Fintech insights: voices of industry leaders and innovators, vol. 1
The Fintech sector stands at a fascinating crossroads of innovation, regulation, and market evolution. Through our “Insights from Fintech Leaders” interview series, we’ve gathered valuable perspectives from ten (so far – more coming soon!) industry pioneers, all very much involved in shaping financial technology’s future.
From startup founders to seasoned executives, these leaders share candid insights about the challenges they face, opportunities they see, and lessons they’ve learned. Their collective wisdom offers a unique window into how Fintech transforms financial services and what lies ahead for the industry. Here’s what we learned from our conversations with fintech experts, while keeping it easy to read and digest – one of many chapters in our ongoing industry exploration.
Want an even deeper dive? Watch the full “Insights from Fintech Leaders” video interview series on our LinkedIn page, where industry pioneers share their firsthand experiences and thoughts about Fintech’s key challenges and opportunities. Follow Scalac to stay updated on Fintech innovation and join a community of technology leaders shaping the future of financial services.
Below are the companies whose leaders shared their insights with us. A massive thank you to everyone who took part in our interview series.
Let’s get into the questions we asked our Fintech pioneers and uncover insights about the industry’s present and future.
What’s the biggest challenge in Fintech today?
The Fintech industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, but with this expansion comes a unique set of challenges. Fintech companies face obstacles ranging from regulatory compliance to financial constraints that make it challenging to innovate and scale. Our industry experts share their perspectives on the most pressing challenges:
Regulatory compliance
Chris Crespo, Founding Partner & Chief Editor at Nordic Fintech Magazine, emphasizes the sheer volume of regulation as a significant challenge. “Fintech is a very dynamic space, but specifically for Fintechs that are licensed, there’s a ton of regulation that they need to deal with. Regulation keeps increasing on a regular basis.”
Access to financing
Michael Diguet, Co-founder & CEO of Algoan, highlights that “access to financing is still a big challenge for Fintechs and for startups in general.” This issue has become particularly pronounced in the wake of the financing crisis that began in 2022. The scarcity of funding has created a significant hurdle for fintech companies looking to grow and innovate. Diguet emphasizes that the resource-intensive nature of regulatory compliance in the fintech sector compounds this challenge. The combination of limited access to capital and the need to allocate substantial resources to meet regulatory requirements creates a complex environment for fintech startups to navigate and thrive.
Operational efficiency
Shani Golov, Senior Director of Sales at ThetaRay, discusses the challenges in compliance processes, such as “high volume of alerts, high false positive ratio, or a lot of operation that needs to be invested in these processes.” These inefficiencies in traditional transaction monitoring solutions create significant operational costs and resource strain for financial institutions.
Scaling and customer acquisition
Theodor Christensen, CEO and Founder at AgroRisk, notes the difficulty in “establishing partnerships and scaling innovative Fintech solutions to really get the big institutions to take them on board.” This reflects a broader industry trend where fintech companies must navigate the complexities of becoming trusted partners to established financial institutions.
Balancing growth with regulatory requirements
Arturs Piliksers, Partner at Bonusukarte, emphasizes that regulatory requirements are becoming increasingly demanding for fintech companies, particularly in areas like AML and KYC compliance. He notes that this challenge is compounded by the dynamic nature of regulations, where companies often prepare documentation according to one law only to have another law come into effect before completion. Despite these challenges, Piliksers maintains an optimistic perspective, suggesting that regulatory supervision institutions themselves recognize there should be reasonable limits to regulatory requirements. His experience indicates that while the compliance world remains challenging, it has reached a relatively stable state where companies can effectively operate while meeting their regulatory obligations.
Finding patient capital
Kristoffer Stellini Juul Ejlersen, Co-Founder & CEO at Myver, discusses the challenge of “finding strategic investors with patient capital,” especially for companies building long-term infrastructure. As the CEO of a company developing banking infrastructure, he particularly stresses the importance of securing investors who understand and commit to the extended timeline required for such fundamental developments. Ejlersen notes that beyond just finding funding, the real challenge lies in maintaining a steady stream of cash flow and identifying investors willing to stay committed for the long haul. This perspective reflects a broader industry shift from rapid growth expectations to a more sustainable, patient approach to building fintech infrastructure. For companies like Myver, this means focusing on core product development and securing initial agreements to demonstrate viability before seeking larger investment rounds.
How is AI changing financial services?
Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing Fintech in numerous ways – fundamentally transforming how financial services are developed, delivered, and consumed. Our conversations with Fintech leaders reveal a shift from viewing AI as merely a technological tool. This evolution creates new opportunities while raising important questions about implementation and practical value:
Enhancing decision-making
Michael Diguet explains how AI, particularly generative AI, has improved their credit scoring processes: “About 80% of this human work has been replaced by generative AI, making us even more efficient to train new algorithms and enter new markets in Europe.”
Improving compliance and risk management
Shani Golov describes how their AI solution learns the normal behavior of clients based on historical data, without relying on predefined suspicious scenarios or thresholds. This approach enables the system to detect anomalies in transaction patterns that may indicate suspicious activity. By moving away from traditional rule-based monitoring systems, this AI-driven method helps financial institutions reduce false positives and improve the efficiency of their compliance processes. The solution represents a shift from conventional transaction monitoring approaches to more sophisticated, behavior-based anomaly detection.
