OM Bank
OM Bank X Rival: Building a Bank That Operates as Differently as it Promises
Building a Bank That Operates as Differently as it Promises
The Tension
South Africa’s banking category is dominated by deeply entrenched incumbents. Legacy systems, opaque fee structures, and standardized customer relationships that continue to prioritize institutional stability over individual financial well-being.
OM Bank entered this landscape with a radically different ambition: to become a world-class, app-first bank built around transparency, financial stability, and customer control. Backed by Old Mutual, the largest financial services provider in Africa, OM Bank had the scale to compete, but not the luxury of behaving like an incumbent.
The Belief
Through early strategy and positioning work, it became clear that a genuinely customer-centric bank couldn’t be built on legacy infrastructure. If OM Bank wanted to offer a fundamentally different relationship with customers, the systems behind the bank had to be just as progressive as the product itself.
That required rejecting default technology stacks and conventional agency models in favor of a purpose-built, future-ready foundation. It was a more demanding way to build, but it was the only one that supported the kind of bank OM Bank set out to create.
How We Challenged It
Rather than retrofitting old tools, Rival embedded deeply and helped OM Bank design its marketing engine from scratch.
We advised on the procurement and implementation of a best-in-class MarTech and data ecosystem, including specialist platforms such as mParticle (now mParticle by Rokt) and Braze. This enabled advanced customer data management, segmentation, analytics, and real-time marketing automation, capabilities rarely implemented successfully in the South African financial sector.
As the relationship evolved, Rival was awarded the contract to in-house OM Bank’s performance marketing capability. Instead of simply running media, we operated the function while simultaneously training, hiring, and enabling OM Bank’s internal team to eventually own it themselves. The goal was never dependency. It was capability.
Making It Real
OM Bank is an app-first product, and Rival’s performance strategy was designed to reflect that reality.
Because Rival helped design the underlying technology stack, performance media isn’t bolted on after the fact. It is embedded into the product ecosystem itself, enabling continuous optimization, smarter targeting, and faster learning once OM Bank goes live.
What Changed
OM Bank now has something rare in financial services: a fully operational, challenger-grade machine built to evolve. By embedding deeply, rejecting legacy conventions, and committing to long-term capability building, Rival hasn’t just helped OM Bank prepare to launch. We’ve helped them build the bank they set out to be.
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