“You can’t create a product that truly resonates with the market by sitting in a room and simply dreaming it up. If you look at history, many successful startups began because the founder faced a real problem, realized others faced the same challenge, and set out to solve it—that’s how great companies are born. But often, their second product fails because they assume they can innovate in isolation, without engaging with the market or understanding real-world pain points. For a company like ours, it’s critical to deeply understand these challenges—what keeps the CTO awake at night. Only then can we create meaningful solutions. But we can’t do that in a vacuum.“
Andrew Steadman, Chief Product Officer at SBS
Andrew Steadman has spent the last two decades building a reputation for leading transformational product strategies at large, global companies. He managed products at Temenos and Fiserv during their transitions to SaaS business models and piloted the product management methodology that became the standard at Fiserv. He also spent three years as a Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, leading the firm’s payments research focus.
Now, as Chief Product Officer at SBS, Andrew aims to set the product strategy by identifying market problems that can be solved using the company’s expertise. He often cites the original iPod as an example of how great companies identify market gaps, leverage their unique abilities to solve them, and create real value for customers.
In this episode, Andrew delves into his background, discussing the banking products he has worked on and sharing his thoughts on traditional banking products. He recounts the day he had to sunset a product—and the impact that followed—and offers valuable advice on choosing to partner with a company that has a different culture. When it comes to talking about disruption in the banking product lansdcape, Andrew believes that mobile phones have been the biggest shift in banking products and will continue to be. Plus, he reveals the one major mistake you should absolutely avoid when building the next big fintech product… Can you guess what it is?
Depending on your personal aspirations, you may be particularly interested in:
- 00:00 – Warm welcome
- 01:42 – The evolution of banking products
- 06:19 – Looking back on the past year as CPO at SBS
- 09:36 – The CPO’s toolkit: What it takes to build a great product
- 15:31 – The art of strategic partnerships
- 18:51 – Future trends: What’s next for banking products?
- 27:34 – Quick-fire round & Wrap up