– Ritavan
Both FinTechs and legacy financial institutions can execute on the same core playbook: building a proprietary, data-driven value creation flywheel that compounds over time. The models are different, but the strategy is the same: leverage your unique starting point, build (or acquire) complementary capabilities, and create a closed-loop growth engine that’s difficult to copy.
Consider Wise (formerly TransferWise) – a FinTech born digital. It started with a narrow, high-friction use case: cross-border money transfers. By obsessively focusing on transparency, low fees, and speed, Wise built trust in a segment traditionally dominated by opaque pricing and slow service. Over time, it expanded horizontally, adding multi-currency accounts, business services, and APIs, while reinvesting the behavioural data and customer insights it captured at every step. Despite starting as a digital-only company, Wise has built its own proprietary infrastructure, acquired regulatory licenses across markets, and turned itself into a full-stack financial services platform. It didn’t try to look like a bank; it built its own defensible engine that now powers about £10 billion in monthly flows.
On the other end of the spectrum is Bajaj Finance, a traditional, family-controlled Indian financial services behemoth. Despite its legacy roots, Bajaj has built what is arguably one of the most effective hybrid financial ecosystems globally. Starting from a base of consumer durables financing, it used its physical presence and underwriting expertise to grow rapidly, but what sets it apart is how it modernised from within. Bajaj built its own technology stack, developed real-time credit decisioning engines, and launched a digital platform for cross-selling loans, insurance, and payments – all tightly integrated with its legacy strengths. Its flywheel combines deep customer relationships, proprietary data, and capital access with digital interfaces and agile product delivery. It didn’t need to buy a FinTech; it became one, while staying true to its legacy advantages.
These two companies prove the same point from opposite directions: you win by identifying your unique advantages, building or acquiring what you lack, and integrating them into a self-reinforcing, proprietary system.
For a traditional bank or insurer, the lesson is clear: you don’t need to be born digital to win in a digital-first world. You have trust, scale, data, and licenses – assets that digital players spend years trying to acquire. What you need is a modern layer: personalised UX, real-time data loops, and intelligent automation. You can build that layer in-house, as Bajaj did, or acquire it through the right FinTech partnership. The key is integration. Don’t run a FinTech sideshow. Infuse it into your core.
Whether you’re starting from tech or from trust, the playbook is the same: build a proprietary flywheel where each customer interaction creates more data, more value, and more lock-in. That’s not just digital transformation, it’s strategic compounding. And in an industry where both growth and resilience matter, that’s how you build an edge that lasts.
About the author
Ritavan is an entrepreneurial technology leader, and author of Data Impact. Over the past decade he has built and scaled data-driven solutions that have impacted billions of euros. He has authored peer-reviewed papers, given invited talks at global conferences, and holds an international patent. Known for his first principles approach to building and scaling data-driven solutions across industries, Ritavan combines deep technical expertise with strategic vision and an execution-focused mindset.
