What traditional banks can learn from fintechs beyond speed and UX

Fintechs have changed what people expect from financial services. Much of the focus has been on their speed and user experience. However, the real value is in how they organize teams, develop products, manage data, and foster innovation. Traditional banks can learn from these methods and adapt to be more agile and focused.

Customer-Centricity and Product Innovation

Fintechs work in a setting that requires quick cycles of change and regular feedback, focusing on results rather than just activity. Each release is judged by how it impacts real customer issues, not by how much is produced. In comparison, traditional banks often experience lengthy transformation processes that reflect their own priorities. The needed change is to shift from project-based work to product-focused delivery. Here, the focus is on delivering value to customers and learning quickly.

This also requires moving beyond feature development as a metric. Fintechs begin with the customer’s problem and build backwards. Banks must follow the same principle. Delivery should be driven by insight, not parity.

Hyper-Personalization and Proactive Engagement

Fintechs use clean, integrated data to provide personalized engagement and work with unified customer views. This allows for real-time decision-making and contextual communication. In contrast, banks have fragmented systems and outdated information pipelines. Bridging this gap requires investment in data platforms that unify behavioural, transactional, and interactional data into a single, accessible layer.

Hyper-personalization is not just a competitive advantage. Banks should look at them as a core capability. Proactive and contextual engagement builds trust, improves retention, and increases product relevance.

Technology, Data, and Scalability

Fintech systems are modular, cloud-native, and focus on platforms. This greatly improves a Fintech’s ability to integrate, configure, and scale. In contrast, legacy banks, operating on ten-year platforms, need a fundamental change in both the architecture and interconnection of systems. A platform approach, where services are loosely coupled, easily configurable, and API enabled, provides a start. Simultaneously banks have to broaden their perspective on partnerships, as fintechs succeed by building open ecosystems. Banks should focus on developing strategic partnerships with external partners to strengthen their value proposition, reserving their internal resources for the development of differentiated capabilities.

Talent and Culture for the Digital Age

The organizational design and the culture of a firm greatly influence the speed and the extent of innovation. In contrast to the rest of a firm, in smaller, empowered teams, who’s work is clearly defined, the pace of work increases, and the response to problems improves. There are fewer decision-making levels, and a clearer preference for action. This is where banks need to focus their attention.

Fintechs rely on speed and innovation to remain competitive, and attracting fully digital talent is critical to achieving that aim. In practice, this translates to restructuring team configurations, eliminating bureaucratic approval chains, and cultivating agility as a core aspect of the organization, as opposed to a mere mode of operation.

Trust, along with the ability to scale, and institutional strength, is what traditional banks already possess. Operational agility is what they lack. In this regard, fintechs provide a sophisticated blueprint with a mindset, structure, and systems that promote continuous change.

Integrating the fintech approach with the existing banking strengths is where the opportunity lies. Product thinking, customer intelligence, and platform architecture, along with platform architecture and lean decision making, are not simply trends. They are the foundation for a new class of financial enterprises. Banks that pursue this approach will not only keep up. They will lead the industry.

By Kishan Sundar, SVP, and Chief Technology Officer – Key Accounts, Maveric Systems Limited