Vladimir Lounegov bets on the work behind the bank

Vladimir Lounegov has a rather unfashionable answer to a fashionable question. Ask where the money is in financial technology and he will take you past the gleaming app to the people handling compliance, lending and disputed transactions. Somewhere beyond the presentation, a customer wants an answer about a payment. Lounegov has built a business around helping provide one.

His company, Mbanq, supplies banking technology and the services needed to operate it. Its clients include banks, credit unions, fintechs and brands offering financial products. That last group makes the story particularly interesting. A company can have customers who trust its name without having the machinery to offer them an account. Lounegov works in the considerable space between those two things.

There is an appealing wrinkle in his career. He once helped financial institutions examine acquisitions. Now he helps organizations assemble the means to offer financial services themselves. The route runs through London consulting firms, a financial crisis, a move into technology and, more recently, an English football ground. Banking, it seems, can lead to some unexpected fixtures.

A crisis changes the assignment

Lounegov studied at the London School of Economics between 1997 and 2000. His professional career began in London in 2000, and his experience came to include senior positions at PwC, KPMG and EY. Financial services, investment analysis and mergers and acquisitions formed part of his working education. These were jobs concerned with the practical question beneath a transaction: what, exactly, are you buying?

The 2007-08 financial crisis changed the question. The acquisition pipeline dried up, and banks turned their attention to efficiency. In Lounegov’s account of that period, technology became a way to improve profitability. There was less room to expand through another deal; there was more reason to examine how an institution actually worked.

That is a useful origin for someone who would eventually sell banking infrastructure. Looking at a business through an acquisition teaches one set of lessons. Looking at it when budgets tighten teaches another. A feature might charm a sales meeting. An operating expense has the discourteous habit of appearing again next month.

At PwC, Lounegov helped establish a fintech practice and led a team that examined 1,600 fintech startups around the world. That work placed him among a large collection of competing proposals for banking’s future. Before he became the person making a pitch, he had spent time assessing other people’s pitches.

The number helps explain the continuity between the consultant and the founder. His eventual business sat at the intersection he had been studying: financial institutions with established obligations, and technology companies proposing new ways to meet them. His next step would require him to take responsibility for a proposition of his own.

Two coffees, then a company to build

Lounegov co-founded Mbanq in 2016. He had also founded Zeus Ventures, focused on big data analytics and marketing, and Conxio, a banking communications platform. Mbanq brought the banking and technology strands of that entrepreneurial experience into one company. Its early identity as a technology provider developed into a broader banking-as-a-service business.

One detail of its team’s formation comes with a pleasantly modest refreshment bill. Igor Kostyuchenok, Mbanq’s co-founder and senior vice president of engineering, recalled receiving a LinkedIn message from Lounegov proposing coffee. Kostyuchenok was considering building his own banking-as-a-service company. After two coffees, he joined Mbanq.

Kostyuchenok brought experience from Fidor Bank and a close acquaintance with the frustrations of banking software. He described systems that limited the speed of delivery and suppliers that covered only one portion of what a customer needed. His recollection gives the recruiting story its substance. There was a shared problem to discuss, as well as a vacant chair.

A founder’s work often gets compressed into the moment of inspiration. This episode offers a more useful picture: identify someone who knows the problem, send a message, have a conversation and make room for their expertise. The coffee itself has received no technical credit. The decision that followed it helped put an engineering leader inside the business.

The business after the launch

Banking-as-a-service is an accommodating phrase. It can conceal almost as much as it explains. In Mbanq’s case, the offer brings together banking software, connections to partner banks, payments infrastructure, customer applications and operational services. A client can draw on these capabilities to launch and run a financial product.

The operating part matters to Lounegov. In 2023, he described compliance services, lending services, complaints and chargebacks as central to the economics of the company. There is a clear commercial preference in that list. Software starts a relationship; ongoing work gives the relationship something to do every day.

“The tech is important, but our biggest margins are made through services.”

