Building a new bank; how culture is key to agile success

In the last few years, we have seen a growing and overwhelming pressure for banks to compete with fintechs. A rising demand to become agile in what is historically, a rigid and regulated environment. With the cost of living increasing across the world and global events impacting the way we use and consume finance, customers are looking for new and innovative ways to finance their purchases and make more informed spending choices.

The tipping point

Just three years ago, on the unwitting edge of a global pandemic, the wheels began to turn in our transformation journey. The products and services on offer were not nearly fast enough to market. The ability to adapt to customer needs and desires was reactionary and IT costs were running away, growing in technical debt and complexity.

Things needed to change for us to compete in the competitive financial e-commerce space in a sustainable and scalable manner. ?

Starting small

In the business side, a compelling commercial opportunity arose for us to support IKEA in strengthening their UK e-commerce and in-store offering. Meanwhile, in digital, a strong demand to mitigate the technical complexity of the Bank meant the path was set for our journey to begin.

Embracing the principle of delivering early and often, it was important to start small and build upon solid foundations. In April 2020, our journey started. With a commercial drive and an architecturally led vision for a scalable technology platform, a small number of agile teams were born to prototype this seemingly radical delivery approach. At least it seemed that way for those of us in the banking community.

Alternatives

For many years, projects had followed a formulaic and episodical pattern. This more often resulted in big bang deliveries into markets that had evolved, where consumer needs had changed during the course of delivery. The focus had been on hitting budgets and launch dates with cumbersome, siloed activities. Transparency and feedback were often limited to restricting teams on their road to success. Success was measured in the completion of a project and generally not value-driven or outcome-based.

This might be appropriate and even more suitable in some environments, but digital banking was evolving. We were, and are, fortunate to have the support and belief from our owners and the management in being part of that evolution.?

Proof is in the pudding

The evidence was clear to us, after only seven months of the journey commencing, the teams had scaled to over one hundred people. We deployed the first pilot product on a brand new cloud-based banking platform to production, accessible to friends and family by Christmas that same year.

The change was seismic and by the end of 2021, just seven months after the commercial launch, we had onboarded more than 30,000 unique customers.

The challenges

The road has been full of twists and turns, and we have navigated hurdles along the way.

The move from on-premise to public cloud was one that required strategy and consideration to ensure compliance and regulatory needs were met.

Expanding products from one to many, scaling across the organisation and markets in a sustainable and efficient way required a fundamental understanding of our customers' needs whilst maintaining a constant eye on technical integrity.

Arguably the biggest challenge of all was the most important one, the people, their ways of working, the culture and change management aspects that are all too often overlooked or underestimated. Living one of our key values of working together, with regular reflections, lessons and learnings along the way, we have strived to build a new environment where Business and Technology work side by side. ?

Diversifying and experimenting

Our values and essence are core to how we operate and evolve. This means that our strategy has been to embrace and learn from different approaches. We make value-based assessments, using data and fact-based information to determine which path works for us in both our products and the way we operate.

Working with different vendors in both size and location has enabled us to try different constellations and set ups whilst maintaining some of the core responsibilities internally; Ikano Bank continues to own the governance, operating model and ensures employees hold key positions.

We seek team members with the right competencies, expertise and attitudes to work together with us as part of the Ikano Bank team, spreading the Ikano culture and mindset across our many locations around the globe.

How far we have come

Whilst the technology aspects of our agile journey have been vital, the success of this agile approach to our product development has only truly been possible because of the people. The teams, attitudes and trust we have built are our most valuable achievement.

We are now following a decoupled architectural approach, focusing on SaaS solutions with minimal customisation. We are cloud-based with native services and take a greenfield approach whilst limiting exposure to the existing infrastructure.

Working together to create, plan and achieve common goals has aligned us to our customer and partner needs and allowed us to remain relevant and competitive in the market.

Reflections

It is remarkable how far you can come in only three short years. A change spanning an entire ecosystem of people, the products offered and technologies used. We have created the ability to adapt to change, incorporating fast feedback loops and scale in a way not previously possible.

Our roots and bond with our founder, Ingvar Kamprad have encouraged us to be innovative, daring and to strive for agility at scale in a fast-paced environment. Whether you call it agile or debate the benefits and downfalls of methodologies and frameworks, this way of working has been transformative for the way we work.

Without a shadow of a doubt, our culture and people have led us to become a better, more nimble bank for our customers.