A new digital bank focused on service members and their families is aiming to address long-standing challenges around financial literacy, access, and reliability—issues often tied to overall military readiness.
ROGER Bank, a veteran-led digital platform backed by the FDIC-insured Citizens Bank of Edmond, is designed with a military audience in mind, particularly for those navigating deployments, relocations, and the transition to civilian life.
Military.com spoke with ROGER Bank CEO Jill Castilla about gaps she sees in traditional banking, how digital tools are shaping access to financial services, and where financial literacy fits into readiness.
Kim O’Brien (Military.com): What gaps in traditional banking did you see for service members, veterans, and their families that inspired you to create a bank specifically designed to serve them?
Jill Castilla (President and CEO): As a bank CEO, military spouse, Blue Star mom, former enlisted service member, and Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army Emeritus, I’ve had firsthand military banking experience from nearly every perspective. While many banks and credit unions have served the military community for generations, I continue to see gaps in costs, functionality, and day-to-day relevance, especially for junior enlisted troops, spouses managing the household, and veterans navigating the transition to civilian life. From the onboarding of new service members to outdated fees and funds mobility to integrated budgeting tools, we set out to make banking a simple, fee-free advantage for the military community. Military life is dynamic, global and digital. Banking should be too.
One of the first deficiencies that stood out to me involved something very basic: getting paid.
While moving through a reception battalion at Army basic training, I saw stacks of forms completed incorrectly or incompletely, resulting in delayed pay for new service members. When you’re young, far from home, and just starting your military career, a delay in your first paycheck can be devastating. That observation became the catalyst for ROGER. It led to the development of our patent-pending instant direct deposit process, designed to eliminate friction at the very start of service and ensure pay is set up accurately and immediately. This naturally expanded into other areas where service members deserved better. Across the industry, headlines continue to surface about practices that disproportionately impact younger troops: overdraft penalties, low returns on deposits, and unnecessary fees that quietly erode hard-earned pay. Rather than layering on new products, we focused on removing those barriers entirely. ROGER was created to combine the stability of a 125-year-old FDIC-insured community bank, Citizens Bank of Edmond, with the modernization of a fintech platform. That allowed us to eliminate account fees, boost yields that aren’t commonly found in the current market, and build secure digital tools that reflect how military families live, including earlier access to pay and secure messaging for sensitive account changes like address updates. Ultimately, ROGER exists to re-establish what banking should look like for the military community: stable, modern, transparent, and designed around service members’ realities.
Military.com: How does ROGER go beyond standard checking, savings, and mortgage products to promote long-term financial literacy and empowerment for military families?
Castilla: At ROGER Bank, we believe financial readiness is mission readiness. ROGER was created specifically to support service members and their families with modern tools, transparent products, and education that fits military life. Our aim is to empower military families with the knowledge and tools to build lasting wealth. We developed financial education tools and resources specifically designed for service members’ needs from day one. Our website offers blogs, guides, and FAQs covering everything from managing money on deployment to understanding VA home loans and enlistment bonuses. ROGER’s team knows that many new recruits have limited experience handling their own finances, so we’ve made financial literacy a cornerstone of our support. We want to help young service members manage, secure, and command their financial future.
Beyond education, we’ve added pro-military benefits to our products to encourage smart financial habits.
One example is our high-yield approach to banking. While standard banks might offer negligible interest, ROGER provides a competitive 2.00% APY on checking balances and 3.61% APY on savings. Combined with our fee-free structure, this allows service members to grow their money without worrying about penalties or minimums. In practice, it helps troops build an emergency fund or deployment savings faster, which supports long-term stability. Financial empowerment also comes from control and access, so we’ve built tools to help customers stay on top of their money. Our app provides personalized spending insights and budgeting tools so you can track where your money is going. We offer robust debit card controls: you can lock your card with a tap or set alerts, which is helpful if you’re traveling or temporarily off the grid.
And if questions ever come up, ROGER customers speak with real veterans and service members on staff who understand issues like combat pay, PCS moves, Tricare and childcare planning, or the nuances of the GI Bill.
