I was recently invited to do a book signing, a keynote speech and a roundtable discussion at the UNCHAIN Festival in Oradea, Romania. Honestly, it was one of the most delightful fintech events I visited in years, an experience from the landing, up to the flight back.

For the round table, I was fortunate to have my friend Andras Rung, Founder and CEO of Ergomania, by my side and because I didn’t want too much overlap with the keynote later in the day, Andras and I opted to pivot the topics slightly, connecting them to “A New Ethos in Banking”, but in a more practical and concrete manner for banks. The session was called “Purpose-Driven Banking & Payments: Redefining Customer Experience in a Digital Age.”

Under Chatham House Rules, we had an exceptional and honest session with 15-20 people from a variety of banks across the CEE region.

Banks love to talk about purpose-driven strategies on stages and in interviews. It was my opportunity to write the book, but I also know that the reality behind the scenes is not always what the C-suite preaches. Behind the impressive rhetoric, the fundamental question remains: are financial institutions truly living up to these ideals?

As with all of The Banking Scene’s round tables, the conversation revolved around three rounds, in this case:

• Purpose as strategy: is your transformation roadmap anchored in purpose, or only performance?
• Values as an operating system: we say we’re value-driven, but how often do values really shape how we act?
• Experience as proof: the customer doesn’t hear your strategy, but they feel your service

These pillars kind of symbolise the rhetorical triangle of persuasion (logos, pathos, and ethos), offering a powerful lens to assess the sincerity and effectiveness of banks' transformation efforts.

Purpose as Strategy: Vision vs. Regulatory Pressure

Many banks articulate a clear sense of purpose and the ambitions are clearly there, but the feedback from the discussions was also that actual execution often remains reactive rather than proactive.

A recurrent theme was the dominance of regulatory drivers. ESG, for example, was acknowledged by several participants as being more of a compliance mandate than a visionary pursuit. It was seen as a box-ticking exercise, done to satisfy external audits, improve ratings, or respond to public scrutiny, rather than to realise an internal commitment to sustainability.

They acknowledged that more could be done, but the pressure from regulatory change doesn’t leave the time, nor the headspace, to think deeply about utilising it as a competitive advantage and a driver of empathy for the customer.

Mergers and acquisitions further complicate matters. One participant from a bank that had undergone a recent merger of three institutions shared how difficult it was to harmonise distinct legacy cultures, missions, and customer expectations. The result? A watered-down, generic purpose statement that failed to resonate deeply within the organisation.

There were exceptions, though, with a few institutions that had purpose deeply embedded into their strategy. At one bank, this translated into integrated IT-business cooperation within agile teams, ensuring more alignment between the business and its support functions.

Another example was particularly noteworthy: once famous for aggressive growth and rigid standardisation, the company has shifted toward more nuanced localisation efforts to better meet customer expectations in diverse markets. They listened and responded with improved products and services, aligning with local expectations.

Values as Operating System: Between Symbolism and Substance

Stating values is easy. Ensuring they are being considered in every change or business operation is still relatively easy. Living them day-to-day is not. Participants widely agreed that values such as integrity, innovation, empathy, and inclusion are routinely published but rarely operationalised in a meaningful way.

One standout example involved a product team empowered to reject a seemingly minor regulatory change because it would have compromised customer trust. The decision to resist this change came at a short-term commercial cost, but it underscored a culture where frontline staff felt genuinely empowered to act in line with organisational values.

Local cultural dynamics also play a key role. For example, Romanian teams within an international banking organisation spoke about the challenge of implementing digital-first values in a market where digital literacy and consumer expectations still lag. This disparity results in a clash between global ambitions and local realities.

Still, with empathy, adaptation, and stakeholder involvement, some teams are successfully navigating this complexity.

Experience as Proof: Commoditised, Yet Crucial

The third lens was customer experience, or more specifically, how success is being measured. Here, the verdict was that while digital transformation has made strides, most banks are still offering commoditised, friction-prone interactions. As I shared during the session, digital in banking has become a "dissatisfier": invisible when it works, deeply frustrating when it doesn’t.

Many banks still rely on Net Promoter Scores (NPS) as their main measure of customer satisfaction. People agreed it is a good measure, but there was also consensus that the way it is measured is not always clear or transparent enough.

That is why some leading players are evolving their metrics, focusing on journey friction and user confusion. Neobanks, in particular, are innovating in this area: tracking how often customers get stuck, how frequently they need to Google support questions, or where drop-off points occur in the digital journey.

The discussion also revealed a paradox, where some fintechs, particularly B2B providers, were criticised for having weaker UX and ethical standards than the incumbent banks they serve. One participant observed that B2C fintechs and neobanks are usually more attuned to user needs, while B2B providers optimise for sales rather than end-user empathy. This gap represents both a risk and an opportunity.

To conclude this part, I’d like to share a great example that illustrates how, without genuine customer empathy, even the most data-rich strategies can fall short. The product design anecdote was the following: a new payment flow was built around a wealthy, hyper-digital user persona, only to find out that the real power user was a rural postman paying bills for neighbours. Without genuine customer empathy, even the most data-driven strategies can fall short.

It is great to see how neobank also start to inspire and raise the bar for incumbents to think differently about how to measure success. If you read The Banking Scene Blogs, you know how important we think this is.

Surprising Contradictions and Cultural Shifts

One of the most thought-provoking revelations was from the Greek banking context. After years of economic crisis, customer attitudes toward loan repayment have undergone a fundamental shift. Repaying debt is no longer viewed as a moral obligation by some, suggesting a profound erosion of the trust-based contract between banks, their customers, and society.

Similarly, participants noted that compliance, although crucial, is now viewed as a balancing act with customer expectations. Digital banks are leading the way in fully digital journeys; they have matured and now adhere to even the most stringent local regulations, yet do so with a human-first mindset.

These contradictions highlight the shifting foundations of ethos in banking. Trust is no longer guaranteed by brand name alone. It must be earned, often daily, through transparency, context, and consistent behaviour, as I explain in my book.

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos Show the Way to a Meaningful Transformation

Reflecting on the rhetorical triangle as a framework, the overall conclusion is the finding that the balance between the three anchors remains challenging:

• Logos (logic): Strong internal frameworks, but not always clear to the outside world. Banks excel in KPIs, regulatory compliance frameworks, and structured planning.
• Pathos (emotion): Underleveraged. Empathy is growing, but it’s not systematically embedded in product or policy.
• Ethos (credibility/trust): Fragile. Trust must be earned through consistent behaviour, which is something banks are still learning to master in the digital age.

Conclusion: Toward Authentic, Human-Centred Banking

The round table reaffirmed that the ambition to lead with purpose, values, and experience is very much alive and well understood, but not always executed. Ambition alone is not transformation. True change occurs when strategy is defined by purpose, not just regulation; when values guide real decisions, even at the cost of short-term gains and when experiences are not just efficient but effective, adding many more parameters in the equation.

Banks that want to build a new ethos must embrace the full rhetorical triangle, not just the logic of KPIs, but the empathy of design and the credibility of aligned action.

That’s not just branding. It should be a meaningful transformation. That’s ethos in action.

Interested to learn more? You can find the book on Amazon.com, Bol.com, Springer Nature Link, and all other self-respecting e-commerce book platforms.