Composable Architecture and the Cultural Shift of Agile Delivery

The successful scaling of a digital financial product depends less on initial speed and more on establishing a robust, right-sized foundation. For Paragon Bank, this meant adopting an enterprise composable architecture to support its “Spring” savings proposition. By utilizing Mambu’s API-first and modular design, Paragon was able to seamlessly connect multiple providers and suppliers to create a full market offering. This architectural choice allowed the bank’s internal teams to essentially “set and forget” the core infrastructure, freeing them to focus entirely on the front-end user experience and ensuring the proposition remained hassle-free for the end customer.

A critical component of the successful launch was a disciplined, phased rollout strategy. Paragon began with an employee pilot followed by a “friends and family” phase, which provided a stable environment to test, refine, and iterate on the proposition before a full public launch. This approach ensured the final product was reliable and scalable, as evidenced by positive customer reviews and high Trustpilot scores. Unlike traditional savings franchises where customers are presented with a wide range of products to navigate themselves, Spring “turned the model on its head” by presenting curated solutions to specific financial problems, reducing the cognitive overhead for the consumer.

Beyond the product itself, the development of Spring spearheaded a fundamental cultural transformation within Paragon Bank. While the institution had experimented with smaller front-end changes in the past, the scale of Spring required enterprise-wide functions to adopt agile methodologies, product ownership roles, and iterative work cycles. This shift required employees across the business to acquire new knowledge and apply it rapidly, fundamentally changing how the bank approaches delivery and transformation.

The partnership with Mambu provided the necessary consultancy and technical reassurance to prove that a traditional institution could successfully operate with a modern, agile mindset. By carving out a space for this new way of working, Paragon demonstrated to its stakeholders that it could deliver high-impact digital transformation from within. This has resulted in a significant boost in organizational confidence, with all future initiatives now viewed through the lens of the successful agile delivery model established during the Spring project.

https://mambu.com/en/customer/paragon-bank?utm_campaign=Deposits&Savings&utm_source=FFNews&utm_medium=paid_media&utm_content=interview

Key Highlights from the Fintech Show:

• Composable Foundation: Karishma Jaycee explains that scaling Spring required an architecture capable of connecting to a diverse ecosystem of suppliers.

• Phased Launch Strategy: The importance of “friends and family” testing to ensure the product was fully refined before hitting the public market.

• A New Savings Paradigm: Derek Sprawling discusses how Spring differs from traditional franchises by proactively presenting solutions to problems rather than a baffling array of choices.

• Cultural Agile Transformation: Imogen Gurney highlights how the project forced a traditional bank to embrace sprints and iterative delivery on an enterprise scale.

• Organisational Confidence: How the successful partnership and delivery have paved the way for future large-scale transformations across the bank.