Nir Zuk (YouTube Screen Shot)
Nir Zuk’s new digital bank called bank Esh is getting off to a great start just two weeks after it got final approval from the Bank of Israel. Clal Insurance, a major Israeli insurance firm, invested NIS 100 million (about $28 million) for a 4.99% stake in each of the group companies, both the bank and the technology company, leaving it with an estimated $500 million valuation.
So what is a digital bank anyway? Digital banking has to do with how everything is switching to online and cloud services these days. This includes the financial sector, both with investments and personal banking. In this way digital banking is a type of fintech. New technologies are in development worldwide to facilitate this. There is no lack of fintech startups in the world, especially in Israel, Startup Nation.
Digital banking requires sophisticated automated processes and web-based services and may include APIs enabling cross-institutional service composition to deliver banking products and provide transactions. The field also deals with the day to day banking services which people everywhere depend on being able to process on line and thorough apps.
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This also explains why there is such demand for cybersecurity startups as well: all that digital banking needs to be protected from hackers. And Nir Zuk is the right kind of person to also deal with cyber security threats as in addition to Palo Alto Networks he also was a founder of Israeli firm Check Point which made its fortune developing firewalls.
Esh Group CEO Yuval Aloni said, “We welcome Clal Insurance and Finance, which will join the existing shareholders, who have so far invested over NIS 100 million. After the deal is completed, investment in the Esh Group will total over NIS 200 million. This investment will enable us to develop the product in accordance with the group’s vision before we enter the market.”
Nir Zuk founded Palo Alto Networks in 2005 and has served on the board since its inception. He is former entrepreneur in residence at Greylock Partners, a successful serial entrepreneur and a network security expert. Prior to co-founding Palo Alto Networks, Nir Zuk was CTO at NetScreen Technologies, acquired by Juniper Networks in 2004. Prior to NetScreen, Nir was co-founder and CTO at OneSecure, a pioneer in intrusion prevention and detection appliances. Nir was also a principal engineer at Check Point Software Technologies and was one of the developers of stateful inspection technology.
