Modernizing The Banking Industry

With Martin Della Chiesa, CEO of Skaleet.

In 2019, Martin Della Chiesa and his wife began a new chapter in their lives by leaving the City of Light for the Big Apple. Martin’s wife, a lawyer, had the opportunity to move to the US as part of an exchange with her law firm. Martin, on his side, had to start over. He had spent the previous three years working as a consultant at Accuracy. After a few calls and meetings, and with the strong support from the partners of the firm, he was hired as a Senior Associate at the New York-based private equity firm Long Arc Capital.

Martin didn’t have to wait long to sign his first deal. Just a few weeks in, his phone rang. It was an old friend, the CFO of a French company called TagPay, reaching out about a potential investment opportunity. Martin took the lead on the deal, and Long Arc Capital invested €25 million to acquire a majority stake.

A year later, that company would become Skaleet.

***

Martin’s early years began far from New York. In fact, far from any capital city. He grew up in northeastern France, in a small town between Metz and Nancy. Born into a family of doctors, he followed an exemplary academic path. Passionate about geopolitics and economics, he enrolled at Sciences Po Strasbourg. As a student, he dreamed of becoming either a journalist or a civil servant — Sciences Po is a prestigious French school known for preparing students for such careers. But he soon realized that this path wasn’t for him. Driven by his interest in economics, he shifted toward corporate finance. He initially planned to pursue another year of study in London, but on a whim, he applied to the General Inspection of one of France’s largest banking groups. Just a few weeks later, the good news arrived: he had been accepted into the BPCE Group.

“[Culture] relies on three things: who you hire, who you fire, and who you promote. That’s what people really see when they look at your culture.”

General inspection is an incredible training ground for understanding how a bank operates. You know, deeply from the inside. For three years, Martin traveled every week, visiting branches across France, Europe, and Africa. His understanding of the banking system deepened, and over time, he made three key observations about the industry.

First, the system wasn’t going to be disrupted easily. Some banking brands have deeply rooted local relationships that people often underestimate, and their market shares are enormous. Back in 2015, when I was doing my apprenticeship at Crédit Agricole in Reims — the city of champagne, for those unfamiliar — the business banking arm held a 70% market share in the region.

Martin’s second observation was the exceptional expertise of banks in asset and liability management. “Serious issues are quite rare in French banks,” he notes.

His final insight was about IT. He recognized that the infrastructure was delivering services at massive scale, an achievement in itself. But what struck him was the widening gap between his expectations as a customer and the actual experience in bank branches. Both in terms of digital interfaces and internal tools for employees.

One thing was clear to him: change was coming.

***

Naturally, from his position at the General Inspection, Martin started paying closer attention to what was happening in the fintech world. It was 2016, Revolut had just been founded the year before and was already generating a lot of buzz. The sector was beginning to stir and after three years in the bank, he faced a choice: continue at BPCE and likely spend his entire career in an industry that didn’t fully grasp the shift underway, or try something more innovative. He didn’t hesitate for long. “I felt more drawn to being one of the people helping to move the industry forward, rather than part of the leadership trying to protect the status quo.”

At the time, the ecosystem was still in its early days. “Founders were mainly focused on building the core of their businesses, and most early hires were developers or product people.” If they brought in someone like him, it was usually for a compliance or CFO role. Neither of which appealed to him. The alternative was to start his own company, but Martin didn’t feel ready. He couldn’t picture himself sitting in a Parisian café with a MacBook, launching something from scratch. He didn’t yet understand the 0 to 1 journey. He had met people who made decisions, but not people who built. So he decided to wait. Instead, he joined Accuracy as an Associate, working in a team focused on financial services.

As a consultant, Martin broadened his view. He explored other countries, worked with different institutions, and positioned himself at the intersection of traditional banking and fintech. What attracted him to this space was the entrepreneurial energy. He had joined a relatively young and fast-growing team within a consulting firm that was also scaling. An environment that allowed him to develop a commercial mindset and further nurtured his interest for technology and disruption. He notably delved into Blockchain and Bitcoin and wrote a book published in 2018: Blockchain – The key to unlocking the value chain.

Martin stayed at Accuracy for three years, until 2020, when he moved to New York with his wife. There, he would add a new string to his bow. After banking and consulting, he was about to discover the world of investing.

***

During his four years as an investor, Martin didn’t hesitate to get his hands dirty. He spent as much time supporting portfolio companies — helping with acquisitions, go-to-market strategies, product roadmaps, internal processes — as he did sourcing or closing deals. And the more deals he worked on, the more he observed what was happening across Europe and the US. Each experience was a learning opportunity, and he brought that knowledge back to the companies he worked with.

