Marcus Has Reached $100 Billion in Deposits

Marcus by Goldman Sachs, the prestigious investment firm’s attempt at being a conventional bank, announced that they have over $100 billion in deposits after just five years in operation. The online platform that began as an invite-only savings platform has transformed into a full-blown consumer bank, operating on the futuristic model of operating savings and CD accounts digitally.

“If you told me we would accomplish so much in just five years from launch, I would have said you were crazy,” wrote Harit Talwar in a LinkedIn post on Thursday that announced his retirement from Marcus. “It shows that nothing is impossible when you have the best people.”

In his post, Talwar praised Marcus’ desire to take risks, acting as a separate entity while having to operate within the confines and upkeep of the Goldman Sachs reputation.

“We had the audacity to think big, and it’s safe to say we proved the skeptics wrong – eight million customers, $100 billion in deposits, nearly $10 billion in card and loan balances, $1.5 billion in run rate revenue, two J.D. Power wins and partnerships with the top brands in the world including Apple, Amazon, Walmart, JetBlue, AARP, General Motors and more,” Talwar wrote.

Marcus launched in 2016 with some of the best interest rates in the banking industry. It introduced the Goldman Sachs brand to an entire new group of customers by offering up high interest rates on accounts with no fees, which was nearly unheard of at the time. Two years after launch, Marcus had over $35 billion in deposits.

Marcus’ path was almost completely different prior to its launch. The original idea prior to Marcus was a platform called Mosaic, a banking concept meant for borrowers with good credit that were looking to refinance other debt.

In his retirement post, Talwar credited the camaraderie that developed between employees as a major factor resulting in the success of Marcus. “The team has given more than perhaps in prior jobs, but maybe that is the price of building something this extraordinary at an unprecedented pace,” Talwar wrote. “Yet by sharing those experiences in the trenches, we’ve made lasting friendships and redefined what a consumer business looks like.”

The outlook for Marcus is seemingly endless. Online banking is trendier than ever, and the outlook for banking is losing the brick-and-mortar mentality.

Experts also believe that Marcus has helped Goldman Sachs’ progress into new markets. “Marcus has taken advantage of a core strategic advantage—[Goldman Sachs’] lack of a preexisting deposit customer base— to prove that digital deposit gathering at scale is possible for a large institution,” Todd Baker, Managing Principal of Broodmoar Consulting and Senior Fellow at Columbia University told deBanked.

When the company first came about, deBanked reported that Marcus may be poaching customers from a peer-to-peer lender named LendingClub. The two companies are now more alike than ever given that LendingClub is also now a bank. LendingClub, still new to the banking scene however, had only amassed $2.5B in deposits as of June 30, 2021.

It seems that Marcus may have been ahead of the curve when it comes to fintech’s place in traditional banking, racking up staggering figures across the board and showing young upstart competitors just how strong it is.