One Zero founder and owner Amnon Shashua has told "The Financial Times" (FT) that the Israeli digital bank is preparing to expand its activities outside of Israel and will apply for a license in Italy by the end of 2023.
"The plan is to be the first pure play pan-European digital private bank for the mass affluent," he said, referring to clients that One Zero characterizes as having disposable assets of between $50,000 and $500,000.
The FT reports that One Zero has acquired 60,000 customers since its launch in Israel last summer and has 1,000 clients per relationship manager, and is planning to reach 2,000 by the end of the year. Shashua adds that One Zero's long-term target is to reach 10,000 clients per relationship manager.
Ultimately One Zero wants to deploy an AI chatbot to field customer questions, even sophisticated questions, and free up bankers' time for other tasks.
Shashua told the "FT," "If people don’t get answers, they feel like they are not being served, so you need to handle this either through human bankers or automation," he said. "The rise of language models . . . is ripe to create this automation."
Asked whether he would consider selling One Zero, which was valued at $385 million when it raised $250 million in February, Shashua told the FT that it is "too early to talk about M&A. My interest is technology. Once the technology is done - I’m not a banker."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 7, 2023.
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