We've been having closed-door conversations with product leaders in banks, insurers and fintechs across EMEA. We wanted a clear, honest view of what’s really happening in their product teams.
"Last quarter the board doubled our AI budget, yet I still can’t tell them where the value will land." - Product executive, tier-1 bank
A common theme is mentioned by the interviewees: delivery capabilities have improved, yet the business impact is still hard to see. When asked “why?”, leaders have identified four challenges soaking up their time and preventing organisations from turning delivery efforts into clear business results. In this first article of the series, we share some of the initial insights collected.
Four core challenges for product leaders in financial services
1. Fragmented priorities hold back value creation
“We work on too much stuff. We spread our capacity too much on a whole wide range of priorities instead of obliging all business lines and tribe owners to focus on their top 20 % of initiatives. Those are the ones that will deliver 80% of the value.” Product executive, tier-1 bank
Financial‑services product teams seem to fall into the “more is better” trap. By green‑lighting several initiatives at once, they dilute capacity and end up moving everything (if anything) forward slowly instead of pushing a few high‑impact initiatives over the finish line.
This overload is ultimately represented by product roadmaps that are packed 12–18 months out and filled with conflicting priorities. Every stakeholder often negotiates for their own features, the roadmap becomes a ledger of political compromises rather than a clear path to business outcomes. This leads teams to lose additional time reconciling dependencies and re‑prioritising work, reducing velocity and impact.
To restore focus, interviewees shared that some organisations have pushed teams to corroborate each product initiative with a concise, data‑driven business case. The goal is to have clear answers for 2 questions:
- What customer problem does the initiative solve?
- How will it create economic return, either through revenue growth or cost efficiency?
If the answers are weak or unquantified, the idea waits in the backlog until evidence improves. Once an initiative is approved, executives mention tying it to OKRs and reviewing progress monthly. Initiatives that miss value or timing thresholds are either reshaped or shut down, with resources redeployed to higher‑yield opportunities.
According to some product leaders interviewed, this disciplined cycle (rigorous selection up front, ruthless monitoring in flight) helps turn a crowded roadmap into a clear plan of focused initiatives that collectively move the needle for customers and stakeholders.
2. Conservative risk approach
"There is also a heavy regulatory burden, especially in the bank. We need to make sure that we can prioritize there as well." - Product executive, fintech scaleup
Financial‑services product leaders operate under some of the toughest regulatory standards in the market. Capital‑adequacy rules, data‑privacy laws, and consumer‑protection directives stack up into a heavy regulatory burden that shapes every feature, release, and customer interaction. Compliance is non‑negotiable, but it crowds the roadmap: teams routinely divert capacity to mandatory projects (e.g. GDPR upgrades, AML controls, audit logging) regardless of whether these initiatives address a validated user need or generate new revenue.
Many companies play it safe by imposing overly strict controls, even when simpler ones could do the job. This cautious approach can help in heavily regulated industries, but being too conservative can also slow down innovation. The best compliance approach should match the company’s actual risks, products, and regulatory environment. Finding the right balance between compliance and velocity is one of the most strategic calls a product leader must make.
Because every new feature or product must clear legal and risk functions, development cycles are longer. A single sign‑off loop can add weeks or months, and multiple loops can turn into quarters. The effect is two‑fold:
- The cost of delay erodes the economic return foreseen
- Feedback from real users arrives too late to influence early design choices.
This slowdown is compounded by a second, subtler constraint: distance from the end user. Organizations deliberately introduce layers between product teams and customers, especially in enterprise B2B contexts, where contracts often run into hundreds of thousands of euros. Vendors assign dedicated account managers, project teams, or solution consultants to manage client relationships and drive adoption.
This structure is designed to minimize the risk of misalignment or friction with key accounts: every touchpoint is controlled, every conversation is filtered, and every issue is carefully managed. The intention is to preserve trust and stability in high-value relationships. But a side effect of this model is that product teams often lack first-hand exposure to how their solutions are actually used. As a result, feedback becomes delayed, filtered, or distorted.
“The project managers who are close to the customer are the proxy of the customer. So it’s there that you have to distill (…) there’s a lot of stuff built that nobody uses.” — Product executive, fintech scale-up
This disconnect shares a root cause with regulatory friction: risk aversion. Just as compliance requirements force product teams to think defensively, client-facing structures are often designed to de-risk large accounts, not optimise user discovery. In both cases, the safeguards intended to prevent damage inadvertently slow down learning and reduce innovation output.
Some product leaders attempt to reintroduce direct customer insight by setting up expert panels: groups of industry veterans or user champions who serve as proxies for broader user bases. While helpful, this approach is a workaround rather than a cure.
Ultimately, regulation and indirect feedback loops reinforce each other: the more risk-averse the system, the harder it becomes to experiment, learn, and pivot. As a result, teams tend to favor “safe” roadmap bets over bold ones, compounding the risk of long-term stagnation and loss of competitive edge.
3. Operational overload
All the product executives we have interviewed mentioned that most of their week is consumed by “running the machine.” Release coordination, security sign‑offs, people management, and compliance checks dominate their calendar. These activities are deemed essential even though they crowd out time for strategic work like market analysis and product evangelization.
This pattern is self‑reinforcing. Why? Most organisations reward output metrics (e.g. features shipped, story points completed), so leaders naturally focus on the processes that protect throughput and schedule. The more attention they devote to protecting delivery, the less time they have to frame, test, and track the business outcomes those features should deliver.
Many leaders hope AI will help automate the most time-consuming operational tasks. While early pilots show promise, few have yet delivered significant time savings. Until automation matures, the operational load is likely to remain on human shoulders.
4. The talent gap
Recruiting talent seems to be a headache for most of the leaders interviewed. Product professionals who combine deep technical skills with domain knowledge in banking or insurance are difficult to find. Leaders, therefore often spend significant time recruiting and sometimes coaching new joiners on industry basics, reviewing detailed decisions, and back‑stopping critical analyses.
“These topics absorb 80 % of my time; you need experience in the industry just to get up to speed." - Product executive, fintech vendor
Larger players have tried to close the talent gap through university partnerships, fast‑tracking graduates into product roles. While this helps at junior levels, the shortfall persists in senior positions where the competition from pure‑play tech firms is fiercest.
Conclusions
Despite mature delivery capabilities, financial services product organisations struggle to translate them into tangible business outcomes.
Product roadmaps remain overloaded with priorities, often reflecting internal political interests rather than strategic alignment. While essential, regulatory requirements introduce complexity that slows innovation and impacts talent acquisition. Finally, operational tasks dominate product leaders' schedules, leaving limited time for strategic work that will ultimately drive business results and delivery focus.
To address these challenges, product leaders are taking practical steps. They are narrowing their focus onto fewer, higher-value initiatives that clearly align with strategic objectives. These initiatives are tracked closely through business cases and, in some cases, outcome-based metrics (e.g. OKRs). Additionally, some organizations are bringing product teams closer to customers by establishing regular touchpoints and direct user feedback channels. Others have mentioned investing in automation and lean product operations to free leadership capacity for strategic tasks.
In the next article from this series, we'll expand on these early insights by providing a comprehensive overview of the challenges faced by product organisations in financial services, and will discuss how organisations try to overcome them. Stay tuned!
