SUPERBANK A Bank Whose Loan Book Runs on Shareholder Cash, Not Deposits

Four Shareholders, One Rebrand, Not Yet a Deposit Franchise

PT Super Bank Indonesia is the product of a multi-year consortium takeover of a small conventional lender: PT Bank Fama International, founded in Bandung in 1993, became part of Emtek Group at the end of 2021, was joined by Grab and Singtel in early 2022, and by KakaoBank in 2023 - the four together now own effectively the entire bank (Emtek's PT Elang Media Visitama at 34.75%, Grab's PT Kudo Teknologi Indonesia at 21.40%, Singtel Alpha Investment Pte. Ltd. at 19.02%, KakaoBank Corp. at 10.05%, plus smaller holders including Grab-linked A5-DB Holdings Pte. Ltd. at 7.13%). 2023 was the year the rebrand actually went live: Superbank's own consumer app launched on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in the fourth quarter of 2023, the moment this filing - and this blog's coverage of the company - begins. There is no independently traded equity or debt; this exists purely because Indonesian banking regulation (OJK's transparency and publication rules) requires every licensed bank, public or private, to publish quarterly financial statements.

The bet is the familiar super-app-adjacent digital-bank playbook: use a consortium of ecosystem partners (ride-hailing/delivery, telco, media, and a Korean digital-bank operator) to acquire customers cheaply, gather deposits through the app, and lend that money back out. Superbank's FY2023 filing (signed by the bank's directors in Jakarta on March 28, 2024) shows a bank that is scaling the lending side of that loop fast - loans more than tripled - while the deposit side is still tiny relative to it. The gap between the two isn't a mystery: it's being filled by fresh shareholder capital, not by the deposit franchise the bank's own marketing describes.

The Prescription

Superbank has already proven it can originate credit at scale through partners rather than branches: gross loans grew 211.4% in a single year, split between Rp1,842 billion of "Executing" loans (bilateral funding provided directly to financing companies) and Rp619 billion of "Channeling" loans (delegated origination through fintech platforms, each secured by fiduciary-assigned receivables rather than direct collateral). The move that compounds from here is building the retail deposit franchise fast enough to actually fund that lending machine - right now the bank is proving it can lend, not that it can gather the cheap money a digital bank is supposed to be built on.

What it should stop doing: letting a loan-to-deposit ratio^» of 316.89% - up from an already-unusual 252.96% a year earlier - stand as the funding structure of record. A conventional bank funds new loans mostly from new deposits; Superbank funded most of 2023's loan growth from paid-in capital and additional paid-in capital, which together rose by more than Rp1.2 trillion during the year while third-party deposits added only about Rp551 billion. A bank that needs a new capital round every time it wants to grow its loan book hasn't yet built the thing that makes a deposit-taking bank valuable in the first place.

Key Financial Metrics

FY 2023 vs. FY 2022 (P&L, twelve months ended December 31), and Dec 2023 vs. Dec 2022 (balance sheet) - bank-only ("Individual")

FX: IDR 15,425 = USD 1 (December 29, 2023 close, applied throughout for consistency).

Metric	FY 2023 (IDR)	FY 2023 (USD)	FY 2022 (IDR)	YoY
Net Interest Income ("Net Revenue" equivalent)	Rp301,104M	~$19.5M	Rp151,742M	✅ +98.4%
Non-interest operating income (expense), net	Rp(795,211)M	~-$51.6M	Rp(351,302)M	⚠️ cost widened 126.4%
Operating Loss	Rp(494,107)M	~-$32.0M	Rp(199,560)M	⚠️ loss widened 147.6%
Net Loss	Rp(385,101)M	~-$25.0M	Rp(155,187)M	⚠️ loss widened 148.1%

Balance sheet metric	Dec 2023 (IDR)	Dec 2023 (USD)	Dec 2022 (IDR)	Change
Total Assets	Rp5,556,074M	~$360.2M	Rp3,995,632M	✅ +39.1%
Loans (Kredit yang diberikan, gross)	Rp2,920,823M	~$189.4M	Rp938,044M	✅ +211.4%
Total Deposits (Giro + Tabungan + Deposito)	Rp921,706M	~$59.8M	Rp370,828M	✅ +148.6%
Total Liabilities	Rp1,187,736M	~$77.0M	Rp450,379M	➖ +163.7%
Total Equity	Rp4,368,338M	~$283.3M	Rp3,545,253M	✅ +23.2%

Net Interest Income stands in for "Net Revenue" per this blog's bank convention; Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow don't meaningfully apply to a deposit-taking bank and are omitted, consistent with prior bank coverage on this site. Operating Loss is the bank's own disclosed "Laba (Rugi) Operasional" line. Free cash flow and a standalone total-cash figure aren't available - this is the bare OJK quarterly-publication format, with no accompanying cash flow statement in the quarterly filing itself (the annual report used for footnote detail below doesn't restate this either, since Indonesian bank annual reports present the same statements as the quarterly publication plus notes).

