Across the Financial Services industry, transformation is shaped by regulatory complexity, existing systems, and the need to balance control with adaptability. These challenges become even more pronounced in Cooperative Banking where transformation must operate within decentralised networks, strong local autonomy, and embedded governance models.

Standardised, one-size-fits-all approaches rarely reflect how teams actually work in these environments, often leading to low adoption, limited ownership, and reduced long-term impact.

What proves more effective is a people-centred approach to transformation, one that focuses on how teams collaborate, how decisions are made, and how ownership is distributed across delivery. Rather than applying a standard approach, the ability to adapt to each context, indicators from delivery, and the specific challenges teams face becomes essential, and a consultancy model that puts people at the center becomes the backbone of an effective transformation and lasting change.

To explore how this balance can be achieved in practice, we sat down with Ana Trisca, Head of BizTech Consultancy for Financial Services at Accesa, to discuss and understand how consulting focus shifts based on real delivery indicators and how hybrid models, targeted interventions, and clear ownership help organisations run both small and large-scale transformation initiatives, with minimal disruption, effective adoption, while keeping a close eye throughout the entire customer journey.

Developing a fit-for-context consultancy model

When teams lack clarity, when delivery remains slow despite clear decisions, or when dependencies increase and multiple teams are involved, causing priorities to become unclear, one-size-fits-all models are too broad to identify and address these challenges, leading to delayed decisions, increased rework, and reduced efficiency.

“Transformation is effective when built around people, how teams collaborate, take ownership, and make decisions. A one-size-fits-all approach is not sufficient to address this complexity.

What works instead is a people-centred approach that adapts to how teams operate in practice, which is why we work closely with our partners from the consultancy phase through to delivery and towards operations, to understand team dynamics, along with business objectives, and end user expectations.

We’re then able to build and deliver solutions that are tailored for each organisation, keeping a close eye out throughout the entire customer journey to ensure we continue to focus on what matters most, not just for the business but its people and end users.” said Ana.

In practice, this means that when teams lack clarity on goals or direction, the focus shifts to agile coaching and process consulting to improve collaboration and alignment. When decisions are clear but delivery is slow, bringing architects or consultants on board, together with modernisation sprints and CI/CD improvements, helps remove technical blockers. When dependencies increase and alignment is missing, introducing program governance mechanisms, such as PI Planning, clear operating models, and decision logs, helps coordinate teams and support compliance.

In Financial Services, where organisational contexts vary significantly, effective transformation depends on adapting the approach to each situation rather than applying a single model.

Understanding what challenges hold delivery back

When product ownership remains with the client and teams are limited to writing and implementing technical stories, involvement stays at the execution level. This is amplified when decision-making is distributed across multiple stakeholders, success criteria is not clearly defined, and budget constraints limit flexibility despite the need for adaptation.

These challenges do not appear in isolation, and in most cases, behavioural, structural, and governance factors overlap, making it difficult to address them through a one-size-fits-all approach. As Ana explains:

“The key is not to apply a standard fix. It’s to identify the root cause and address it through solutions that don’t just focus on processes, platforms, and technology, but also the people who build and use them. In practice, this means introducing simple but consistent governance elements, such as regular planning cycles and decision-making supported by technical or architectural reviews.

By connecting business context with implementation, we can reduce handovers, support faster decisions, and bring a level of ownership and accountability that spans the entire delivery team. It's one of the reasons why we focus on ensuring customer proximity and a consultancy-led mindset throughout every project. They allow us to understand when and where challenges arise, as well as address them quickly and effectively, across teams, departments, and organisations; adapting not just to business objectives but any changes within the business itself.”

Aligning on a clear definition of value, not just delivery completion, ensures every solution has a meaningful and lasting impact. At a project level, it helps teams focus on outcomes rather than output, moving from execution to contribution, improving both collaboration across roles and the outcomes themselves.

Balancing governance and innovation in hybrid delivery

Banks operate in a highly regulated environment that requires auditability, compliance, and traceability, such as versioning, risk logs, and architecture governance, while needing to support innovation and agility across the organisation. At the same time, they need low-code agility and fast delivery which includes hackathons, co-creation sessions, and quick discovery initiatives with results linked to feasibility.

“Applying a one-size-fits-all model cannot support both governance requirements and innovation because they’re not standard across every organisation and it’s essential that we assess them and understand them individually. In working with our customers across the DACH market, we’ve found that a dual-track delivery, with one track for innovation, PoCs, prototypes, and experimentation, and one for controlled, regulated implementation delivers much better, faster, and more predictable results.”

Hybrid models ensure governance through traceability, control, and clear accountability, and enable innovation through rapid prototyping, experimentation, and quick discovery, bringing both together so organisations can innovate without compromising compliance.

“What really makes the difference in these models is clarifying who owns decisions, involving teams earlier through prototypes and discovery sessions, and having governance that supports decisions instead of slowing them down. In this way, we’re able to reduce the waste that one-size-fits-all approaches can sometimes create through unclear ownership, the need for rework, governance bottlenecks, and inefficient environments.” Ana added.

People-centred transformation requires industry understanding, a consultancy-led mindset, and strong delivery capabilities working together. At Accesa, we combine the agility of a mid-sized company with end-to-end delivery, staying close to our partners' context from early discovery and prototyping through to governed implementation and long-term operational support.

If these challenges resonate with your organisation, let's continue the conversation. Explore our Financial Services consultancy capabilities and connect with our experts to discuss how a people-centred, hybrid approach can support your business transformation.