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When Pei-Si Lai walked into GXBank, it wasn’t with fanfare or a long runway. She joined just days after leaving her previous role, diving headfirst into the challenge of building a digital bank from scratch. Less than two years later, she’s not only led GXBank to more than a million customers and billions in deposits, but Pei-Si Lai now oversees an entire regional operation as Group CEO of GXS Bank.
And through it all, her philosophy remains refreshingly human: build with purpose, lead through crisis, and keep playing at the edge.
Pei-Si Lai
“It’s really quite difficult to actually start a bank from scratch… The first challenge is bringing everybody together, making sure that we see an aligned purpose,” Pei-Si said.
Her time at GXBank began not with comfort, but with chaos. Launching publicly in September 2023, the team faced daily challenges. But those moments, Pei-Si says, are what forged their strength.
“You get into crisis every day, honestly, almost… And a team is only a good team only when crisis happens and people come together to actually get it fixed,” she highlighted.
One of those early crises?
A 47-minute downtime just five months after launch. While many might panic, Pei-Si saw opportunity in how the team responded. She mentioned that she was proud of how everyone got together in a single unison to tackle the problem.
“The second time [we had downtime] was much easier… It shows our ability to really respond and improve every single time,” Pei-Si said as she recalled the incident that the digital bank faced.
For her, crisis wasn’t failure. To her, it was more like a rhythm. She credits the team’s operating rhythm and structured communication as key to their increasingly swift recoveries.
She said, and I quote her, “You actually built that one… and then that way, the team has probably more than I expected.”
From the CEO of One Digital Bank to the Guardian of Three
Pei-Si’s leap to Group CEO hasn’t been about scaling headcount. Her aim has always been about scaling clarity.
“Think about it,” she began.
“We built three banks in three years and got everything from scratch. Your first two to three years is really about building a foundation… now we need to be sharper,” the Group CEO of GXS Bank explained.
Each market (Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia) brings its own complexities. Yet Pei-Si applies a disciplined framework: start by asking what real customer problems exist, and solve them with purpose-built products, not assumptions.
On one hand, in Malaysia, GXS found that many customers faced common financial challenges. Some of those she highlighted were that they weren’t saving enough, lacked adequate protection, and couldn’t access the credit they needed.
Similar patterns emerged across the region, prompting Pei-Si to emphasise the importance of diagnosing the real, underlying financial problems in each market before offering solutions.
In Singapore, on the other hand, this approach has led GXS to focus on younger customers and gig workers seeking practical, wealth-building tools.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the strategy centres around forging strong ecosystem partnerships both within and beyond Grab, to create real value and traction in a competitive landscape.
Micro-entrepreneurs have also emerged as a key segment. While every bank may try to claim its own niche, Pei-Si believes differentiation comes from depth, and that means focusing with greater precision.
For GXS, sharpening its work in this space is critical to standing out and serving where others fall short.
Credit Innovation as Her North Star
Pei-Si often refers to her team’s approach as “playing at the edges”. But make no mistake, this is not about risk for risk’s sake. It’s about experimentation with intention.
“We can only do credit innovation if we have enough data and the risk appetite to test and learn… That’s the great thing about being in a digital bank. With a very clear mandate to serve the underserved, we have the natural appetite to try and test,” Pei-Si Lai, Group CEO of GXS Bank clarified.
This approach is enabling GXS to serve gig workers and micro merchants who are typically excluded from conventional credit systems.
Rather than relying solely on formal credit histories, GXS taps into alternative data, such as gross merchandise value (GMV) from platform sales, to assess creditworthiness. Pei-Si believes this type of contextual underwriting is key to unlocking access for underserved users, calling it a true example of credit innovation in action.
Kaushik’s One Word to Describe Pei-Si: Irreplaceable
Pei-Si’s impact has extended far beyond numbers. Her leadership has shaped not just GXBank’s growth, but its soul. That sentiment is echoed deeply by her successor, Kaushik Chowdhury, the newly appointed CEO of GXBank (if you have the time, read on what he has to say as he takes on his role from Pei-Si Lai).
Kaushik described his predecessor with one word: irreplaceable.
“I’ve never worked for a better boss,” the CEO of GXBank said.
He shared how a colleague once joked that working for her would spoil him for any future boss.
“I thought he was exaggerating. Now, I know he wasn’t,” chuckled Kaushik.
For him, Pei-Si didn’t just lead but rather enabled others to lead.
“She lets people like me step up and delegate. She works so hard with such a big heart,” he continued.
Pei-Si’s aspirations for GXS are also clear and pragmatic. Profitability for her is not just a milestone. It’s a means to reinvest in solving deeper customer problems.
“We hope to break even as a group by 2026, and for Malaysia by 2027… That gives us the right to invest in growth, and solve wider problems,” the Group CEO of GXS Bank said aspiringly.
But for her, the real “North Star” lies in staying true to three questions: What do users love? What can technology build? And what makes commercial sense?
Pei-Si Lai, the CEO of GXS Bank, believes that the bank should go beyond simply offering services that users adopt out of convenience.
Instead, the goal is to continuously push boundaries and challenge conventional thinking to operate at the edge of what digital banking can achieve.
By designing solutions with care and intention, she hopes to create experiences that customers genuinely value and trust, building lasting affinity, not just transactional success.
Watch this video on Pei Si Lai, the then, CEO of GXBank (now Group CEO of GXS Bank), talks about how she measures success as a leader, recalling the best compliment she received in her professional career.
