To increase growth and provide even better service to their customers, UAB „General Financing“ became a bank under the new name of „General Financing bankas“ now adding deposits to its portfolio.

The idea began three years ago in 2017, when Lithuania created conditions for specialised banks. These conditions establish a favorable environment for Lithuanian and foreign start-ups seeking to provide various financial services in the European Economic Area.

Building a portfolio of specialised banking services allows „General Financing bankas“ to offer their customers a wider range of services. As one of the first banks in Lithuania granted a specialised bank license, „General Financing bankas“ is an innovator, contributing to a changing banking landscape in Lithuania and across Europe.

But transformation doesn’t happen overnight. There were a number of challenges: navigating the labyrinths of Lithuanian and European legal acts, managing compliance throughout the organisation and building a future-ready tech stack to enable growth.

For a modern bank, the ecosystem is a critical success factor. It brings the key elements of digital banking – cloud, big data, and open APIs – together to build an excellent customer experience. The challenge in banking transformation is integrating legacy systems with the digital ecosystem.

"The most difficult and probably the biggest challenge was that we have one IT team that had to support the systems developed over fifteen years and create new ones that the bank needs," says Vygandas Jonušas, Director of the Information Technology Department of „General Financing bankas“.

Fortunately, Mambu’s cloud-native banking platform has allowed „General Financing bankas“ to build a best-for-purpose agile and scalable architecture to progressively change their systems. The quick and flexible assembly of independent systems on a cloud platform gives them the ability to build intuitive, responsive features that can be easily and continuously updated.

For example, in order to launch banking activity, it was critical to connect to CENTROlink, the payment system designed and managed by the Bank of Lithuania, that provides the gateway to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). Close cooperation between all three parties, Mambu, Inventi and „General Financing bankas“, guaranteed that the usual complex process was rather straightforward and cost-effective.

The future is a moving target

Now that „General Financing bankas“ has launched and reached an important milestone in their transformation, they continue building for constant change and the evolving needs of their customers. Their plans for the next 2 to 3 years are to create the greatest possible added value for their customers and continue building new products and services to meet customer needs.