Espresso Break: Blink-and-You-Miss-It Finance, Quiet AI, and Culture Cost of Speed 😉
This week’s Espresso is action-packed! We probe the hype, the shifts, and the pressure points. From embedded finance that wins by disappearing, to AI rollouts that work because they’re boring, and cultures that quietly crack under scale. Trust, tech, or transformation? Pick your topic.
Let’s get one thing straight: No one’s logging into their bank app thinking, “I hope they’ve really nailed embedded finance today.” Most people don’t even know what that means. And they don’t care.
But what they do care about?
👉 Getting a refund faster
👉 Filing expenses without crying
👉 Not realizing their holiday didn’t include insurance
This is where embedded finance shines - not by being visible, but by vanishing into the background.
→ FinTech’s Great Illusion: The Less You Notice, the Better It Works
According to Jas Shah, most people aren’t asking for credit, insurance or reconciliation tools. They’re asking to complete a task without friction, fuss, or fifteen browser tabs. And that means…
💳 Credit at checkout - not five links later
🧳 Insurance in your booking flow - not an upsell email
📒 Bookkeeping that does itself - instead of haunting you at year-end
Embedded finance doesn’t win because it’s cool. It wins because it makes “boring” disappear.
→ Exhibit A: The Netflix Button
Remember when no one asked for a streaming shortcut on their TV remote? According to a survey Down Under, now 75% of Netflix views on TVs start with that button. Why? It cuts out the fluff. It gets you to the thing you want faster.
Embedded finance is the same. Click. Cover. Checkout. Done. No jazz hands. No jargon. Just job done.
→ What Customers Didn’t Want… Until They Did
The graveyard of “not needed” ideas now fuels the future:
Sometimes customers don’t need convincing - they need relief.
→ The Real Embedded Gold: Outside of Finance
Park Christmas Savings is letting people save before they splurge - SNBL (Save Now, Buy Later) is quietly winning loyalty in a way “interest rates” never will. HSBC x Ember now lets small businesses handle tax, accounting, and banking in one spot. No more hopping between tabs. No more “I’ll sort that later.” When embedded tools solve pain, people don’t care what they’re called. They just keep using them.
→ The Takeaway: Nobody Asked. Everybody Benefited.
So next time a stakeholder asks, “But do customers even want embedded finance?” - tell them they didn’t want their phone to unlock with their face either. They just wanted less typing. And better naps. Embedded tech wins not by demanding attention, but by quietly giving it back.
Final byte: If your product can reduce effort, increase clarity, and show up exactly when needed? You’ve won. Even if no one asked for it.
You’d expect a private equity giant’s AI blueprint to be stiff as a pressed suit - jargon-packed, buzzword-bloated, probably PowerPointed to death. Instead? It’s part playbook, part parenting diary.
📋 Scribbled priorities.
🗣️ Copilot chats by the coffee machine.
👟 AI rollout with a human-first stride.
Say hello to Lucia Soares, CIO and transformation ringmaster at Carlyle. 👋 Her job? Infuse AI into the company’s bloodstream without making people feel like organs getting replaced by robots.
→ AI isn’t the rocket. It’s the ride.
Soares is allergic to hype. She’s not chasing AGI utopias - she’s chasing results.
📉 Cut costs (without cutting heads)
📈 Turn weeks of diligence into snack-sized analysis
🔍 Let insights rise to the top before your team’s third espresso
AI now helps Carlyle's credit investors do in hours what used to take weeks. It reviews legal invoices like a caffeinated hawk, spotting bloat faster than a human ever could.
→ 90% of staff use AI… and nobody had to bribe them with pizza
AI fluency isn’t a Friday lunch-and-learn. It’s day-one essentials. New hires get ChatGPT, Copilot, and Perplexity in their toolkit . An “AI Champions Council” shares what works (and what’s just smoke). Some teams won’t even read your memo unless it has passed through AI first. But this isn’t AI cosplay. Every AI output ends with a human-written “does-this-make-sense?” gut check. Because no one wants a robot writing their investment memo. Yet.
→ Build fast. Think harder. Ship smart.
At Carlyle, AI doesn’t steal the wheel - it just tunes the engine. One solo technologist built an AI-led diligence tool now rolling out firm wide. No party. No fanfare. Just silent impact.