Automating research and analysis
Christopher Lyrhem, Chief Future Officer at Sircular, highlights AI’s potential in automating quality research, noting that “We can automate quality research, and I think the application value for this is immense.” As a researcher with 16 years of experience, Lyrhem emphasizes that AI’s ability to automate quality research represents a breakthrough, particularly when combined with AI agents that can conduct continuous research on specific future scenarios. He envisions thousands of AI agents working simultaneously to analyze different aspects of societal developments, marking a significant shift from traditional automated analysis focused primarily on numerical data and coding rather than text and semantic analysis.
Operational efficiencies
Jeremy Boles, Head of Fintech Sales & Partnerships at Cambrist, emphasizes that while AI has become a buzzword recently with generative AI, his company has been utilizing AI technologies for an extended period, particularly in predictive analytics models for trend prediction and data pattern forecasting. He notes that AI isn’t necessarily new technology, but rather is currently at the peak of its hype cycle. Boles predicts that over the next 6 to 18 months, the industry will see a combination of more practical use cases emerging while the hype subsides, suggesting that when AI becomes truly embedded in processes, it will no longer be a topic of discussion.
Enhancing customer experience
Einar Eidsson, Head of Product at indó iceland, sees significant potential in AI for “understanding incoming customer feedback and helping people find their way around user environments.” He emphasizes that while these capabilities already exist to some extent, the key challenge lies in increasing the actual value delivered through these technologies.
Accelerating product development
Christopher Lyrhem advocates for leveraging AI agents as development tools, suggesting that they can aid in creating code and improving products rapidly. He emphasizes treating AI agents as “the next big thing” that can help developers become more productive by essentially cloning their capabilities. Lyrhem recommends using these agents not only for code creation but also in the iterative process of product improvement, ensuring products are both market-ready and capable of rapid enhancement. This perspective is grounded in his vision of creating products “that is good enough to the marketplace and also improve your products fast enough for the marketplace.”
Which Fintech trends show the most potential?
The Fintech industry is witnessing a significant shift from isolated solutions to interconnected ecosystems. Our industry experts highlight several transformative trends reshaping current financial services and fundamentally changing how we think about money, transactions, and financial infrastructure. These trends create new opportunities while challenging traditional business models:
Embedded finance
Chris Crespo talks about the transformative potential of embedded finance, noting that financial services fundamentally serve as tools to help people acquire goods and services produced by other industries. He envisions exciting value propositions emerging when financial experiences are seamlessly integrated into sectors like travel, retail, and automotive. This integration creates an ecosystem where non-banking organizations can develop and incorporate financial solutions, bridging the gap between consumers’ desires and the financial mechanisms needed to fulfill them.
Open banking
Michael Diguet expresses strong enthusiasm for open banking’s potential, particularly noting its increasing efficiency and standardization across Europe due to EU legislation. He emphasizes that open banking-based credit scoring is gaining significant traction, with more credit decisions being made using this technology throughout Europe. For Diguet’s company, which specializes in credit scoring, this standardization creates exciting opportunities as it makes the technology more accessible and easier to implement across different European markets.
AI and machine learning
Multiple experts, including Christopher Lyrhem and Jeremy Boles, highlighted AI’s transformative potential in fintech. Lyrhem, Chief Future Officer at Circular, emphasizes AI’s unprecedented ability to automate quality research, noting that thousands of AI agents can simultaneously analyze different aspects of future scenarios in financial services. Boles, Head of Fintech Sales & Partnerships at Cambrist, points out that while AI has become a recent buzzword with generative AI, his company has long been utilizing AI technologies in predictive analytics models for trend prediction and data pattern forecasting. He anticipates that over the next 6-18 months, the industry will see more practical use cases emerging while the hype subsides, suggesting that when AI becomes truly embedded in processes, it will no longer be a topic of discussion.
Compliance as a business enabler
Shani Golov observes that financial institutions are undergoing a fundamental shift in their approach to compliance. She points out that while compliance was traditionally viewed as a “blocker to the business” that companies merely had to “tick the boxes” for, financial institutions are now changing their mindset. They increasingly recognize that good and strong compliance processes can enable business expansion and help extend their market footprint, transforming compliance from a perceived business blocker into a business enabler.
Interoperability and partnerships
Theodor Christensen identifies a significant shift in the fintech industry towards interoperability and strategic partnerships. He emphasizes that companies increasingly recognize that “no one can deliver the whole answer, but we need to partner up to deliver parts of the answer, be really good at what we do and do one vertical or deliver one part of a solution and then teaming up together.” This represents a notable evolution from previous approaches where large organizations attempted to provide comprehensive solutions. Christensen views this transition to more nimble, partnership-based approaches as a positive development, marking a departure from “these holistic, big organisations that tried to do everything and didn’t do it very well.”