We also regularly support spouses and veterans who are the ones making the day-to-day financial decisions for their families. We’re here to talk through decisions in a way that fits military life. We also collaborate with organizations to promote financial literacy in the military community. We produce content and workshops on bases and at other military events (often in partnership with base financial counselors and recruiters) to reach troops and families where they are. From basic training through retirement, we want our customers to feel confident about money.
Military.com: As a veteran-owned, led, and operated institution backed by an FDIC-insured bank, how do you balance innovation as a digital platform with the trust and stability service members expect?
Jill: We like to say ROGER combines modern digital banking with old-fashioned trust. On the innovation side, we’re a mobile-first bank (fast account setup, a straightforward app experience, and new features rolling out based on feedback from our military users). But none of that matters without security and reliability. Service members and veterans demand a bank that will be there for the long haul, especially when their financial well-being and families are on the line. That’s why we built ROGER on a foundation of proven stability: we are veteran-founded and 100% veteran-operated, and backed by Citizens Bank of Edmond, an FDIC-insured community bank with 125 years of experience serving customers through every economic cycle. Being veteran-owned and led is how we establish trust.
Our entire team, from the CEO to customer support, wore the uniform.
We’ve been the young recruit, the deployed soldier, and the PCS’ing spouse. That shared experience creates an immediate bond with our customers. It means when we design a new feature or policy, the first question is, “Is this the right thing for the military community?” For example, if a service member calls with an issue, they’ll speak to someone who understands acronyms like PCS or BAH, who knows the stress of deployment, and who will work the problem until it is resolved. In an age of chatbots and long hold times, that human connection builds trust. Our customer support staffed by fellow veterans is one of the clearest ways we show we have our customers’ six. On the flip side, we are constantly innovating to meet modern needs. Balancing innovation and stability is about diligent planning and listening. We partner with Nymbus, a leading fintech provider, to ensure our digital infrastructure is top-tier and secure. We rigorously test new features in-house with our veteran team’s input before rolling them out. We won’t launch anything unless we’re confident it meets the highest security standards and adds genuine value for our customers. Trust also comes from transparency. We are upfront about how everything works: interest rates, fee-free policies, and our limitations. If something goes wrong, we own it and fix it. This culture of accountability comes from our military values. In the service, integrity is paramount; we carry that into our banking philosophy. Service members deserve a bank that is both technologically strong and fundamentally trustworthy.
Military.com: Looking ahead, what does success look like in terms of expanding your impact within the military community?
Jill: Success for ROGER means delivering lasting financial value to the military community. We want to support service members from the first day of service through deployments, transitions, and civilian life. While ROGER is still a young bank, our growth reflects demand for banking designed specifically for military life and informed by direct feedback from service members, spouses, and veterans. Looking ahead, we aim to deepen partnerships with military organizations and installations to complement existing financial readiness efforts. We’re also exploring expanding our product offerings as our customers’ needs evolve (for example, we plan to launch business banking). We will do this carefully and in line with our core purposes. Ultimately, true success will be measured by stories and outcomes. It’s seeing a young military family buy their first home using a ROGER account they’ve saved up in, or a deployed soldier who avoided predatory loans because our early pay and savings tools had them covered until next paycheck. Our internal mantra is to lay the foundation for unshakeable financial strength and future prosperity for every service member.
If in five or ten years we can look back and say we’ve tangibly improved financial readiness, that will be the real victory for us.
For service members and families, the best way to engage with ROGER is to visit ROGER.bank. You can open an account in minutes through our app or website. There’s no minimum deposit, and even if you’re a 17-year-old enlistee without a prior bank account, you can sign up without a cosigner before you ship out to boot camp. Success is expanding our reach to active duty, Guard and Reserve, spouses, and veterans, and knowing we’ve made a practical difference. For those reading this, the first step is simple: open an account, use the resources, and tell us what you need next. We’re here to serve you for the long haul, and we take that responsibility seriously.
