“Agile ways of working makes our transformation possible”

Meet Mikael Andersson, Head of Digital Delivery

For the past three years Ikano Bank, started by the founder of IKEA, has been in the middle of a large-scale technology shift, transforming the business from a traditional transaction-based operation to a “streaming bank”. But the change is about much more than system solutions and new technology. We met up with Mikael Andersson to hear more about agile ways of working, how IT creates business value, and how Ikano Bank managed to let IKEA customers in the UK open a line of credit in under 1 minute.

Hi Mikael!

Enabling business growth through scalability is a main driver behind the technology development at Ikano Bank. What does that mean?

Our ambition is to grow our business, on our existing markets as well as through entering new ones. With the new cloud-based platform we can repeat and scale solutions in our markets and create relevant financial services for more of the many. This doesn’t mean one size fits all, to us it’s about seeing the opportunities for the specific market and take advantage of them. This is done customising as little as possible in the beginning and work iteratively with development.

The first product on the new platform was launched in 2021 and was a real challenge, can you tell us about that?

Yes, the challenge was to launch a new financial service that would enable IKEA customers in the UK to open a line of credit, in around 1 minute. The new product was expected to be in the market within a year, and I don’t think you need to work in Banking and Finance to understand that it’s a tight timeframe. Tight, but not impossible.

We soon realised that we had to solve something that no one had done before, considering that digital identification is not as well established in the UK as it is in Sweden and the Nordics. The product needed to have a fully digital onboarding, including credit check, identification of the customer, and payment. In short, we did not only need the new platform – we knew that we would never be successful if we continued to work in the same way as we had in the past. We had to change ourselves and our ways of working.

So, that was the starting point for agile ways of working at Ikano Bank. What are the main difficulties with such a transformation?

As in all major changes communication is key. Conflicts in the team can occur when you can’t call your manager for re-prioritisation. Agile development works when everyone has bought into the processes and ways of working and accepts that the communication paths will be different. As change leader you need to be transparent – about reasons why, expectations and how you plan to work together. My advice is to avoid starting off with too big plans, and with too many teams; start small and with a team that wants to work in an agile way. And then invite more and more teams gradually. In this way you will get more promoters for the agile methodology.

Your department, Digital Delivery, works closely with the Product, Security and Customer Experience teams. Why is that important?

IT has a completely different business value today than it had 10 years ago. Data is a core resource that requires understanding, not least in the financial sector where, in addition to the opportunities that the data provides, there are strict requirements on compliance. Working together give developers deeper knowledge of the product, and the product owner gets a deeper knowledge of the technology and customer experience. We are not driven by technology, but by our customers. Technology is only an enabler, meeting the needs and expectations of the customer is always our focus.

Thank you, Mikael, we look forward to following our continued agile journey!