By Nabila Khalid
Vice President & Head of Brand and Communication, Prime Bank PLC
I am not a banker. I am a Brand person. And that is exactly why Bangladesh’s digital banking race fascinates me.
Bangladesh Bank has given initial approval to five digital-bank ventures.
Naturally, much of the conversation is about who will win.
I find myself asking a slightly different question:
When almost every bank becomes digital, what exactly will make one bank meaningfully different from another?
Because these five aren’t entering an empty market.
They are entering a Bangladesh where bKash, Nagad and Rocket have already normalised managing money through a phone for millions of people.
They are entering a market where MFS has a long tail of smaller players that proves something important:
A licence gives you permission to compete. It does not give consumers a reason to choose you.
And they are entering a market where conventional banks aren’t exactly sitting around waiting to become obsolete.
Banking apps have become significantly more capable. Bangladesh had around 2.27 crore internet-banking customers by June 2026, and internet-banking transactions that month were worth roughly Tk 1.84 lakh crore.
So the distinction between a digital bank and a bank that is digital is going to become increasingly blurry.
Meanwhile, the incoming players bring another advantage: ecosystems.
bKash brings an established financial-services habit and distribution ecosystem. Boost has Robi-Axiata behind it. Nova brings together VEON/Banglalink and Square. DK brings digital-banking experience from Bhutan, while Kori comes from a technology background.
So I don’t think the next battle is simply:
Digital Bank vs Traditional Bank.
I think it becomes:
Ecosystem vs Ecosystem.
And THIS is where I think the role of Brand in banking needs a serious rethink.
For too long, Brand can easily become the department that receives something after most of the important decisions have already been made.
Business develops a product. Product decides the features. Technology builds it. Someone decides the commercial target.
Then Brand receives a brief:
“Now communicate it.”
That model will become increasingly ineffective.
Because when everyone has an app, instant transfers, cards, deposits, loans, rewards, QR payments and increasingly similar digital functionality, communication cannot manufacture meaningful differentiation after the fact.
Brand needs a seat much further upstream.
Not to tell Risk how to manage risk.
Not to tell Technology how to build technology.
And certainly not to pretend Brand knows banking better than bankers.
But Brand should be the function constantly asking:
Why would the customer care?
That sounds like a communication question.
It isn’t.
It’s a business question.
And perhaps that is where the modern banking Brand function needs to evolve.
Brand should become the custodian of customer meaning.
Product knows what we built.
Technology knows how it works.
Business knows what we need to sell.
Data knows what customers are doing.
Service knows what customers are complaining about.
Brand should connect those dots and understand what all of it means to the customer.
That requires Brand teams to understand far more than campaigns.
We need to understand customer journeys, digital behaviour, transaction patterns, complaints, product adoption, churn, segment behaviour and the moments where customers simply give up.
And then Brand has to bring those insights back into the organisation.
Because sometimes the problem isn’t:
“How do we communicate this product better?”
Sometimes the correct Brand response should be:
“I don’t think customers understand why they need this product at all.”
Or:
“We’re promising simplicity, but the journey isn’t simple.”
Or even:
“Our competitors can copy this feature in six months. What are we actually building ownership of?”
That is a very different Brand department.
It also changes what Brand should measure.
Of course awareness matters.
Reach matters.
Engagement matters.
But if I am branding a banking proposition, I increasingly want to know:
Did awareness become consideration?
Did consideration become acquisition?
Did acquisition become activation?
Did customers actually use what we advertised?
Did they come back?
Did they deepen their relationship with us?
And ultimately:
Did Brand create preference, or did we simply create visibility?
Because visibility will become increasingly expensive while functional differentiation becomes increasingly temporary.
Technology gets copied.
Features get copied.
Rates get matched.
Offers get countered.
Even UX advantages eventually get replicated.
What is much harder to replicate is a clearly owned position in people’s minds, reinforced consistently by their actual experience.
And this becomes particularly important in Bangladesh because the banking industry’s transformation is happening alongside a much bigger issue: trust.
Reported non-performing loans reached around Tk 6.07 lakh crore at the end of June 2026, equivalent to 32.78% of total loans.
In that environment, Brand cannot treat trust as a word in a tagline.
Trust has to become an operating principle.
If we promise simplicity, onboarding has to be simple.
If we promise digital convenience, a customer shouldn’t routinely need to visit a branch to resolve a digital problem.
If we promise inclusion, our products and journeys need to work beyond affluent urban customers.
If we promise customer-centricity, complaint resolution is part of Brand.
If we promise security, how we communicate when something goes wrong is part of Brand.
Suddenly, Brand Experience and Customer Experience cannot live on opposite sides of the organisation.
And neither should physical and digital banking.
I don’t necessarily see branches disappearing.
I see their purpose changing.
As routine transactions move to phones, branches can become less about transactions and more about relationships, advice, complex financial decisions, SME engagement, wealth management and reassurance.
The app becomes the transaction infrastructure. The branch increasingly becomes trust infrastructure. And Brand has to make both feel like the same institution.
That, to me, is the fascinating part of what is coming.
Bangladesh’s banking future will certainly be more digital.
But digital itself will eventually stop being a positioning.
When everyone is digital, saying “we are digital” becomes a little like saying “we have ATMs.”
It is expected.
The real questions become:
Who understands me? Who makes my financial life easier? Who gives me a reason to stay? Who do I trust with more of my financial life?
And therefore I think the biggest transformation ahead isn’t only for banks.
It is for those of us who build their brands.
The Brand team of the future cannot simply be the storyteller of the bank.
It has to help the bank decide what story is worth building in the first place — and then make sure the organisation actually delivers it.
Because in the next era of banking, the experience will be the communication.
And Brand’s job will be to make sure the promise and the experience finally become the same thing.