And yet... speed is always slowed down at some point. A global rollout comes with regulatory roadblocks — different regions, different rules, same slowdowns. So yes, Carlyle moves fast, but only where the runway is clear. And only with humans still in the cockpit, hand on the throttle.
→ From flea markets to finance
Lucia didn’t come from Silicon Valley. She came from Saturdays at the flea market, helping her parents sell houseplants to strangers with questions.
Hustle first, listen hard, and say yes before you're ready. That grit? It’s now helping steer billions.
The stall has just gotten… larger.
→ This isn’t transformation. This is compound learning.
Forget strategy decks. Real change is:
🧱 Embedding fluency
🧠 Elevating human judgment
📣 Making experimentation the default, not the exception
And yes - sometimes that means a morning run, a scribbled list, and a hallway chat that sparks a system-wide AI tweak.
→ The real flex: No flexing.
This is 2,300 people getting 1% better at their jobs every day. No fuss. No keynote. Just quiet, compounding advantage.
The bottom line: If your AI strategy doesn’t include people, pencil notes, and Plan Bs… it’s not a strategy. It’s just software trying to act important.
Scaling a FinTech is like building a rocket on a treadmill. You’re sprinting uphill, juggling investors, compliance, and customer churn. And somewhere between Series A and “Wait, where’s Dave from Ops?”, your once-vibrant culture silently slips through the floorboards.
Eugenia Mykuliak gets it. Founder of B2Prime, she’s navigated the hyperspeed world of FinTech growth - and lived to write about what happens when culture gets ghosted during scale-up.
Let’s dive in. 🤿
→ Startups run hot. Culture melts if you don’t catch it.
Scaling product? Everyone’s cheering. Scaling culture? Crickets. 🦗
The ugly truth? Most teams are trying to build new markets and keep operations running, using the same people, same hours, and zero extra oxygen. That’s like asking your barista to also design the espresso machine while steaming your milk - something's bound to burn!
So what happens? Burnout. Blame games. A Slack full of unread “Let’s align on values” threads.
→ Run vs. Change: Pick your lane, then build a bridge
You’ve got two gears in FinTech :
🛠️ “Run” - the heartbeat: compliance, transactions, support.
🚀 “Change” - the adrenaline: launching, pivoting, disrupting.
Problem? Most companies slam both onto the same teams, then wonder why performance tanks and culture frays.
Eugenia’s fix: create “change agents” - people who champion innovation without derailing the core engine. Think of them as cultural relay runners passing the baton between “now” and “next.”
Bonus: Appoint them inside ops teams so they speak fluent frontline reality and transformation vision. That’s how you avoid the classic “cool idea, nobody asked for it” syndrome.
→ Middle managers = culture routers
Your execs can chant “core values” all they want, but if middle managers aren’t living them, your culture’s stuck in Google Docs purgatory. They’re not just task jugglers. They’re the human routers between strategy and reality.
Train them in communication and leadership, not just spreadsheets. Arm them with the “why,” not just the “what.” Because when they get it, the whole team gets it.
And when they don’t? Well, enjoy your daily dose of confusion-fueled apathy.
→ Tech isn’t just for tickets - it’s for trust
Too many FinTechs treat tools like Slack, Notion, or Jira as digital filing cabinets. Instead? Use them like town squares.
📣 Celebrate wins.
📸 Share behind-the-scenes.
🤝 Make people feel seen - even if they’re six time zones away.
Because nothing kills culture faster than a lonely login screen.
→ Culture isn’t an onboarding slide. It’s your company’s immune system
Ignore it, and things start breaking where you least expect - in tone, trust, and team glue.
If you don’t scale culture with your company, your company will outgrow its soul. And nobody wants to IPO with a personality vacuum. Do they? 👎
This edition of #Espresso blends clarity, culture, and code into one smooth pour. We’re diving into why embedded finance works best when it’s invisible, how Carlyle is proving AI transformation can be human-first, and what happens when fast growth leaves company culture gasping for air. Which of these insights caught your eye this week? Don’t miss out on this week’s Espresso Break! ☕
💡 aixigo's Knowledge Hub is a great resource for anyone looking to stay ahead of the curve. Get one of our white papers for free using this link!
☕ Don't miss out on our "Espresso Break".
🆕 Become a part of team aixigo!