BKN301 CTO calls for AI-native bank infrastructure

Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya, chief technology officer at BKN301, said banks need a new operating model as artificial intelligence shifts from a technology experiment into a component of day-to-day execution. In an external opinion published by Finextra, he argued that the next competitive issue for banks will be their ability to run intelligence reliably across operations, risk, compliance, fraud and customer service.

Paolini-Subramanya framed the argument against roughly a decade of bank digitalisation. He said banks have spent that period building digital channels, adopting APIs, using cloud infrastructure and trying to improve customer experience. Those changes, in his view, made banking more connected and accessible, but they did not prepare institutions for a model in which intelligence is embedded across business processes.

His central distinction is between digitalising banking and operationalising AI. Digitalisation, as he described it, improves how customers and systems connect. AI, by contrast, affects how decisions are made, how risks are assessed and how work is executed inside the institution.

Architecture rather than isolated tools

Paolini-Subramanya said most bank architectures were designed to process transactions, manage products and connect systems. He argued that they were not built to coordinate intelligence across an organisation.

The mechanism he proposed is an orchestration layer that links execution, data and intelligence under a single governed framework. In practical terms, that means AI would not sit as a separate tool beside existing systems. It would be connected to the data, controls and workflows that determine how a bank processes activity and applies decisions.

He said banks have often treated integration, data and intelligence as separate programmes, handled by different teams and vendors. According to Paolini-Subramanya, that fragmentation adds complexity and makes it harder for banks to scale technology, change systems or extract value from new tools.

Governance and scale

The BKN301 executive argued that the institutions best placed for an AI-native phase will not necessarily be those with the largest AI budgets or the most advanced models. He said the more relevant test will be whether banks can create conditions in which intelligence operates securely, reliably and at scale.

That view places emphasis on architecture, governance and control. Paolini-Subramanya said future banking infrastructure should be governed and sovereign, and should be designed to coordinate intelligence across the organisation.

Finextra identified the post as external content supplied without editing, representing the author’s views. Paolini-Subramanya is based in Milan and listed by Finextra as chief technology officer of BKN301.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.