Also, this week:

• 😓 Troubles for Danish Bank Lunar

• 👩‍⚖️ AI Lawyers are coming

Solving the Business Process Puzzle in Fintech

As I work with more and more organizations within Fintech, I am constantly amazed at how little control and understanding organizations actually have with critical business processes. They might have a drawing of their intended business process when they started the project. Still, when you start to dig in, it becomes clear that they don’t know the order of their integrations or where the different business rules trigger (or sometimes even what the business rules are).

Business logic loves to hide in the quiet spaces in the code, and having a drawing of your process doesn't mean you actually know what's happening. You must go deep into the code to understand how each piece impacts the overall process. And most business developers won’t (or can’t) go there.

That is why many see the need for solutions like Camunda and BPMN (Business Process Model Notation) files, where the business process is connected to actual code (heck, we even have a product using their engine for orchestration). You might think that solves the problem, but that is only half of the equation:

• It doesn’t answer which business rules triggered for one specific application.

• It doesn’t answer which screens the users see during their application process.

• It doesn’t make the case worker aware of the intricacies of an application process.

If you want to understand a business process, it’s not enough to see the integrations, business rules, and when they happen. You also have to take into account the user experience for the customers as well as the user experience for the case workers. We’ve been trying to bridge this gap in our loan application and onboarding products for the last year. Two things have been instrumental in this process:

1. Merging UX with BPMN

Merging the actual user experience with the BPMN so that business developers, developers, and designers always are on the same page.

Ultimately, understanding a business process when dealing with Fintech requires knowledge of both the technical components and the user experience. The intersection of those two components is where we can truly unlock the power of Fintech.

2. Expose business rules to case workers

Let the case workers see all the business rules and why an application has gone to manual handling. By doing that, the process is better understood, and the case workers can handle applications much faster with insights into the rules and data that triggered manual handling.

By going beyond BPMN and having both the UX and the business logic in one place, we can provide our customers with a holistic view of their process and make changes to it faster than before. That way, you can form a complete picture, making the puzzle easier to solve and the business process smoother to handle. If this is something that makes your brain tingle, just hit reply, and we can talk further!

😓 Troubles for Danish Bank Lunar

Danish challenger bank Lunar has had a difficult year, with the company sending out layoff warnings to around 50 employees at the end of last year. The layoffs significantly impact Lunar's operations in Norway, with both the country manager and communications chief leaving the company. This follows a series of setbacks for Lunar throughout the year, including withdrawing a billion-dollar bid for Instabank, laying off 40 employees, and facing criticism and fines from Danish financial regulators. The company's founder and CEO have said that the layoffs were necessary to make the company more profitable.

This is bad news for the Norwegian Fintech ecosystem. Lunar had an interesting voice and tried to take an important challenger position in the market. However, in my opinion, you aren't a real challenger without providing bread-and-butter services like mortgage and eFaktura.

👩‍⚖️ AI Lawyers are coming

I came across two interesting news regarding AI lawyers this week:

• DoNotPay will pay any lawyer or person with an upcoming case in front of the United States Supreme Court $1 000 000 to wear AirPods and let their robot lawyer argue the case by repeating exactly what it says. The main bump in the road so far is that the Supreme Court bans any electronic devices from being present in the courtroom while Court is in session.

• Another interesting product is Tome: a tool that simplifies the process of reviewing investment or venture contracts by summarizing the terms, highlighting common clauses, and suggesting possible alternatives. Currently, it focuses on SAFEs (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) and management letters, but it plans to expand to other types of contracts in the future.

When the hourly fees are very high, and the rules you follow are written down and based on other documented cases, you are bound for AI lawyers to contribute to the field in one way or another.