In this exclusive interview, Raul Alexandru Risnita, Director Companies Digitalization Department at Banca Transilvania, talks about practical digitalisation for companies: process and people first, tools second.
At UNCHAIN, the fortress is just the setting. The real story is the people. Finance Legends brings forward the voices shaping finance. The ones building, adapting, and rethinking the systems that keep money moving. This time, we sat down with Raul Alexandru Risnita from Banca Transilvania to talk about the efforts of bringing digital banking closer to Romanian businesses.
Raul has spent much of his career at the intersection of business and technology. As Director Companies Digitalization Departmentat Banca Transilvania, he works on the products and processes that keep businesses connected to the bank’s services, from everyday transactions to full digital ecosystems. His approach is pragmatic rather than theoretical, built on understanding how technology can solve real operational challenges for companies that are still learning what “digital” means in practice.
Corporate digitalization has become a strategic priority for many banks. In your view, which area of the digitalization process makes the biggest difference for corporate clients?
Digitalization has become a mainstream priority in most domains and has become more interconnected between segments than ever. For full digital experiences or automation, some domains become dependent on others. Corporate customers focus mostly on creating efficiency in internal processes and automating redundant employee work, very similar to what we, as a large bank, are trying to do.
And from the bank’s side, what does that mean in practice?
We need to be able to offer them transactional frameworks, accessibility, and connectivity to their transactions, accounts, and banking activity. Extending this to customizing statements, recurrent or bulk payments, auto-reconciliation, and adapting to their more personalized needs, like direct integrations with ERP systems, payroll systems, and so on. In other words, we need to facilitate accessibility in whatever touchpoint a customer needs.
Looking at it, we get the sense that the story of corporate digitalization isn’t really about the technology itself. It mostly centers around habits. About how companies, often run by people who built them long before “digital” became a department, start rethinking the way they work.
That same idea is what shaped BT Go, the platform that slowly grew from a practical tool into something closer to a companion for entrepreneurs who just want banking to get out of the way.
BT Go is well-regarded among SMEs. What do you think has been the key to building an app that business users choose to adopt?
I think we have built BT Go with the thought of it becoming more than a banking application. We mainly focused along the way on understanding how we can solve the day-to-day problems and struggles that entrepreneurs face. Most of the time, it has been a close collaboration between real customers and product owners, trying to discover together what the best experience would look like and how we can adapt and offer more seamless services.
There is still a long way ahead for BT Go and its plans, but I am most confident about its success because we totally changed the product development mindset and perspective on how it needs to be developed, starting from real needs being solved with the latest technology.
With BT Go, the front door felt settled. The next question sat behind it: how do you handle the knocks that come at all hours? Where do you put help when people don’t want to open another app? That’s where a “little” WhatsApp experiment came in, one that even carried his name.
You’ve launched tools like the “Raul” chatbot on WhatsApp. What role do you believe automation plays in transforming client service at scale?
I think it solves exactly what the question expresses — “scale.” Depending on processes, the only way you can reach high numbers and volumes is by automating whatever can be automated, restructuring unnecessary steps, and creating simple and intuitive workflows.
How far can that automation go before it starts to replace the human element?
We have managed to reach more than 60,000 customers with a chatbot embedded in WhatsApp that has been built around simple automated processes. I believe most companies should focus on using automated or AI capabilities to figure out potential scalability paths that open up through this type of technology. Close and offline customer relationships still remain a very important aspect of the experience, but when it comes to servicing high numbers and volumes of simple requests, we should let technology do its thing.
Automation helped BT serve more people, faster. Inside the bank, that created a different kind of work: aligning teams, untangling approvals, redrawing processes. We asked Raul what has to shift on the inside for the strategy to stick.
Digitalization isn’t just about technology, and it also requires internal transformation. What organizational change do you think is essential for making these strategies work?
A very good question. I think technology is the last thing that comes in the digital transformation process. Basically, it’s the enabler, not the starting point. I think that a combination of a forward-looking mindset together with business knowledge, customer insights, and process design is the most important thing when thinking about transforming businesses and organizations. Once your strategy is clear, your processes are designed based on real needs and customer understanding, tand he technology will come to enable these changes.
And culturally, what needs to change inside the organization for that to work?
I am a great fan of creating a safe environment where people can create, think outside the box, push the boundaries, and just try. No matter if they fail, if the trying never stops, in the end you will find a good solution or develop a good product. So, to conclude, it’s mostly about the right people with the right skill set who can work within a safe and innovative culture. It’s itself a great process of aligning all this together.
After culture comes direction. Once the teams, processes, and guardrails are in a decent place, the open task is simple enough on paper: decide where to put the energy to evolve.
Looking ahead, where should Banca Transilvania focus next when it comes to supporting businesses through digital innovation?
I’m really not a great future predictor and I think the way things are looking nobody can truly say what will happen in the next couple of years. Nevertheless I think that there are some areas where we should be more present or focus more, like embedded finance for example. People and businesses are more and more on the go. We are seeing more and more superapps being developed which leads to the fact that we need rapid access to multiple services in the same place, quickly and with lower effort.
This creates a future based on API capabilities and services, not a fight for the most beautiful interface. The touchpoint will be wherever the customer feels most comfortable and attracted to enter. Who knows, maybe we will no longer have any applications in 10 years from now but just one… a super AI search engine and assistant that provides personalized content without us even making a slight effort.
All of this lands only when people keep comparing notes in real life. Direction is set inside the bank. Calibration often happens out in the open: on stages, in hallways, around a table after a panel. From there, the role of industry meetups becomes hard to ignore.
UNCHAIN has become a key meeting point for fintech and banking professionals across the region. From your perspective, what role do events like this (and particularly UNCHAIN) play in shaping collaboration and innovation in the industry?
Unchain Festival is a venue for innovation that has managed to improve year after year. Something rare in the Romanian landscape of fintech and technology events, and it’s something that needs to be sustained continuously. We need to focus more on bringing great people and minds together, facilitating and investing in their ideas and discussions so the entire ecosystem benefits from it.
It’s exactly what these kinds of events bring together: great minds and people with no limits in opening a great dialogue for collaboration between them. It’s also a great place for people to be seen, for ideas to rise and, why not, for people to start co-creating together.
Overall, Raul talks about digital change in a way that stays close to the work. Start with real problems and map the process. Let the technology come in when there’s something clear to enable. For companies, the value shows up in operations: access, connectivity, integrations, and service that holds up when demand surges.
Looking ahead, his instinct stays modest. Companies should build what helps, meet people where they already are, and don’t make the tool the story. It’s a practical view for a market that moves on habit as much as on hype. If the coming years reward builders who keep usefulness at the centre, Raul’s work is already pointing in that direction.
