Building a Digital-First Bank: The Indexo Story

Gints Ozoliņš, the CTO of Indexo, brings over 19 years of experience in IT management, having worked with major organizations like Tele2, Tieto, and Cognizant. Now he’s leading the development of innovative technologies behind Latvia’s newest bank. In today’s episode, we’ll dive into the technical challenges of launching a bank, the innovations driving Indexo, and Gints’ vision for the future of banking technology. In this interview, he shares the journey of launching a digital bank from the ground up, the challenges of innovation in a regulated industry, and his philosophy on personal and professional success.

The vision: Disrupting a stagnant market

Indexo first disrupted the Latvian financial market five to six years ago by introducing passive fund management and significantly reducing pension fund fees. This positive change brought transparency and better returns for a large portion of the population. Inspired by this success, Indexo set out to do the same for the Latvian banking sector, which they saw as an oligopoly dominated by four large banks with a lack of competition.

Gints joined the team at the onset of the banking project, a decision he describes as a new and interesting challenge after years in large, established organizations. He values commitment and openness and believes in exploring new areas of growth. He finds personal fulfillment in the process of building something new and making a tangible difference.

The technical launch: Overcoming challenges

Building a bank from scratch presented a unique set of challenges. Indexo had no legacy systems to migrate, which allowed for freedom in technology choices, but they had to build the entire infrastructure from zero.

The initial steps included defining the service proposition, target customers, and products. The focus was on residential customers and providing all the necessary foundational services like payments and accounts. The biggest technical challenge was translating this vision into a working solution.

A key decision was the choice of a cloud platform. After evaluating the major players, Indexo chose Microsoft Azure, a decision driven by factors such as:

• A strong presence and established support in the Baltics.
• Existing positive experience with Azure in their pension business.
• A larger pool of local competence for the platform.

The team recognized that while the basic services of all cloud platforms are similar, the complexity of building a secure, automated, and scalable cloud-native solution in a highly regulated industry was significant. Gints noted that this was a learning process, as there were not many experts in Latvia with experience building complex, serverless architectures from the ground up.

Security, scalability, and the future of digital banking

In the highly regulated financial sector, compliance is paramount. Indexo focused on solutions and technologies available within the EU to avoid additional complications. They implemented a wide range of security measures throughout the customer lifecycle—from initial identification to data transmission and storage—to ensure customer data and transactions are safe. They also partnered with external companies, including TestDevLab, for functional, performance, and security testing.

For Gints, the difficulty level of launching the bank was an 8 out of 10, with the lack of legacy systems being the main reason it wasn't a 10. They built scalability into the infrastructure from day one and are confident they can handle hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of customers.

Looking to the future, Gints sees Indexo leading the way in Latvian digital banking. While physical branches may still be needed for an older population not familiar with digital tools, Indexo's goal is to make every service, including mortgages, fully digital. This digital-first approach combines the design thinking and ease of use of platforms like Revolut with the local presence and customer service of a traditional bank.

Defining success: A personal and professional view

When asked to define success, Gints offered two distinct perspectives.

For himself, success is about satisfaction and contentment. It's not about achieving a final state of satisfaction but enjoying the process and the challenge. He believes true satisfaction comes from embracing difficult, but not impossible, projects.

For a company, particularly a publicly-listed one like Indexo, success is measured by:

• Generating long-term shareholder returns
• Maintaining a good reputation
• Being a good employer
• Making a positive difference in society

He credits his own career success to the people around him—good managers and colleagues who served as mentors and examples to learn from. This gratitude for his mentors and a focus on surrounding himself with good people underpins his philosophy.

Speakers in the episode

Guest: Gints Ozoliņš

CTO at Indexo

With over 19 years of experience in IT management, Gints Ozoliņš has held key roles at major organizations like Tele2, Tieto and Cognizant. As the CTO of Indexo, Gints leads the development of innovative technologies at Latvia’s newest bank. With strong business expertise and skills in systems thinking and client relationships, he's dedicated to driving strategic change and managing large-scale IT services.

Host: Adrians Miņins

A/V Technical Project Manager

Adrians Miņins is a certified Project Manager who has worked at TestDevLab for several years now. With experience in the industry and a strong passion for software quality, Adrians is the perfect person to lead discussions with industry experts and delve deeper into exciting and thought-provoking topics.