A Digital Bank Still Spending Its Way to Scale
PT Super Bank Indonesia - Superbank - is the Indonesian digital-banking arm of a four-way consortium: Emtek Group's PT Elang Media Visitama (31.27% as of this filing), Singtel Alpha Investments Pte. Ltd. (20.56%), Grab's Indonesian holding vehicle PT Kudo Teknologi Indonesia (19.26%), A5-DB Holdings Pte. Ltd. (11.58%, itself a Grab-linked entity), and South Korea's KakaoBank Corp. (10.00%, added as a shareholder in 2023). The bank itself is not new: it began life in 1993 as PT Bank Fama International, a small conventional Bandung-based lender that Emtek acquired in 2021, then rebranded and refocused as Superbank once Grab and Singtel joined the consortium in early 2022. This is Superbank's filing for the period ended September 30, 2024 (published by the bank's directors on October 31, 2024) - published purely because Indonesian banking regulation (OJK's transparency and publication rules for commercial banks) requires every licensed bank to disclose its quarterly financial position, not because Superbank has any independently traded equity or debt.
The economic bet is the same one every consortium-backed digital bank in Indonesia is running: use a well-known ecosystem partner's existing user base (here, Grab's ride-hailing/delivery app and Emtek's media/e-commerce reach) to acquire depositors and borrowers cheaply, then scale a loan book fast enough to outrun the fixed cost of building banking infrastructure from scratch. Nine months into 2024, Superbank's own numbers show the acquisition side working - deposits up 328% year-on-year to Rp3.2 trillion, loans up 189% to Rp4.9 trillion, total assets up 77% to Rp9.7 trillion - and net interest income doubling to Rp399.0 billion. What the bank's own press release doesn't say, in either its Indonesian or English version, is that none of that growth has yet turned into a smaller loss: nine-month net loss actually widened from Rp254.7 billion to Rp285.7 billion.
The Prescription
Superbank has already proven the hard part of the digital-bank playbook: it can originate a loan book at genuinely attractive economics, with net interest margin» rising from 6.81% to 7.81% even as the book nearly triples. The move that actually compounds from here is letting operating leverage catch up to that growth - cost-to-income ratio» of 149.65% and BOPO» of 159.37% mean the bank is still spending roughly Rp1.5-1.6 for every rupiah of operating income it earns, which is a start-up cost structure, not a scaling one. A bank that's tripled its loan book in a year has no excuse for its efficiency ratios barely moving - the next few quarters need to show BOPO actually falling toward 100%, not just improving off an extreme prior-year base.
What it should stop doing: presenting the ecosystem-growth numbers (deposits, loans, assets, customers) as if they were the whole story. A reader relying on Superbank's own press release would come away thinking the bank had a strong quarter with no caveats - the release simply never mentions that the bottom line moved the wrong way. Growth metrics and profit are not the same story, and a company that only tells the first one is asking to be read skeptically.
Key Financial Metrics
9M 2024 vs. 9M 2023 (P&L, nine months ended September 30, cumulative), and Sep 2024 vs. Dec 2023 (balance sheet) - bank-only ("Individual")
FX: IDR 15,171 = USD 1 (September 30, 2024 close, applied throughout for consistency).
| Metric | 9M 2024 (IDR) | 9M 2024 (USD) | 9M 2023 (IDR) | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net Interest Income ("Net Revenue" equivalent) | Rp399,013M | ~$26.30M | Rp199,946M | ✅ +99.5% |
| Operating Income | Rp(290,727)M | ~-$19.16M | Rp(255,937)M | ⚠️ loss widened 13.6% |
| Net Income | Rp(285,739)M | ~-$18.83M | Rp(254,741)M | ⚠️ loss widened 12.2% |
| Balance sheet metric | Sep 2024 (IDR) | Sep 2024 (USD) | Dec 2023 (IDR) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Assets | Rp9,717,600M | ~$640.5M | Rp5,556,074M | ✅ +74.9% |
| Loans (Kredit yang diberikan) | Rp4,898,871M | ~$322.9M | Rp2,920,823M | ✅ +67.7% |
| Total Deposits (Giro + Tabungan + Deposito) | Rp3,239,720M | ~$213.5M | Rp921,706M | ✅ +251.5% |
| Total Liabilities | Rp4,362,117M | ~$287.6M | Rp1,187,736M | ✅ +267.2% |
| Total Equity | Rp5,355,483M | ~$353.0M | Rp4,368,338M | ✅ +22.6% |
Superbank is a bank; Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow aren't meaningful for a deposit-taking institution and are omitted. This is the bare regulatory publication format Indonesian banks must file quarterly - no cash flow statement, no notes to the financial statements. Deposits above are the filing's own Giro + Tabungan + Deposito lines summed directly (they reconcile cleanly here, unlike some quarters at comparable banks where the sum has to be derived).
