This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 9, 2026 – February 15, 2026
Fintech is often framed as a game of anticipation, of customer behaviour, regulatory shifts and the next wave of technology before it breaks.
But in a sector where change is constant, it is no longer enough to just anticipate customer needs. What separates fintechs that endure from those that fail, according to global experts brought together under Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet) and Imperial College London’s Catalyst programme, is adaptability and the willingness to change course, even after something appears to be working.
These experts reiterate that innovation is rarely a single moment of invention but an ongoing process of adjustment, rethinking and, at times, letting go. This is why adaptability decides who wins in the crowded fintech space, they add.
Fintech beyond payments: Managing financial complexity
While many discussions focus on start-ups navigating regulation and growth, London-based fintech founder Natalia Corobco brought attention to a different segment of fintech — tools designed to help individuals manage financial complexity rather than transact more quickly.
Her company, Francis, is a personal finance artificial intelligence (AI) platform which targets the “mass affluent” — individuals who may not see themselves as wealthy, but who hold multiple financial accounts and assets across different platforms.
“We don’t use the term ‘wealth’ very deliberately. Most people in our target group don’t identify with it.”
Corobco was inspired to establish Francis as she realised many people lack a clear, consolidated view of their financial position, even if they have accumulated significant assets.
“There’s a gap between people who qualify for private banking and those who actually engage financial advisers. Many sit somewhere in between,” she says.
Francis does not provide investment advice or manage assets. Instead, it focuses on helping users understand what they already have — including fees, exposure and risk — before making decisions.
Why fintech businesses rarely end up where they started
For Robin Bagchi, whose expertise ranges from investment banking and academia to entrepreneurship, the future belongs to founders who can detach from their original vision in order to survive shifting realities.
Bagchi, who is chairman of both the London Technology Club and the Advisory Board for the Centre for Responsible Leadership at Imperial Business School, says a business will rarely end up becoming what its founders originally intended. Markets move too quickly, and technology now rewrites itself every quarter, not every decade.
“You know, often when you start a company, it transforms even within a short time, because innovation is so rapid at the moment and so is disruption; you just have to be very adaptive and not stick to anything.”
Bagchi says an uncomfortable truth founders must face is that the strength of an idea today does not guarantee its relevance tomorrow.
“For example, the CEO of artificial intelligence (AI) coding start-up Windsurf explained that management transformed the company three or four times … into different business lines, just because they realised that they were going to be disrupted.”
US-based Windsurf is best known for its rapid pivot from GPU infrastructure — the business of providing computing power to train and run AI models, which quickly became widely available and price-competitive — to pioneering AI-powered coding tools, a shift that was executed in just 48 hours, according to its co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan.
In other words, if a founder becomes emotionally attached to an established model, he/she may be building the infrastructure for their own collapse, says Bagchi.
Meta Platforms Inc (formerly Facebook) is another example.
“You look at Meta … he [founder, chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg] re-changed the whole strategy. Even changed the name to Meta [to reflect the popularity of the] metaverse. [Now] we don’t even hear about the metaverse anymore … Zuckerberg realised pretty quickly it’s not a business line. He dramatically moved to AI.”
It is not the glamour of the pivot that matters — it is the discipline to abandon sunk costs, even after years of development.
“Even though all that work goes to waste, I think it’s incredibly important not to be stuck to anything,” says Bagchi, stressing that the discipline to abandon sunk costs is what sets successful founders apart.
Moreover, the ability to adapt and pivot is not only about product evolution but also about surviving regulatory uncertainty, Bagchi points out.
The fintech ecosystem globally is built on constant negotiation between innovation and trust, but Bagchi says founders often underestimate the reality that regulatory brakes are inevitable. “How many times did the regulator come into all of these tech companies in the US? It’s continual.”
Founders must be prepared for greater discipline
Crypto Collective founder and CEO Stephanie Razeman, who specialises in growth strategy for digital asset and Web3 companies, says it is critical for founders venturing into fintech to build an investor base that understands the volatility of the road ahead.
Most early-stage fintech firms burn cash each month, and without investors who understand the core business, a forced pause can be fatal, says Razeman.
