Boardroom Tea: Why MariBank is silently disrupting digital banking
Years ago, a soft-spoken banker sent me a message. There was no PR handler, no press kit, no pitch for an interview. Just Siew Ghee Kung Lim, or simply SG, then running a little-known rural bank called SeaBank.
What I remember most is how little he talked. He did, however, ask a lot of questions, and then waited intently for answers. I left the conversation thinking he was very interesting, but (I’ll confess) I wasn’t thinking much about his bank.
Now I realize that I underestimated the quiet one.
SeaBank is now MariBank, and in July the Bangko Sentral made it the country’s seventh licensed digital bank. Forbes and Statista ranked it among the World’s Best Banks in 2026.
To my knowledge: no celebrity endorser, no EDSA billboard blitz. Not even. Press conference? Growth came from somewhere else.
I scoured Reddit and other social media platforms to find out why people switch and I read about free transfers (when it wasn’t yet the norm) and interest that shows up every single day, a few pesos at a time.
These days, SG writes on LinkedIn the way he spoke to me: more questions than answers, more confessions than claims. Again, fascinating.
He admits the bank pulled a P1,000 cashback promo in its first month because it cost too much, and that customers complained even after being told. He describes asking a financial-literacy community administrator what he thought of MariBank, then staying quiet while the man answered. Before launching a card that switches between debit and credit, his team interviewed users of rival banks in Singapore and Hong Kong. On a BSP approval they applied for and turned out not to need, he simply shrugs: “Hindsight is 20/20.”
The quiet one, it turns out, was taking notes.
Simple, Reliable and Rewarding is what SG says MariBank set out to be. “Simple”, the customers agree. “Rewarding” the daily interest takes care of. “Reliable” is the word the bank is still being tested on.
Let me be fair. No bank in this country is immune to fraud. GCash had its own phishing scare in 2023, and big banks field the same complaints, only with longer queues and a branch to shout at.
But a digital bank has no branch to absorb anger. The app is the branch, and the comment section is the waiting room. When the investigation goes silent, the silence happens in public.
“What would you like us to build next?”
That is how SG closed his post on MariBank’s revamped referral program. He said it is the time of year when the bank plans its roadmap, and asked customers what they want. A bank president asking that in public, in November, with the comments open. Brave, or very confident. Probably both.
The customers answered, and their wish list reads like a financial educator’s syllabus.
One commenter asked for a secured credit card for Filipinos building or rebuilding their credit history. She pointed out that many of us learned how credit scores work only after it was too late. Another asked for separate pockets so savings don’t sit mixed with spending money. Another wanted prizes for hitting savings milestones, and a “saving buddy” to keep each other honest. One asked for a savings rate closer to 8 percent. On the App Store, loyal users keep asking why they haven’t been offered a credit card, and what it takes to get one.
Years after that first conversation, SG is still asking more than he tells. The difference is that more people are answering now, around seven million, based on my last count. No one can deny that a few of them are angry. And I think that is when a bank CEO should listen most.
Listening built MariBank. Can it keep listening at seven million customers the way it did at seven hundred?