scale products and services. These partnerships can create innovation opportunities in traditional finance. In a What’s Going on in Banking study, 53% of C-level executives at midsize banks and credit unions believed fintech partnerships would be important in 2019. Thanks to advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud computing, banks can get the help they need to improve their menu of products while creating a frictionless experience for customers. Although these partnerships often make sense, they’re not perfect. Problems may arise from failing to properly follow financial regulations. And rapid movements in tech have yet to be covered by certain regulations.  Discover How Digital Security...