You signed in with another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You signed out in another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You switched accounts on another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.Dismiss alert
Conduct your research, using the case study template as a guide;
We recommend that you use the case study template below in order to focus your research. You may lengthen, shorten, or––if necessary––remove sections from the template to accommodate the information available about your company.
Title
Overview and Origin
What is the name of the company?
Goldman Sachs' Marcus.
When was the company incorporated?
Goldman Sachs' Marcus was incorporated in April, 2016.
Who are the founders of the company?
The Goldman Sachs was funded by Marcus Goldman; the Marcus, online banking, was funded by its current Chairman and CEO David Solomon.
How did the idea for the company (or project) come about?
the Marcus platform combines the freshness of a digital offering with the strength and heritage of the firm, leveraging core competencies in risk management and technology. The idea of entering the consumer finance sector is from 2015.
How is the company funded? How much funding have they received?
In April 2016, Goldman Sachs Bank USA (GS Bank USA) acquired GE Capital Bank’s US online deposit platform — a transaction that doubled the firm’s client count. This enabled the firm to provide an online bank for retail customers, offering savings products. Later that year, the firm launched the Marcus platform, initially offering no-fee unsecured personal loans.
Since launch, Marcus has grown into a multiproduct platform, with $50 billion in deposits, $5 billion in consumer loan balances and four million customers in the United States and the United Kingdom — all without the traditional brick-and-mortar branch model.
Business Activities
What specific financial problem is the company or project trying to solve?
Goldman Sachs' Marcus is trying to solve the problem with private customers' online banking needs and they provide several financial management products to customers such as certificate deposit, personal loans, ect.
Who is the company's intended customer? Is there any information about the market size of this set of customers?
The intended costomer of Marcus by Goldman Sachs is retailed customers who may not have millons of cash but are willing to be the online banking users.
Since launch, Marcus has grown into a multiproduct platform, with $50 billion in deposits, $5 billion in consumer loan balances and four million customers in the United States and the United Kingdom — all without the traditional brick-and-mortar branch model.
What solution does this company offer that their competitors do not or cannot offer? (What is the unfair advantage they utilize?)
As what I personally experienced their product comparing with other online banking services, the online customer service (chat in Marcus App) is more efficient and easier than other online banking apps, while the Marcus app also provided secure protection. For example, other online banking customer services may use a bot or structured Q&A to respond your messages, which would lead you to a step by step way to solve problems; Marcus, meanwhile, they respond more quickly than other paltforms and direct your question to a certain solution. Then I read an article in their website about how Goldman Sachs think about involving AI technology into human resource, that's something I believe not only a real human responded me behind the screen but the future of machine learning in financial technology.
Which technologies are they currently using, and how are they implementing them? (This may take a little bit of sleuthing–– you may want to search the company’s engineering blog or use sites like StackShare to find this information.)
Goldman Sachs has publicly acknowledged its use of Infosys's Finacle software to run Marcus. The software allows Goldman to let customers define and change the parameters of their loans, within boundaries the bank sets.
Landscape
What domain of the financial industry is the company in?
Marcus is in the online banking.
What have been the major trends and innovations of this domain over the last 5–10 years?
During the last 5-10 years, nearly two-thirds (65.3 percent) of the U.S. population uses online banking services. The number of people using digital banking has increased by 4 percent since 2018.
What are the other major companies in this domain?
Ohter companies in this domain including Capital One, CIT bank, Ally, ect.
Results
What has been the business impact of this company so far?
Not as the initial image which Goldman Sachs gives to the public, the launching of Marcus has shown the interest and horizon of the company as it stepped into personal individual customers and the future of banking services. The fast growing of Marcus not only extended Goldman Sachs' market but also bordered the fianace company into connections of technology, which would benefit its main business and the diversity of its business.
What are some of the core metrics that companies in this domain use to measure success? How is your company performing, based on these metrics?
In my understanding of this online banking domain, the core metrics are including the cybersercurty, data analysis, the AI learning which could reduce the human resouce labor, customerized features, ect. Based on these core metrics, Marcus has done a good job so far based on the increasing customers numbers.
How is your company performing relative to competitors in the same domain?
Fairly enough speaking, Marcus still faced some main competitors in this domain considerding other online banking companies and some traditional banks who converted their business into online banking as well. As a major factor and the marketing topic the products such as online CD and saving account which their interest is not as competetive as some other online banks. However, overall it is still a fast growing and competetive company considering it's backed by Goldman Sachs.
Recommendations
If you were to advise the company, what products or services would you suggest they offer? (This could be something that a competitor offers, or use your imagination!)
If I were the advisor to Marcus, I would reccommend the features to be added to Apple Pay, and some other digital payments solution which would get more attention from the youth.
Why do you think that offering this product or service would benefit the company?
As a long history and powerful wall street mogul, Goldman Sachs always plays the role of the old fasion finance comapny in the public, however, to extend its business in the connections with Tech company like Apple or Google, it could change the image and be a more youth-welcome company into the Fintech industry with coopertating with Apple Pay or Google Pay. It could be a chanllenge to make sure to keep the efficiency and securty as well but it's still worthy it.
What technologies would this additional product or service utilize?
Near Field Communication wireless technology(NFC technology)
Why are these technologies appropriate for your solution?
Apple Pay uses Near Field Communication (NFC) technology between your device and the payment terminal. NFC is an industry-standard, contactless technology that’s designed to work only across short distances; On Android devices, Google Pay uses near field communication (NFC) to interact with payment terminals.