He also came to an important realization: you can make the best decisions of your life, things will still get complicated at some point. Market shifts, a CEO leaving… these things happen. If you don’t have a deep understanding of the market and a strong, adaptable infrastructure that allows you to react quickly, it becomes hard to sustain performance over time.

Martin was particularly involved with Skaleet. In 2021, when Long Arc invested €25 million, the company was mainly active in Africa and had just achieved product-market fit in Europe for its Core Banking Platform. Martin’s mission was to scale in Europe and win over larger clients. To do that, he had to strike a delicate balance between maintaining continuity — the company had just 30 employees, 25 of whom were engineers — and injecting new energy through fresh talent.

It was an exciting mission, but something was missing.

He wanted to be in charge. “You represent the shareholder. So in a way, you're the one making the calls. You carry authority and hold some of the key cards, because at the end of the day, it’s about the money. But when it comes to the day-to-day, you’re not the one signing contracts, dealing with difficult clients, or prospecting new ones. You're in the background, like Didier Deschamps on the sidelines, pointing out where players should go, drawing up the game plan, giving a pep talk at halftime. But at some point, I realized I didn’t want to be on the sidelines anymore. I didn’t want to be the coach. I wanted to be the captain on the field.”

He didn’t know it yet, but that opportunity was just around the corner.

***

Skaleet was founded in 2006 by Yves Eonnet and Hervé Manceron, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing two years ago for this same newsletter. The company initially focused on payments and mobile money in Africa before expanding into the broader banking market. In 2015, Skaleet implemented its first SaaS Core Banking Platform for Trust Merchant Bank in DRC. Every financial institution relies on a system to manage the core functions of banking. Historically, this was called a Core Banking System, mostly monolithic and asynchronous. Today, we refer to it as a Core Banking Platform, or Core Banking Solutions.

A Core Banking Platform is not the same as Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), which I’ve discussed previously in this newsletter. A Core Banking Platform is the technology infrastructure banks use to manage their internal operations: handling accounts, transactions, interest, and compliance. It powers the day-to-day workings of a bank. In a way, it’s the ERP of banking. BaaS, on the other hand, enables third parties, typically fintechs, marketplaces, or platforms, to offer banking services like accounts, cards, or payments through APIs, without becoming banks themselves. Core Banking Platforms are built for banks and regulated disruptors, while BaaS solutions are designed for non-regulated companies embedding financial services into their own products.

“For a long time, Skaleet was seen as a substitute competitor to BaaS providers. But in reality, the company plays a very different role. In the lifecycle of a fintech or financial institution, Skaleet comes in after the BaaS phase. At some point, you hit the limits of that model. Economically and in terms of experience. So you take the next step. You gain autonomy, get your own license, and that’s where Skaleet comes in,” Martin explains.

A few years ago, the two founders reached their sixties, and the time for retirement approached. After nearly 20 years building Skaleet, it was time to start planning the transition. With the support of the Board, Martin was more than happy to jump in when the opportunity arose. He had all the qualities needed for the role: experience at the General Inspection of a major bank, time spent as a financial consultant in the banking sector, and four years as an investor and board member at Skaleet.

Martin quickly came to understand what it truly means to be a CEO. He said to me something I often hear in conversations with other founders: the first job of a CEO is managing people. And for Martin, that starts with company culture. “It relies on three things: who you hire, who you fire, and who you promote. That’s what people really see when they look at your culture. You can define your values, and you should, but if someone who works to the point of exhaustion for six months gets the promotion, that says more about your real values than any Thursday evening speech ever could.”

Martin had already understood the importance of hiring the right people, and he keeps a useful mantra in mind when recruiting: 8s hire 9s, 7s hire 6s. “An 8 will try to hire someone better than them. So when you hire 8s, you eventually end up with 9s. But when you have 7s, they often feel threatened by people who are better than they are, so they hire 6s. And when your team is made up of 7s, you quickly enter a downward spiral in overall quality.”

Today, Skaleet holds a strong market position that it aims to consolidate and expand. The company now has around 30 clients across 15 countries. In four years, the team has grown from 30 to 120 people and opportunities are growing. Cloud adoption is accelerating, with nearly half of core banking migrations in EMEA moving to the cloud. Physical banking infrastructure continues to decline on the other side. Since 2008, the EU has witnessed a 42% reduction in bank branches, with Spain, Germany, and Italy experiencing the largest contractions. Data is from the European Banking Federation and GrandViewInc, with the help of Perplexity’s Research. A modern Core Banking Platform is not just a tech upgrade, it’s the foundation for sustainable growth in today’s banking environment.

Skaleet’s mission is clearer than ever: empowering European and African financial institutions to thrive by delivering accessible, innovative, and efficient banking services.

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Thomas