Vladislavs Mironovs
Chief Strategy Officer at Citadele Banka
Vladislavs Mironovs’s career underscores just how much the lines between finance and technology have become increasingly blurred.
A technologist throughout his time in higher education and his early career, Mironovs trained as a computer programmer for six years. With technology seemingly the set course for his working life, Mironovs’s first career opportunity presented itself in a sales role.
“Being in sales gave me an introduction to strategy and development, an area where I have since spent the best part of my career,” says Mironovs.
“I then went to work with GE Money Bank and I managed to get on board when the company acquired a local consumer finance company, which is where I managed to progress well.
“My last role with them in the Baltics was as Head of Sales and Marketing, before starting to support GE Capital International to manage strategic pricing initiatives.”
It was from this point onwards that Mironovs began to get noticed, being picked up to GE global talent pool to become a future company executive. It was here that Mironovs went through a series of market rotations, spending time in London and Connecticut.
GE Capital was soon considered for disposition, though, turning Mironovs’s career plan on its head. And, with a newborn child, he decided to head home to Latvia, where he came across Citadele Banka.
“Funnily enough, I knew the then-CEO of Citadele, Guntis Belavskis, because when GE Capital was exiting the Baltics, I sold him part of the bank.
“With Guntis, Citadele had new shareholders, with a mission to drive transformation at the local bank. They were looking for someone to help drive digital transformation and shake up the innovation strategy.
“I initially agreed to help for a short period of time and here I still am almost nine years later.”
Mironovs: Driving innovation at Citadele Banka
With his extensive experience across multiple markets, the question posed to Mironovs most frequently was: ‘Why return to the Baltics?’.
The answer was simple for him, though, it provided an opportunity to lead digital transformation for an entire bank which, for someone in their early 30s – proved an opportunity too great to turn down.
Now Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer at Citadele Banka, Mironovs has flourished in his role over the course of the past nine years.
But, just as in any role, there are challenges – and Mironovs’s success has been forged in how he has managed to overcome them.
“Today, the challenge comes in knowing that everything is digital – that is really important,” he says. “It’s about placing the right technological bets and understanding as well you can when a certain technological innovation is not right for you.
“As a leader, it’s about finding out what is best for you and figuring out how to deal with any ambiguity.
“Once you have an aligned focus and you know what the right direction is for you, you still need to pick up on the right elements and find areas of your operation where you can be agile and bring the agility needed, as well as any changes.”
Over the past few years, driving innovation successfully has been the cornerstone of Citadele Banka’s success.
Looking back to 2015, nine years ago, Mironovs recalls how Citadele Banka was very much a traditional bank at the time – with no digital presence, just bricks-and-mortar branches.
“At the time, our customers were primarily secondary customers,” notes Mironovs. “They used other banks as their primary financial services provider.
“But, we had a strong customer service record and a good tech platform. It’s thanks to these two areas we’ve built a totally new bank, transforming every area of our operations.”
Citadele Banka’s first area of innovation came in the development of a new credit scoring system. “At the time, we felt this was going to be the backbone of our transformation as we had very little loans on our balance sheet,” Mironovs recalls. “Then, that future soon shifted to embracing mobile banking.
“While others were still experimenting with internet banking, we decided to build our own native mobile solution, which turned out to be a great technological bet for us.
“That’s because today 96% of our customers deal with us digitally – a higher proportion of digital customers than most big banks across Europe.”
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