Driving Sustainable Profit in Fintech with Torus, payabl., and Raiffeisen Bank International

Kirill Lisitsyn, CEO at Torus, Breno Oliveira, Chief Product Officer at payabl., and Mariia Komissarova, Head of Data & AI Delivery at Raiffeisen Bank International, explored how financial institutions can turn data intelligence into sustainable profit over the next three years. The conversation underscored that while data was once considered a nice to have it has quickly become a foundational requirement for survival in an increasingly competitive fintech landscape.

Lisitsyn opened the discussion by pointing out the harsh reality of eroding industry margins, arguing that firms must now be both competitive and profitable, which requires a precise focus on identifying the right customer segments. By extracting value-added insights from data, institutions can deliver meaningful solutions that help their customers thrive, rather than just crunching numbers for the sake of it.

Oliveira built on this by challenging the industry’s reliance on static dashboards and advocated for a move toward real-time decision-making, where the goal is to identify trends, such as the likelihood of transaction chargebacks, before they become a problem, emphasising that the biggest hurdle is not pricing, but having an organisational structure and the right technology in place to move as fast as the market trends themselves. Without support from top management, he warned that even the most innovative companies will lag behind.

Finally, Komissarova provided a balanced perspective on how traditional banks can compete with digital-native startups. While acknowledging that real-time infrastructure is often “baked in” for newer companies, she highlighted that legacy institutions possess a unique asset: deep client trust. Noting that for banks like hers, the path forward involves leveraging this trust while simultaneously investing heavily in the underlying data infrastructure, moving beyond big data to build out intelligence layers. Ultimately, Komissarova concluded that success relies on a company’s ability to pinpoint its historical strengths, invest in the right technology, and foster the top-down support that is necessary to evolve.