ROI — Return on Innovation
The Finastra Labs story
Our story started 7 years ago when IND, a Hungarian fintech company established its Innovation Lab with 4 member solely focused on front-end innovation in Europe. But why did we decided to go this way and was it worth it?
Heartfelt nostalgia for the early years
In 2010 the fintech landscape was notably different from what it is today, but banks already felt the need to incorporate innovation in their everyday life. The only question was the way to do it: set up your internal team or outsource it? Both had their advantages:
- an in-house innovation team is a long-term shot: it is slow and hard to build up and operate but gains a deep understanding of the bank’s strategy and nuances over time
- outsourcing innovation aka. relying on 3rd parties such as fintech vendors, startups and creative agencies who represent only general understanding of the industry but has a vast experience on advanced problem solving.
Although it may seems like a disadvantage to rely on external resources in many cases we experienced that the openness and freedom these companies have helped them to look at challenges from unusual angles — something which is extremely hard when the bank’s everyday operation is coded in your DNA.
We looked at it as a competitive advantage: a team dedicated to not just innovate but continuously challenge and rethink the existing retail banking solutions in the digital space and also act as a hit-squad when a progressive client project pops up. Back at that time it was quite unique: only a handful of banks started to do it on their own and we barely new any competitor who did it.
The result was obvious: the next generation of our mobile and online bank, our renewed PFM and online sales engine gave so much advantage to IND that it grab the attention of Finastra (back then Misys) which eventually acquired the company in 2014.
A new chapter began
From that moment on our team began to grow and expand. In the hit-squad times the team consisted of managers socialised in the product department but transformed into some sort of jack-of-all-trades guys. It was fun at the beginning but felt overwhelming when you switch from a 200 something digital fintech company to a 5000 employee giant with hundreds of products.
As the first step we recruited non-product related young Innovation Managers from external sources. Soon we faced the problem that pretty wireframes are not enough to convince many, so Finastra started to hire platform teams: we got iOS, web and Android developers. It meant a lot for us, we were finally able to build and maintain our own concepts across different platforms instead of lingering on product related development resources. This particular problem is a major one that we keep seeing at banks: even-though the C-level votes for an internal innovation team at the end they hire only business guys who end up quarrelling on development resources half their time. It is simply not efficient.
As the number of applications and services had grown in Finastra Labs we faced with another common problem. If you are a product company — even a vendor or a bank — you need to have a clear and recognisable face everywhere. On this topic our freedom was the root cause of the chaos: each of our prototypes had a different UI, experimental controls, divergent graphical conceptions. There was a great pressure to solve this issue that lengthened the hand-over phase to our product department dramatically as well as confused our clients during innovation showcases. So we organised a design team within the Labs with UX talents joining us in mid 2015. And this is how we work today: a team consist of 20 people, with a progressive but unified UI not just delivering the next generation of our digital banking products but on top of that a vast collection of disruptive prototypes each quarter.
Over the years almost everything has changed around us, the expectations, our position and the fintech world around us. Nowadays most of the T1 banks established innovation departments, thousands of good fintech startups emerged and the scale we have to look at become global. We have adopted, we became truly agile, continuously looking for new methods, new ideas and of course great talents who can deliver extreme results working on our own concepts or coinnovating with partners, clients and prospects.
And the ultimate question, was it worth it?
We have no doubts. As part of a currently third largest fintech company in the World our small team has a unique role to influence each part of our company, not just only by delivering disruptive prototypes but sharing the innovative vision to inspire our colleagues. We spend a significant part of our time to improve our processes, try new tools and methodologies that eventually other teams and departments pick up as well. This dual role of our team is essential: we not only deliver disruptive concepts but shape the way how Finastra works and thinks about the World.
And consequently how the World thinks about Finastra