The balance sheet's only available comparative is December 2023, so the growth rates above (+74.9% assets, +67.7% loans) are measured from a lower, calendar-year-ago base rather than a true one-year-earlier quarter. Superbank's own press release instead compares against September 2023 directly (77% asset growth, 189% loan growth, 328% deposit growth), which is the real one-year comparison - the gap between the two sets of growth rates here reflects nine months of additional compounding on top of what's shown in this table's comparative column, not a discrepancy in the underlying numbers.
A bank that doubles net interest income and still posts a wider net loss has a cost problem, not a revenue problem - at this stage in the loan book's growth, that's not necessarily alarming, but it is the thing to watch.
Key Operational Metrics
Funding & Liquidity
- Loan-to-deposit ratio (LDR»): 151.21% (Sep 2024), down from 223.81% (Sep 2023) - still funding a large share of the loan book with capital rather than deposits, but the gap is narrowing fast as third-party deposits scale.
Credit Quality
- NPL» ratio - gross: 3.32% (Sep 2024), up slightly from 3.17% (Sep 2023).
- NPL ratio - net: 0.57% (Sep 2024), unchanged from 0.57% (Sep 2023).
- CAR» / KPMM (capital adequacy): 135.24% (Sep 2024), down sharply from 242.38% (Sep 2023) - still more than 13 times the regulatory minimum of 10%, but the pace of decline shows how quickly rapid loan growth is consuming the bank's capital buffer.
Profitability & Efficiency
- NIM»: 7.81% (9M 2024), up from 6.81% (9M 2023) - solidly above what a conventional Indonesian bank earns, though well short of the 19%+ margins reported by SeaBank over the same nine months, reflecting a more conventional secured/partnership lending mix rather than SeaBank's high-yield micro-lending book.
- ROA: -5.45% (9M 2024), improved from -7.99% (9M 2023).
- ROE: -7.80% (9M 2024), improved from -9.94% (9M 2023) - still deeply negative, the flip side of a bank still building out its cost base ahead of revenue.
- BOPO»: 159.37% (9M 2024), improved from 210.68% (9M 2023) - meaning operating costs plus provisions still exceed operating income by roughly 60%.
- Cost-to-Income Ratio» (CIR): 149.65% (9M 2024), improved from 198.56% (9M 2023).
Not available in this filing: a segment-level loan or funding breakdown, transacting-customer counts (the press release cites "over 1 million customers" as of August 2024, but this isn't in the filing itself), or a deposit-cost/funding-rate disclosure. Superbank reports as a single banking entity with no presentation deck, standalone press release document, or call transcript located separately from this filing for this quarter.
For comparison, SeaBank Indonesia - the closest peer, another consortium-backed Indonesian digital bank with no traded equity - was already solidly profitable over the same nine months (Rp291.5 billion net income, +32.0% YoY), on total assets more than three times Superbank's size. Superbank is earlier in the same playbook: faster percentage growth off a much smaller base, and not yet through the loss-making stage SeaBank cleared years ago.
Beyond the Usual
The press release's own growth numbers hide a wider net loss
Both the Indonesian and English versions of Superbank's Q3 2024 press release lead with deposit growth (+328% YoY), loan growth (+189% YoY), asset growth (+77% YoY), and margin expansion (NIM to 7.81%) - and say nothing about the bottom line. The filed financial statements attached to the same document show nine-month net loss widening from Rp254.7 billion to Rp285.7 billion, a 12.2% deterioration. Gross growth metrics looking strong while the net result moves the wrong way is exactly the pattern worth flagging on its own, independent of whether the loss itself is a reasonable cost of this stage of growth.
Capital adequacy fell by nearly half in one year
CAR/KPMM dropped from 242.38% to 135.24% year-on-year as risk-weighted assets more than doubled alongside the loan book. Both figures are still far above the 10% regulatory minimum, so this isn't a near-term solvency concern - but a ratio that halves annually while the bank keeps widening its net loss is a trajectory worth watching for how many more years of this growth rate the current capital base can support before a fresh injection becomes necessary.
Target Valuation Range
No numeric valuation range is computable for Superbank: it has no independently traded equity or debt, so no share price, market cap, or P/E/P/B multiple exists to anchor one.
Superbank has no independently traded equity or debt - its five disclosed shareholders (Emtek's PT Elang Media Visitama, Singtel Alpha Investments, Grab's PT Kudo Teknologi Indonesia, A5-DB Holdings, and KakaoBank Corp.) are all private strategic investors, and none has floated any portion of the bank on a public market. There is no share price, no market capitalization, and no P/E or P/B multiple that can honestly be built for this entity, so none is estimated here.
Nine months into 2024, Superbank is proving it can grow a deposit and loan book quickly with strong ecosystem backing; it hasn't yet proven it can do that profitably, and the press release framing this quarter suggests the company itself would rather a reader focus on the first part than the second.
PT Super Bank Indonesia's quarterly published financial statement ("Laporan Posisi Keuangan Triwulanan"), bank-only/individual basis, for the period ended September 30, 2024, signed by the bank's board of directors in Jakarta on October 31, 2024, per Indonesian Financial Services Authority (OJK) bank transparency and publication regulations.