At the XT25 Fintech Conference, Alexey Gabsatarov, Chief Technology Officer at Kroo Bank, shared the story of Kroo’s journey to becoming one of the UK’s newest fully regulated digital banks.
In his talk, “Becoming a Digital Retail Bank: What We’ve Learned on Kroo’s Journey”, Alexey highlighted the technical, cultural, and regulatory challenges of moving from fintech startup to full-service retail bank.
He discussed key lessons from the journey, including:
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Simple, ethical banking: delivering fewer but more impactful features, with market-leading rates, zero fees abroad, and a commitment to sustainability.
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Architecture evolution: moving from a modular monolith to microservices, and eventually to event-driven and serverless approaches for scale and agility.
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Scaling infrastructure as code: developing tools and practices to standardise and automate deployment while supporting rapid growth.
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Adopting AI/ML responsibly: embedding machine learning in fraud detection, customer support, and unstructured data processing, while balancing innovation with governance and regulatory compliance.
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Building accountability and motivation: ensuring teams remain autonomous, competent, and connected, while avoiding the “unaccountability machine” that can plague large organisations.
Alexey’s talk offered a candid look at how Kroo is combining technology, culture, and ethics to reshape the customer banking experience.
Watch the full talk here:
Access Alexey’s slides here.
To discover Financial Services offerings at JUXT, visit: https://www.juxt.pro/financial.
