Mashreq NEO PLUS at One Year: Deposit Growth, Revenue and Customer Engagement
The digital proposition for mass-affluent customers pairs a 6.25% saver rate with tools built to turn saving and investing into habits.
Karim El-Sayed Karim El-Sayed covers company news, policy and regulation across the UAE and wider MENA for Anecdoted, with a focus on how new rules and licences reshape how startups operate. karim@anecdoted.com
Mashreq NEO brought NEO PLUS to market in July 2025, and its first year of operation has produced double-digit year-on-year growth in deposits and revenue, alongside an improvement in customer Net Promoter Score. The proposition targets the mass-affluent segment: customers earning at least AED 10,000 a month or holding a balance of AED 50,000.
It puts everyday banking, saving and investing in a single app. The NEO PLUS Saver Account pays 6.25% a year to qualifying salary customers and 5% a year to non-salary customers who meet the balance requirement. Investing starts from US$1, with 10 free trades each month, and managed portfolios begin at US$100.
Picking a segment, then building for it
Chiraag Jogia, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Customer Value Management at Mashreq NEO, said the goal was to create the UAE's leading banking proposition for mass-affluent customers. Research returned two consistent messages: help me grow my money, and make it simple. The product went live four months after that ambition was set.
Jogia points to a gap in the market. Premium banking packages have traditionally carried high entry thresholds, complicated qualifying criteria, or fees for bundled benefits customers never use. Digital propositions, meanwhile, smoothed everyday transactions without doing much to help people save, invest and grow wealth. His position is that premium should mean meaningful value and accessible tools rather than complexity or a bundle of irrelevant perks.
Tools that create habits
Money Insights shows NEO customers where their income goes and where it is already committed, using an Activity Tracker and a Subscription Tracker to surface recurring payments. Auto-Save places saving on a schedule. Four in five NEO PLUS customers use Money Insights, and one in five take an action as a direct result of what they see. Auto-Save usage has grown strongly. Jogia said engagement is particularly encouraging among customers aged 18 to 30, who are forming financial habits before they hold significant wealth. The proposition has been revised continuously since launch in response to customer feedback.
A headline rate is easy for a competitor to match. A habit is not. That is why the engagement figures carry more weight than the interest rate alone: they show whether customers treat NEO PLUS as their main bank rather than a place to park cash. Jogia links commercial growth and customer value directly, attributing deposit and revenue gains to more customers choosing the proposition, engaging more deeply, and entrusting Mashreq NEO with their primary banking relationship.
External validation, and what counts more
Mashreq NEO took six titles at The Digital Banker's Global Retail Banking Innovation Awards 2025, three of them for NEO PLUS: Best New Digital Product of the Year, Best Savings Account and Best Virtual Account. Jogia describes the recognition as external validation that the proposition is differentiated. Customer engagement and feedback, he said, remain the ultimate approval; awards are a proof point rather than the destination.
What year two looks like
The main lesson from the first year, according to Jogia, is that customers want a deeper banking relationship, not just an attractive rate or a set of benefits. Growth in customers moving their salary to Mashreq NEO, in his reading, signals trust rather than simple product adoption. His ambition for the second year is the one set 18 months earlier: a step change in banking for the mass-affluent segment, growing the customer base while deepening relationships across everyday banking, saving and investing. Success from the customer's side means more people taking control of their finances and building long-term resilience.
Many people arriving in the UAE are at a formative stage, starting a career or raising a family, with limited visibility of what living will cost or where to begin saving. Jogia said they want transparency, control and clearer value from their bank, and increasingly expect it to do more than hold and move money. They are more conscious of savings returns, more open to starting an investment journey, and less willing to accept complexity, high barriers or irrelevant benefits. Keeping the experience simple is what gets a proposition over the line.
