Three Pillars of Agility in the Leasing of the Future: Is Your Organization Ready for 2040?

Agility doesn’t start in IT, but in understanding the business

Today, agility is not just a software development methodology. It’s an approach that should permeate the entire organisation, from strategy and processes to technology. Marcin Majka reminds us that the Agile Manifesto, created nearly 25 years ago, focused on people and relationships, not just tools. However, many organizations still think of agility solely in terms of IT.

“Business must return to the center,” said Marcin. Today, we often see situations where it is not technology that supports the business, but rather, the business adapts to technological constraints. For this reason, a shared understanding of the business domain becomes crucial. Only then can we create systems that not only work but are also resilient to future changes.

Excel – the most powerful “beast” of the financial sector

During the presentation, Marcin used the image of an organization as an elephant balancing on a ball, supported by ants – a metaphor that perfectly captures the condition of many companies: sleek interfaces and advanced front-end applications that rely on archaic, often manual processes hidden “underneath.” The common denominator of these processes often turns out to be… Excel.

This illustrates the crucial role of the so-called “invisible infrastructure” – the tools and procedures that form the backbone of financial institutions. Agility doesn’t end with the aesthetics of applications; it begins with efficiently functioning, well-understood, and flexible internal processes.

Domain knowledge is more than just understanding requirements

Mutual understanding of business needs is not the same as having true domain knowledge. During the presentation, Marcin shared a vivid metaphor to illustrate this point.
Imagine a business stakeholder saying: “We want the system to reflect the movement of the Sun — from sunrise to sunset, every day.” It sounds clear and easy to implement. The IT team delivers as requested. The system works, and everyone is satisfied.

The problem arises when we take a step back and look at it from a broader domain modeling perspective. If we truly understand how the world works — that the Sun doesn’t orbit the Earth, but rather the Earth orbits the Sun — we realize that the entire implementation is fundamentally flawed.

And once a new requirement appears — say, modeling a solar eclipse — the system can’t handle it, because it was built on a false assumption stemming from a lack of domain understanding.
This clearly shows how essential deep knowledge of the business model and domain logic is.
Modern projects cannot rely solely on declarative requirements — they must take into account the broader context in which the organization operates. That’s why it is so important to build an ecosystem that understands the various business domains — sales, risk, operations, or activation — and can translate their needs into flexible, agile systems.

Future systems as modular ecosystems

The systems of the future must resemble LEGO sets — decomposable, flexible, easy to update and reconfigure. Only then will organizations be able to keep up with a constantly evolving regulatory and market environment.
Agility requires decomposition — not just technological, but above all, domain-driven. An organization must know its business domains, understand their processes, and be able to manage them independently from the IT department.
Only such a structure enables fast and appropriate responses to change — whether it’s new legal regulations or shifting customer expectations.

Instead of copying existing solutions into a new environment, we should ask ourselves where we truly want to go. Focusing only on known problems limits our perspective — we fail to notice market shifts and ignore those who are already ahead of us. The key is not just what technology we implement, but whether it enables rapid adaptation — even without IT involvement.
If we want to think with a future-oriented mindset, business domains must be given greater agency. Otherwise, even the most promising solution today could become an expensive constraint in just a few years.
System complexity is not accidental — it’s something we must learn to navigate wisely.
Marcin Majka, Product Owner Fintin in TUATARA

Three pillars of agility in leasing

Marcin Majka identifies three key pillars that should form the foundation of any leasing organization looking toward the future:

Understanding the organization’s goals – both in the 5-, 10-, and 15-year perspectives. Only with a clear vision can meaningful and strategic change be designed.

Understanding business domains and their needs – transformation should not simply mean replicating the current state or solving only the most pressing issues during a system rollout. It must be treated as an opportunity to redefine value.

Selecting the right technologies – technology should be tailored to the needs of each business domain, not the other way around. Only then is true automation and system flexibility achievable.

In the second part of the presentation, Piotr Kwiatek, Managing Director of the IT Division at Alior Leasing, joined the discussion and confirmed that his organization is currently undergoing an intensive transformation. A key focus is implementing modular architecture and adopting low-code technologies, which enable the business teams themselves to drive changes — without involving core IT in every iteration.

Piotr emphasized that this strategy not only helps optimize resources but more importantly, accelerates change implementation and increases control on the business side. Collaboration with the parent company (Alior Bank) also plays a significant role here — overlapping projects can create valuable synergies, as long as the interdependence is managed thoughtfully.

Cloud is the standard today, but true value comes from a hybrid architecture — one that allows you to flexibly combine on-premise and cloud environments. I value vendors who give me that choice: I can run a solution in the cloud, but I can also install it on my own servers. This freedom gives me flexibility and control — also from a regulatory perspective.
Piotr Kwiatek, Managing Director of the IT Division in Alior Leasing

Are we ready for leasing 2040?

The closing question of the presentation was also a challenge: are our organizations truly ready for the future of leasing? Are our systems, processes, and teams flexible enough to adapt to the changes coming in 2040 — or are we still relying on fragile, manual solutions, hoping that things will somehow work out?

The answer to this challenge isn’t a single technology or a one-off project. It’s a holistic shift — from organizational culture and system architecture to a deep, practical understanding of customer needs.

Want to learn more about how your organisation can prepare for Leasing 2040? Contact us, and let’s discuss agile that really works.