Net interest income nearly doubled, and the net loss still widened 148% - the entire margin gain, and then some, was consumed by an operating cost base that's scaling even faster than the lending business generating it.

Key Operational Metrics

These metrics answer three questions: is the bank funded well, is the loan book safe, and is the cost base under control.

Funding & Liquidity

• Loan-to-deposit ratio (LDR^»): 316.89% (Dec 2023), up from 252.96% (Dec 2022) - loans outweigh deposits more than three-to-one, a funding structure with essentially no precedent among conventional banks (see Beyond the Usual below).

Credit Quality

• NPL^» ratio - gross: 3.80% (Dec 2023), down from 5.44% (Dec 2022).
• NPL ratio - net: 1.06% (Dec 2023), down from 2.08% (Dec 2022) - genuine improvement, not solely a provisioning effect: the loan-loss reserve (CKPN) to earning assets ratio was 5.46% (Dec 2023) versus 5.17% (Dec 2022), a much smaller move than the NPL improvement itself.
• CAR^» / KPMM (capital adequacy): 185.63% (Dec 2023), down from 253.62% (Dec 2022) - falling only because risk-weighted assets are growing fast off a small base; even at this lower level it's roughly 18x the 10% regulatory minimum for this risk profile.

Profitability & Efficiency

• NIM^»: 7.18% (FY 2023), up from 4.77% (FY 2022) - a healthy margin by conventional-bank standards, though far below the 18-19%+ margins reported by SeaBank, a peer digital lender leaning into much higher-yield micro-lending; Superbank's book (bilateral financing-company loans and fintech channeling) is priced closer to conventional wholesale/SME lending.
• ROA: -10.86% (Dec 2023), down from -5.72% (Dec 2022).
• ROE: -10.70% (Dec 2023), down from -5.53% (Dec 2022) - both profitability ratios are negative and getting worse, the direct arithmetic result of a net loss that more than doubled year-on-year on an asset and equity base that "only" grew 39% and 23% respectively.
• BOPO^»: 239.67% (Dec 2023), up from 208.58% (Dec 2022) - operating expenses run more than twice operating income by this Indonesian regulatory formula, and the ratio is getting worse, not better.
• Cost-to-Income Ratio^» (CIR): 209.33% (Dec 2023), up from 125.14% (Dec 2022).

Not available at bank-only level in this quarterly filing: a segment or product-level P&L breakdown (the loan-type split above comes from the annual report's footnotes, not the quarterly statement itself), transacting-user or merchant counts, and any deposit-cost (funding rate) disclosure.

Beyond the Usual

A loan-to-deposit ratio above 300% means shareholders, not depositors, are funding the loan book

Superbank's own press release frames this quarter's story around deposit growth - "third-party deposits increased 149%... this indicates that transformation... has been well-received by the public." That's true as a percentage, but the absolute numbers tell a different story: deposits grew by about Rp551 billion in 2023 while gross loans grew by about Rp1,983 billion - a gap of roughly Rp1.4 trillion that customer deposits didn't come close to covering. Paid-in capital and additional paid-in capital together rose by more than Rp1.2 trillion over the same year (largely from KakaoBank's 2023 entry as a shareholder), which is where the actual funding for loan growth came from. A loan-to-deposit ratio of 316.89% - triple the level a conventional bank would ever run - means Superbank in its first year as a rebranded digital bank isn't yet demonstrating the "cheap deposits fund profitable lending" flywheel every digital-bank thesis depends on; it's demonstrating that its shareholders are willing to keep writing checks.

The operating cost base grew faster than the margin it's meant to support

Non-interest operating expense (net of the small non-interest income line) widened 126.4% year-on-year against net interest income growth of "only" 98.4% - the reverse of what a maturing bank should show. Professional fees alone rose from Rp53.8 billion to Rp127.3 billion (+136.6%), and communications expense rose from Rp6.5 billion to Rp51.1 billion (+682.6%), consistent with the digital-app buildout and launch marketing that culminated in the Q4 2023 app release. This is a defensible cost curve for a bank mid-transformation - but it's also exactly the kind of spending that needs to start growing slower than revenue soon, or the BOPO^» ratio above 200% becomes a permanent feature rather than a launch-year anomaly.

