VP Lifestyle Content, Business Development

Who We Are

Ascenda is a global technology company on a mission to power the growth of financial institutions and merchants with premium rewards propositions that are effortless to deploy and loved by end users.

Ascenda is a global technology company on a mission to power the growth of financial institutions and merchants with premium rewards propositions that are effortless to deploy and loved by end users.

The world’s leading financial players leverage Ascenda’s rewards infrastructure to drive customer acquisition, usage, and retention.

They include well-known global brands such as American Express, HSBC and Standard Chartered, dozens of local top-tier banks such as Capital One, ANZ, HDFC and ICBC, and successful challenger brands such as Revolut, Brex and Virgin Money (see  for full list).

• Bringing it all together: unifying the many fragmented elements needed for a world-class rewards proposition (points bank, campaign engine, travel portal, points transfer, pay with points, card-linked-offers, etc.) into a simple ‘all-in-one’ solution.
• Making it ultra-accessible: world-class rewards are now available to any financial institution of any size because Ascenda has made it so simple, so fast-to-deploy and so affordable. This has unlocked access for financial brands who were previously unable to consider a high-calibre rewards proposition due to the overbearing complexity and/or cost, opening up new client segments for Ascenda including emerging banks, fintechs and other non-bank financial providers.

Next Up, Ascenda Is Further Shifting The Paradigm Of Customer Engagement In Financial Services, Making The Competition Irrelevant And Growing The Addressable Market Across These Five Dimensions

• Breaking the decade-long enterprise software cycle

Today, the choice of rewards platform is generally a big hairy senior management decision or RFP for financial institutions, and once implemented remains stuck in place for years. Ascenda sees a future where any marketing manager can easily test a one-time tactical incentive with zero overhead or downside on its platform.

• Shifting from selling software to selling guaranteed customer outcomes

Today, rewards platforms provide the mechanics for operating incentives, but not the brains. This puts the onus on the financial institution to design a strong value proposition and operate effective lifecycle marketing - with variable and uncertain outcomes. Ascenda sees a future where clients simply input their customer data and desired behaviors. The rewards platform then indicates the incentive investment required to achieve those goals.

Intelligently setting the optimal value prop and campaign strategies to get there.

• Tapping into hundreds of millions in incentive $s from non-card financial products

Today, the rewards program is generally owned by the cards team, while other product areas (e.g. deposits, lending, investments, insurance) are still using “random” ad-hoc incentives like cash rebates, prize draws, physical gifts – which are entirely generic and unpersonalized. Ascenda sees a future where every division GM is empowered to deploy their incentive funds via the Ascenda platform because it’s easy and significantly increases ROI.

• Merging great rewards and lifecycle marketing into a single powerful solution

Today, financial institutions employ an array of disparate marketing tools, such as earn & burn rewards, card-linked offers, marketing automation, channel orchestration, personalization engine, transaction-based nudges, analytics platform, and so on. Ascenda sees a future where these converge into a single, highly intelligent lifecycle marketing engine that executes end-to-end. All the way from selecting the right personalized incentives for each customer to executing last-mile communications.

• Transforming rewards content from being static to resonating at a deep human level

Today, the best rewards programs offer a broad selection of content, from airline miles and hotel bookings to physical goods. But the fundamental nature of those catalogues hasn’t changed over the past decade, and the onus remains on the user…