The financial market is undergoing a transition from competition between individual products to competition between ecosystems. Banks, brokers, insurance companies, and lifestyle services are increasingly converging around integrated digital platforms, while data about customer behavior is becoming the key asset. The ability to analyze this data, anticipate user needs, and reduce customer acquisition costs is what makes ecosystems one of the most effective business models today.
Now this space is dominated not only by global Asian giants such as Ping An, Alibaba Group, Reliance Industries, and SoftBank Group, but also by rapidly growing international players, including Nasdaq-listed Freedom Holding Corp., which is steadily building its own multi-service ecosystem.
Over the past decade, the ecosystem approach has become the dominant strategy among the world’s largest technology and fintech companies. Tencent transformed WeChat into a platform combining messaging, payments, e-commerce, and government services. The super app is used by 1.4 billion people every month. Alibaba Group built infrastructure around commerce, cloud technologies, logistics, and the Alipay financial services platform. Through Alipay, Ant Group serves 1.3 billion users and processes $17.9 trillion in annual payments.
According to a McKinsey study, “Six breakthrough business models reshaping global growth”, ecosystem models enable Asian companies to achieve growth rates above market averages and rapidly increase both growth merchandize value (GMV) and their customer bases. One of the most illustrative examples remains Ping An. The company started as an insurer, but later built an ecosystem around finance, healthcare, smart city solutions and AI services on a single platform. According to the company’s annual reports, the group serves more than 240 million retail customers, with most customers using several ecosystem services simultaneously. Group Total Assets Rise above ¥13 Trillion.
SoftBank Group took a different path by creating an investment ecosystem through its Vision Fund, investing in artificial intelligence, telecommunications, fintech, and technology platforms. In practice, SoftBank is building a network of interconnected digital services and data rather than a collection of standalone products.
In Europe, a similar model is actively being developed by Revolut. The company began as a payments app before adding investments, insurance, travel services, subscriptions, and financial planning tools. By the end of 2025, the neobank had increased its revenue by 46% to $6 billion, while its customer base reached 70 million users. American company Robinhood Markets is also increasingly evolving from a brokerage platform into a broader personal finance management ecosystem. In 2025, the company served 27 million funded customers. Assets on the platform grew 68% year over year to reach $324 billion.
Why data has become the main asset
The real value of an ecosystem lies in the aggregate data a company collects about its customers. Every user interaction within the platform generates additional data: payment habits, content interests, travel patterns, investment behavior, and consumer preferences.
The ecosystem model also directly impacts business efficiency. According to research by Amra & Elma, ecosystems can reduce effective customer acquisition costs (CAC) by approximately 33% through cross-selling and promotion within the ecosystem. Given that the average CAC in fintech stands at $1,672, ecosystem models generate substantial cost savings.
“Value is created not in individual products, but in the connections between them. The more touchpoints you have in a person’s life, the greater their trust, the deeper their engagement, and the stronger your position, ” Timur Turlov, the founder of Freedom Holding Corp says.
Freedom Holding as an example of a developing ecosystem
Freedom Holding Corp. is also continuously moving toward an ecosystem-driven model, transforming from a financial company into a multi-service digital platform. Its ecosystem structure includes brokerage services, banking, insurance, lifestyle products, travel services, and media. A key element of the ecosystem is the Freedom SuperApp, which combines financial and everyday services. The app currently has more than 5 million users, while the broader ecosystem — including partner companies — serves a total of 11 million users.
One particularly notable example is Freedom Travel. According to Freedom Lifestyle Group, the travel service reached a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $292 million and demonstrated the highest growth rate among Kazakhstan’s online travel agencies. The company’s next target is achieving $1 billion in GMV by 2027.
However, the key ecosystem effect is reflected not only in revenue growth. Over the course of a single year, Freedom Lifestyle Group significantly changed the payment structure within its own services. At the beginning of 2025, approximately 85% of payments in lifestyle services were processed through third-party bank cards. By the end of the year, more than 80% of transactions were conducted using Freedom cards. Meanwhile, 74% of operations were processed directly inside the SuperApp. In the Arbuz.kz service, the share of payments processed through Freedom Bank increased from 40% to 90%.
Timur Turlov describes this strategy as follows: “When a person uses our brokerage platform, gets a mortgage from our bank in one day, consumes content from our media platform, and their children study on our educational platform – that is not accidental. That is exactly what we are striving for. Presence in people’s lives, not just in transactions.”
Today, ecosystems are becoming a new form of competitive advantage. Their strength lies in their ability to integrate data from different aspects of users’ lives and transform it into a personalized user experience. For businesses, this means lower CAC, higher customer retention, and a more resilient economic model. For users, it means convenience, speed, and a unified digital environment. That is why the world’s largest companies are investing not just in standalone products, but in creating infrastructure where services reinforce one another.