Related-party funding and cost exposure both grew sharply from a near-zero base

Interest expense paid to related parties (shareholders and their affiliates) rose from just 0.002% of total interest expense in 2022 to 29.44% in 2023, and general and administrative expense paid to related parties rose from 12.23% to 36.82% of the total G&A base over the same year. Related-party depositors named in the filing include PT Bukalapak.com Tbk, PT Grab Teknologi Indonesia, and PT Bumi Cakrawala; related-party G&A payments go to shareholders including PT Elang Media Visitama (Emtek), PT Kudo Teknologi Indonesia (Grab), Singtel Alpha Investment Pte. Ltd., and A5-DB Holdings Pte. Ltd. None of this is improper - Indonesian disclosure rules exist precisely so this can be tracked - but a bank this early in its life becoming this dependent on its own shareholders for both funding and costs is worth watching as the ownership base (and its incentives) evolve.

Four separate fintech "Channeling" partnerships, each capped and time-boxed

Superbank's Channeling loan book runs through individually negotiated one-year agreements with named fintech platforms, each with its own funding cap: PT Berdayakan Usaha Indonesia ("Batumbu," Rp300 billion, September 2022-September 2023), PT Lunnaria Annua Teknologi ("Koinworks," Rp100 billion, December 2022-December 2023), PT Amartha Mikro Fintek ("Amartha," Rp1,000 billion, July 2023-July 2024), and PT Indonesia Fintopia Technology ("Easycash," Rp1,000 billion, October 2023-October 2024) - a combined Rp2.4 trillion of committed capacity across four partners, each secured by fiduciary-assigned loan receivables rather than direct collateral. This is the delegated-origination model behind the "Channeling" line in the loan-type breakdown above, and it means Superbank's actual credit exposure is spread across, and dependent on, the underwriting quality of four separate third-party platforms rather than the bank's own credit process.

A legacy write-off recovery-sharing deal with Bank Fama's former shareholders is still running

A December 2021 agreement with PT Bank Fama International's former shareholders - struck before the Emtek/Grab/Singtel/KakaoBank consortium fully took over - entitles those former owners to 100% of any recoveries on loans written off before December 31, 2021 collected during 2022, and a 70/30 split in the former shareholders' favor on any recoveries collected from December 22, 2021 through December 22, 2026. It's a small, contained arrangement, but a five-year tail obligation to a bank's former owners is an unusual thing to still be running through the books of what's now marketed as a from-scratch digital bank.

A new long-term incentive plan appeared for the first time in 2023

Superbank recognized Rp18.8 billion of long-term incentive plan (LTIP) expense in 2023, against zero in 2022 - the first year this cost line existed. It sits inside personnel expense alongside a near-tripling of bonus/THR payments (Rp29.8 billion to Rp119.8 billion) and salaries roughly 2.75x higher (Rp91.0 billion to Rp250.6 billion), consistent with a bank rapidly building out a team ahead of its digital launch, but a real addition to the fixed-cost base referenced in the operating-cost finding above.

Shareholders were already funding the next capital round before this report was even published

A subsequent-events note discloses that in February 2024 - after the December 2023 balance sheet date but before this report's March 2024 signing - shareholders A5-DB Holdings Pte. Ltd. and Singtel Alpha Investment Pte. Ltd. paid in advance Rp600.6 billion and Rp485.4 billion respectively toward a planned share capital increase, still in process as of the signing date. Combined with the Rp1.2 trillion of paid-in capital already added during 2023 itself, this confirms the pattern in the loan-to-deposit finding above: shareholder capital, arriving in advance of the formal paperwork, is the mechanism actually funding this bank's growth.

Target Valuation Range

No numeric valuation range is computable for Superbank - there is no independently traded equity or debt for this entity to value.

Superbank has no public shareholders and no listed stock or bond issuance: Emtek (via PT Elang Media Visitama), Grab (via PT Kudo Teknologi Indonesia), Singtel Alpha Investment Pte. Ltd., KakaoBank Corp., and a handful of smaller holders are its only shareholders, and none has ever floated any portion of the bank on a public market. Grab itself trades on Nasdaq (ticker GRAB) and Singtel trades on the Singapore Exchange, but both prices reflect entire multi-line-of-business groups, not this one Indonesian banking subsidiary's standalone economics - folding a group-level multiple back onto Superbank would misrepresent both.

A loan book that more than tripled in a single year looks like a growth story until the funding side is checked: Superbank in its first year as a live digital bank is proving it can originate credit through partners, not that it has yet built the cheap-deposit engine every digital-bank thesis is supposed to run on.

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