Vlad Lounegov, 2023

This helps explain why his public account of Mbanq spends so much time on compliance. The company’s proposition includes support for the rules and processes around a financial service. For a brand accustomed to selling something else, that is a substantial addition to a technology purchase. A payment complaint will not become easier merely because the application has attractive buttons.

His older consulting work also becomes relevant here. Understanding a financial institution means understanding the dependencies behind its products. A customer sees an account or a card. The organization has to consider software, bank relationships, operations and responsibilities. Lounegov has made that collection of dependencies part of what Mbanq sells.

Partners, rather than a solitary performance

Temenos became an important connection. In December 2022, the banking software company announced an expanded agreement with Mbanq and a minority investment. The relationship followed a joint credit-union-as-a-service offering announced the previous year. It brought Lounegov’s company into a partnership with an established banking technology supplier.

The agreement described an offer for fintechs, consumer brands and banks, combining technology with regulatory support. Lounegov emphasized the span from a product’s conception through delivery and operations. The ambition was broader than installing software and leaving the customer to arrange everything around it.

His interest in brands has a practical basis. An organization with an existing audience has already solved part of the problem of reaching people. Offering financial products introduces another set of requirements. Mbanq’s role is to supply capabilities around that audience, working with the institutions and systems needed to support the service.

There is also a thread of education in his public work. Mbanq Labs lists him among its mentors. In a 2020 video, he discussed how traditional financial institutions could compete with technology-oriented newcomers, including their relationships with fintechs and decisions about core systems. His audience has included established bankers as well as people building something new.

At FinovateFall in 2024, his announced presentation carried the title Show Me the Money - the Bottom Line in FinTech. It was a suitably direct heading for someone who keeps returning to the economics of operations. Even the conference title was being asked to account for itself.

Electricity, then the football ground

In January 2025, Lounegov opened the Open Finance track at Fintech Islands in Barbados. He reached for a domestic comparison: “Open finance is like electricity - invisible but indispensable, powering how the world functions in the background.” It was a compact way to describe infrastructure whose importance can exceed its visibility.

The discussion concerned consumers consenting to share transactional data between financial service providers. His comparison made the plumbing easier to picture without requiring the audience to admire a pipe. It also fitted the business he had chosen: much of the valuable activity happens behind the product someone actually uses.

By July 2026, Mbanq had acquired a much more visible place in public life. It announced a long-term stadium naming partnership with Bradford City AFC. The ground would become Mbanq Valley Parade, retaining the Valley Parade name. The agreement also included plans to establish Bradford as the centre of the company’s UK operations.

“Our name on Valley Parade is both a privilege and a responsibility,” Lounegov said. The company described plans for a permanent presence in Bradford and West Yorkshire across technology, operations and business development. Possible work to improve the supporter experience through financial infrastructure remained subject to regulatory approvals.

A football club gives his interest in existing communities a concrete setting. Here are people with a shared identity, a place and a relationship that predates any financial product. The partnership puts Mbanq’s name among them. The accompanying plans ask the company to build a working presence in the city, too.

The work still needs doing

Lounegov’s public ambitions have included expanding access to financial services through platforms aimed at underserved groups and small businesses. In an early 2024 discussion of fintech’s prospects, he again emphasized compliance, adapting to regulatory change and activities with a workable revenue model, including lending. The vocabulary stayed close to his company’s operating proposition.

In October 2026, he joined a Seattle conference panel on capital markets for Croatian emerging companies. The topic connected his earlier investment and advisory experience with Mbanq’s international operations, which include teams in Croatia and Montenegro. Years after leaving the consultant’s position, he was still discussing how businesses reach capital and grow beyond their home markets.

The line through this career is unusually practical. Lounegov has moved from assessing financial businesses to building one that supplies other organizations with banking capabilities. There are speeches, partnerships and now a stadium sign along the way. Behind each, his commercial argument returns to the work that follows a launch. The account must function. The complaint must be handled. Somebody has to be there on Monday.