In January 2016, a small Bandung bank sold new shares at Rp132 each and raised about Rp31.85 billion. It was a modest listing on the Indonesia Stock Exchange for a modest lender called Bank Artos, which had been founded in 1992. Nobody would have called it a technology company.
The man who would transform it was born in Pontianak in 1965. Jerry Ng studied business at the University of Washington and built a career at Citibank Indonesia, BCA and Danamon before running Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional, BTPN, as president director from 2008 to 2019. At BTPN he is credited as the initiator of Jenius, one of Indonesia's early digital banking services. It was a good vantage point for seeing what a bank could be when it stopped being a branch network.
The idea was life-centric banking, built into apps people already used, including GoPay and the Bibit investment platform.
He left BTPN in 2019. Then came the move that few expected: with Patrick Walujo, he led a consortium that took control of Artos late that year, through his vehicle Metamorfosis Ekosistem Indonesia. They did not buy a brand. They bought a licence and a listing, and a clean place to start.
In 2020 the bank became Bank Jago. In December, Gojek's payments arm took a stake of roughly 22 percent, and GIC invested in 2021. The idea was life-centric banking, built into apps people already used, including GoPay and the Bibit investment platform.
The market loved it, then punished it. By late 2021 and early 2022 the shares traded around Rp18,000 to 19,500, more than 140 times the IPO price, with a market value above Rp240 trillion. By late 2022 they had fallen to about Rp3,300 to 3,600 as the digital bank frenzy cooled.
The price cost investors dearly, but the bank kept building. Net profit in 2025 was Rp276 billion, up 115 percent, and customers reached 18.2 million; by July 2026 they were about 19.4 million, and the shares closed that week at Rp1,405.
The quiet lesson is that Ng did not start a bank from nothing. He found a small, dormant licence and used twenty-five years of experience to give it a purpose. A founder's tools do not have to be new, and an overlooked asset can be worth more than a clean slate.