About

Francis Hellawell

Banking Transformation | Business Architecture

38 years · 35+ banks · 12 countries · Retail, Commercial & Investment Banking · Challenger banks · Regulatory change

I work across retail and commercial banking, payments, regulatory change, core banking replacement, and challenger bank set-up. My focus is the architecture that sits between strategy and delivery: the operating model, value chain, and capability design that decide whether a transformation actually lands.

Recent work spans the UK’s first mobile-only challenger build, large-scale core banking transformation, payments and regulatory change, and advisory on embedded finance and BaaS architecture: mapping economic flows before a single line of monetisation is committed. Across nearly four decades the pattern has held: banking transformation succeeds or fails because of organisational design, not technology alone.

Outside banking architecture, I support my partner’s tutoring business and back my two sons through university, including one who is the drivetrain lead on his university’s Formula Student team.