Hypothekarbank Lenzburg
“Can a 150-year-old Swiss regional bank become the regulated BaaS and embedded finance backbone for European fintechs and non-bank companies by verticalising its own core banking technology?”
Founded in 1868 as a regional Swiss mortgage bank, Hypothekarbank Lenzburg ('Hypi') began a deliberate pivot toward digital and open banking in 2017 by opening its Finstar core banking system via API — an unusual move for a community bank of its size. From 2018 onward it built a BaaS business, most visibly as the regulated banking backbone behind Swiss neobank neon (250,000+ customers, CHF 1.4B in deposits by end-2025). In 2023 it formalised this direction under the HBL Solutions brand, and in 2024 accelerated by acquiring Swiss Bankers Prepaid Services AG and spinning off Finstar as a separate technology subsidiary — transforming from a local retail bank into a vertically integrated embedded finance and BaaS provider targeting Swiss and European non-bank partners.