Instabank had a clear vision to deliver the best user experience in the market and simplify banking services. With a brand-led growth and competence strategy as a solid foundation, Instabank is now well established in the Nordics as an innovative and customer-focused digital consumer finance bank.
Instabank was established as a digital bank in the fall of 2016, with operations targeted at the Nordic markets. They offer banking accounts, credit cards, loans, and insurance. After less than four years of operation, the bank has more than 50.000 active customers. Instabank was successfully acquired by Lunar in April of 2022 at a share price of 3.75NOK / share.
Brand strategy
Identity and design
Market entry and launch
Growth strategy
Positioning strategy
Customer analysis journey
Mobile bank app design
Annual strategy
Trends and future analysis
Creating a bank
Building a bank from the ground up is no easy task, especially in a saturated market during a time when a new phenomenon we now commonly define as“Fintech” was an up-and-coming concept. The founders of Instabank had a clear challenge for The Brand Project: helping them create a solid foundation for a new, innovative and disruptive consumer bank that embraces change and sets the standard for simplicity, innovation, and customer-driven products and solutions.
Exploring the landscape
Customers have a general distrust of financial providers. Insight shows this distrust is paired with bad customer journeys, complex products, and relatively weak levels of customer service. The idea of simplicity seemed lost in an industry that was based on legacy systems and a relatively old model of customer contact and customer service in general.
The public landscape is one of regulation and boundaries. It aimed at controlling niche players, reducing the power of the larger banks, and allowing technology and transparency to create platforms for better decision-making and de-risking the industry and its consumers.
Focus on experience & position
Together with the founders, we created a holistic core strategy for the bank and defined an aspired positioning as a customer-focused Fintech player in a highly competitive market. The name Instabank was established and the identity rolled out. Innovation practices, strategic partnerships, and a core(brand-led) growth & competence strategy enabled the startup to become the fastest-growing new bank in the country.
The Brand Project continuouslyworks with the management team on strategic projects within business development, product development, prototyping, and brand-led transformations to enhance and develop Instabank as the leading next-generation consumer bank.
The value created
Since its establishment in 2016, Instabank had experienced year-on-year growth in all markets. Three years later, the bank was an established provider of financial services in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. By 2020 Instabank was for the first time bigger abroad than at home. In the early months of 2022, Instabank was acquired for 1.3Bkr by the Danish digital bank Lunar.
This concludes the impressive brand-led growth journey of the bank, as the Instabank brand will fully integrate into Lunar within 2022. The Brand Project is proud to have been an integral part of this brand story – from the very beginning, to its successful end.