She reminds fintech founders that their survival depends on open communication with investors about the realities of operating in a regulated financial environment, not technology alone.
To prevent surprises on the regulatory front, Razeman says founders, especially in the crypto and digital asset space, must treat compliance as a core capability, not a reactive add-on.
“There was a huge knowledge gap and skills gap within the digital asset space in general … in terms of regulatory change, that’s very time-consuming, but you have to get it right.”
Razeman also warns that start-up founders have a tendency to assume that they have the capability to “do it all”, believing it is cheaper and better.
“I’ve seen some start-ups that think, ‘Oh, we can do it ourselves.’ Sometimes there are experts out there who are going to enable … faster, more efficient implementation.”
But in areas like crypto, disaster strikes when founders treat compliance as a side task, she adds. “You have to invest in getting it right … [because] chances are you’ll pay for it down the road if you don’t.”
Razeman also challenges an uncomfortable cultural reality that founders struggle with dissent. “You need to empower people to be able to challenge you, not just have yes-men around.”
Those surrounded by people who agree to avoid conflict will eventually build blind.
“Being the best leader is not about having all the answers. It’s about having people who are empowered to also have answers,” she adds.
Common mistakes that slow or sink start-ups
Drawing on years of experience in entrepreneurship education, Imperial Business School professor of practice, artificial intelligence (AI) and innovation David Shrier outlines three mistakes he has seen repeatedly among start-ups, including those that appear promising on the surface.
The first is building a product before confirming that a real market exists, says Shrier, who is also the founding director of the Trusted AI Alliance.
The second is scaling too early, before product-market fit has been established.
The third, and often the most damaging, is accepting the wrong kind of capital.
“There’s a strong temptation to take money when it’s offered. But not all capital is aligned with what the founder wants to build.”
Shrier cites cases where investors pushed for exits that suited fund timelines rather than long-term company growth, leaving founders with little control over outcomes.
Most of Malaysia’s fintech start-ups in the Catalyst programme, however, have already achieved revenue and, in some cases, are close to breaking even. This position gives the founders more room to make strategic choices, he adds.
“Once you reach break-even, you’re no longer dependent on outside investors to keep going,” Shrier says, adding that this reduces the pressure on founders.
However, it also introduces a new responsibility: choosing when to remain focused and when to step back and reassess direction.
Founders, Shrier says, often feel compelled to keep building and scaling, even when deeper questions about customer needs or long-term viability remain unresolved. At the same time, he warns against excessive analysis that delays execution.
One of the most difficult tasks for start-up leaders, he says, is managing the trade-off between focus and exploration. “You can always do more research but you can also spend six months building something only to realise you’ve solved a problem for one customer.”
Proximity and the future of financial services
Robert C Wolcott offers a wider economic perspective, saying that digital technologies are steadily bringing services closer to the point of need — a trend he refers to as “proximity”.
In financial services, this translates into faster credit decisions, more immediate payments and tools that respond in real time to individual circumstances.
For fintech companies, the success increasingly depends on how closely products align with specific moments of demand, rather than broad, one-size-fits-all solutions.
Wolcott is the co-founder and chair of The World Innovation Network (TWIN), a global community of innovation and growth leaders. He is also an entrepreneur, angel investor and innovation expert, and author of Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life.
“What digital allows us to do is compress all sorts of capabilities into smaller and smaller packages and distribute them all over the place, ever closer to each moment in time and space,” says Wolcott.
This forces value creation to move nearer to where a customer actually needs it, rather than being processed through distant institutions or lengthy procedures, he explains.
Financial services are particularly affected by this shift as credit decisions, payments and compliance processes that once took weeks can now occur in a moment, changing how businesses operate. For small and medium enterprises (SMEs), this immediacy can alter decision-making entirely — enabling them to act on opportunities as they arise rather than forecasting months ahead.
“If you’re an SME and it took you months to get approval for a loan, that’s very different from being able to get capital when you need it,” says Wolcott.
The ability to make smaller, faster decisions reduces risk on both sides and allows firms to respond more precisely to real demand.
For a fintech start-up to succeed, Wolcott says founders must understand how financial services can be delivered closer to specific moments of need and design their businesses around that reality rather than rely on broad, generalised solutions.
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