Enhanced user experiences
Einar Eidsson envisions advancements in balancing AI-driven and human interactions to enhance customer experiences on a large scale. He emphasizes developing AI systems capable of engaging in human-like dialogue without provoking the user resentment commonly linked to chatbots. Eidsson envisions a future where AI can provide efficient service while maintaining a natural, friction-free interaction that saves both time and money for companies and their customers.
How to balance innovation with compliance?
In today’s Fintech space, the relationship between innovation and compliance presents a complex challenge. As Jeremy Boles notes, with regulatory compliance consuming up to 10% of banking revenue, finding the right balance is crucial for all Fintech players. While regulations constantly evolve, Einar Eidsson reminds us that banks, Fintechs, and regulators share a common goal: keeping customers safe while fostering innovation.
Our industry experts offer perspectives on navigating this delicate balance, from working within regulatory sandboxes to building compliance-first solutions. Their insights reveal that successful Fintech companies don’t view compliance as an obstacle but rather as a foundation for sustainable growth and customer trust:
Collaborative approach with regulators
Chris Crespo points to Latvia and Lithuania’s regulators as examples of successfully balancing innovation with compliance. He specifically highlights that “the regulator in Latvia or the regulator in Lithuania they’ve actually been very good at fine-striking a balance.” This observation comes from his experience discussing this challenge with many regulators, acknowledging that while achieving this balance is difficult, these Baltic regulators have managed to create an environment that enables companies to innovate and test new products while maintaining necessary regulatory guardrails for customer data protection and jurisdictional compliance.
Building expertise
According to Michael Diguet, balancing innovation with regulation is primarily “a matter of expertise, of hiring the good people to manage balance between innovation and regulation.” He points to his own company’s experience, noting that despite being a relatively small team of only 30 people, they are regulated by the French regulator ACPR and maintain ISO 27001 certification, demonstrating that it’s possible to be both innovative and compliant when you have the right expertise on board.
Privacy and data protection focus
David Barriere, Head of International Sales at AdvanThink, emphasizes that data privacy and consumer protection must be fundamental priorities in fintech operations. He specifically highlights that being “compliant with the respect of the privacy of the data” and ensuring “protection of the people” are the main points that regulators are particularly cautious about. Barriere advocates for choosing solutions that minimize system noise and false alerts while allowing businesses to focus on relevant suspicious activities, thereby enabling companies to operate efficiently while maintaining strong privacy and security standards. This approach helps organizations maintain compliance while still being able to “run fast and grow.”
Working together
Einar Eidsson points out that banks, fintechs, and regulators ultimately work toward shared objectives. He points out that “we are in this together, like banks, and fintechs, and regulators – we’re trying to achieve the same thing: we want people to be safe, we want people’s money to be safe”. Despite the challenges of constantly evolving regulations, Eidsson advocates for continued collaboration, stressing that these stakeholders are not adversaries but partners working toward common goals of protecting customers and solving their problems effectively. He underscores the importance of maintaining this collaborative mindset even when new regulations appear to target specific companies, recognizing that the ultimate aim is to help customers solve problems in the best possible way.
Top tips for Fintech newcomers
Launching a Fintech venture requires more than just innovative technology or a brilliant idea. Industry leaders share practical advice from their real-world experiences of building and scaling Fintech companies. From managing timelines to securing first agreements, here’s what they recommend for those starting their Fintech journey:
Focus on the customer
Chris Crespo advises, “Go and ask your customer what problem you have and how I can help you solve this problem.”
Network and participate in events
Michael Diguet recommends attending industry events to make connections and prepare for future expansion.
Prioritize compliance
Shani Golov stresses the importance of having a proper compliance solution before any transaction execution.
Be patient and persistent
Kristoffer Stellini Juul Ejlersen emphasizes the need for grit and patience, noting that building a Fintech company takes time and effort.
Focus on core product and first agreement
Ejlersen also advises developing a core product and closing the first agreement to secure initial funding.
Leverage AI
Christopher Lyrhem suggests employing AI agents to increase productivity in various aspects of business development.
Be realistic
Jeremy Boles recommends being prepared for things to take longer and cost more than initially anticipated.
Gain domain expertise
Theodor Christensen emphasizes the importance of understanding the industry and customer pain points before developing solutions.
Partnering with a Fintech development company – this is the way
A clear picture emerges from these conversations: a successful Fintech project isn’t just about technology – it’s about solving real problems while dealing with regulatory challenges. The industry is maturing, moving from a phase of rapid growth to one of strategic consolidation and thoughtful innovation.
Partnerships between a traditional financial institution and a Fintech innovator (e.g., fintech development company) are becoming increasingly common. Such collaborations pave the way for sustainable, user-centered solutions that better serve today’s financial needs. For those looking to make their mark in Fintech, the message is clear: build such partnerships, focus on solving genuine problems, and view compliance not as a burden but as a foundation for sustainable growth. The future belongs to those who can balance innovation with practicality while keeping customer needs at the heart of their solutions.
Want to be part of our Fintech-themed conversation? Connect with us on LinkedIn to access even more expert insights and join our growing community of Fintech innovators. Don’t be a stranger!
