Today's

top partner

for CFD

Business

Crypto

Finance

Growth

The long-running tension between fintech agility and banking
caution is entering a new phase—one shaped not just by regulation and capital
discipline, but by the disruptive force of artificial intelligence.

That was the underlying message from a senior panel at the Finance Magnates London
Summit 2025, where executives from banks, fintechs and technology firms
debated how fast is “too fast” when innovation now moves at machine speed.

The session, titled “Move Fast & Fix Things? Corporate
Culture in Fintechs vs Banks,” brought together Tiama Hanson-Drury, Chief
Product and Technology Officer at legal-tech firm Opus 2; Charlotte Bullock,
Chief Product Officer at the Bank of London; Elena Novokreshchenova, Board
Director at Virgin Money and former Remitly executive; and Ezechi Britton,
co-founder of innovation accelerator Collectively Better.

From Headcount to Value Creation

Where growth once meant rapid hiring, the panel argued that
fintech and banking cultures are now converging around leaner, outcome-driven
models. Novokreshchenova, who helped scale Remitly from a three-person
operation, said today’s environment demands discipline on both sides of the
regulatory divide.

“Capital is expensive now,” she said. “Investors are looking
very carefully at profitability per head. You have to be mindful of how much
you bulk up your team versus what you actually produce.”

Britton said the industry has moved beyond what he called
“team empire building” toward a sharper focus on revenue and execution. “The
question now is not how many people you have, but are you generating revenue, are you
profitable, and are you growing?”

Hanson-Drury agreed, warning that early-stage companies
often mistake hiring for progress. At one former employer, she said, no role
could be approved unless someone had already performed the work for three
months—an approach designed to prevent premature expansion. Britton admitted he
had learned the lesson the hard way: “Six months later you’re going, ‘Oh dear,
I’ve got a problem right now.’”

Agile, but Not Aimless

If startups move quickly, banks move deliberately—and
both models carry risk. Bullock, who has worked in global corporates and
early-stage firms, described the extremes. In large institutions, lengthy
approval chains can outlast the relevance of the technology under review. In
startups, strategy can veer sharply with each new opportunity.

“I sometimes describe it as kids playing football,” she
said. “One person kicks, everyone follows. It creates change debt—an MVP goes
live, but when you try to scale it, the cracks show.”

Novokreshchenova added that the cultural divide is also
geographic, with US firms historically more tolerant of failure than their
European peers. Yet even banks are trying to adapt, she said, though regulators
inevitably slow the pace. “By default, they are slower in terms of change,” she
said. “But the appetite to improve is clearly there.”

AI: Competitive Weapon and Existential Risk

Where the panel showed both excitement and anxiety was artificial
intelligence. Hanson-Drury warned that the competitive moat once created by
professional judgment in fields such as banking and law is eroding fast.

“We’re now in a place where AI is being applied to
multi-step processes—reason and judgment,” she said. “What used to be a
competitive advantage is no longer one. If legacy players don’t harness this, fintechs will take
market share.”

But Bullock cautioned against “AI for the sake of AI,”
arguing that many use cases are disconnected from real strategy.
Novokreshchenova added that implementation—not invention—will define the next
phase of disruption. “It’s not plug-and-play,” she said, pointing to the
difficulty of embedding new models into fragile legacy data infrastructures.

Governance emerged as the sharpest fault line. Bullock
offered a stark warning about security risks. “With AI, copying an entire CRM
platform could take minutes,” she said. “That’s terrifying.”

Britton framed the dilemma bluntly: “Revolut can move fast
in a very different way from Barclays. The risk of making a mistake in
production is not the same. In banking, the moment you break things for
customers, you have a real issue.”

The Talent Question

As automation accelerates, the panel warned of an unintended
consequence: the hollowing out of junior roles. Bullock said entry-level
positions are already disappearing. “Who needs an analyst when you have AI at
your fingertips?” she asked. “But those people are also our future buyers.”

Hanson-Drury said future hires must combine curiosity with
humility. “If you’re too fixed on how you used to build products, you’ll be out
of date very quickly,” she said, describing how her teams now prototype ideas
with AI tools before they ever reach formal approval.

Britton, however, urged caution against blind reliance on
machine output. Without skepticism, he warned, “you’re going to get a
generation of young coders vibe-coding their way into production with no
understanding of what the code is doing.”

Novokreshchenova added a sobering ethical dimension, citing
concerns around AI in debt collection and vulnerable consumers. “Innovation is
exciting until there is an accident on the other side,” she said. Her advice to
both startups and banks: “Don’t hire yourself. Balance speed with experience.”

Strategy Before Speed

As the discussion closed, a common thread emerged:
technology may be accelerating, but strategy and people remain the decisive
variables. Hanson-Drury urged firms to ensure every employee understands the
basic economics of the business.
“We can build faster than ever,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s the
right thing to launch.”

Britton offered a final warning against rushing into AI
transformations without foundations in place. “Solve your people first,” he
said. “Then your process. Then your technology.”

The panel ended where it began—on the uneasy balance between
velocity and responsibility. In a world where systems can now move at machine
speed, the true challenge for banks and fintechs alike is not how fast they can
go, but how carefully they choose where to go next.

This article was written by Tareq Sikder at www.financemagnates.com.

—

— CONTENT NOT MODERATED BY G6

— Please be careful with this content. If you don’t think it should be here, please get in touch with us at [email protected]