Digital banking platforms, advised from both sides of the table.
Boka Digital Advisors helps credit unions, community banks and mid-size banks choose the right digital platform, then make the decisions that determine whether the program actually ships.
The experience behind the advice
Two decades in financial services product, spent on both sides of the vendor relationship.
Building the platform
Product leadership for a cloud banking platform used by financial institutions across the country, covering digital account opening, member and customer onboarding, and the fintech integrations underneath them.
We know how these platforms are built, what is configurable, what is custom, and what the roadmap will and will not cover.
Buying and implementing it
Digital product leadership inside a $1.5 trillion North American bank, taking a digital banking program already in flight and turning it into $1.4 billion in deposits within twelve months.
We know how institutions actually operate, how requirements get written, and where a program quietly loses a year.
The problem is rarely the technology.
Digital banking platforms work. The vendors are competent and the software does what the demo showed. Programs still run long, cost more than planned, and launch an experience that looks like the old one with a new interface. It usually comes down to a small number of decisions that were made late, made once, or never made at all.
- Every platform demos well
- Selection turns into a feature comparison rather than a fit assessment. The right question is not which platform is best, it is which one matches how your institution actually operates and what your members or customers genuinely need.
- Risk and compliance set the ceiling
- Most digital experiences are shaped less by product decisions than by what risk, legal, compliance and fraud will accept. Those teams are almost never wrong about the requirement. They are frequently working from a baseline nobody has revisited in a decade, and no one has asked what the requirement is actually trying to accomplish.
- The first build sets the shape
- The line of business that goes first gets a platform configured around its process. Consumer, business and lending arrive later to find a system built for someone else, and the choice becomes rebuild or accept fragmentation on a newer platform.
- Nobody owns the reuse question
- Every requirement is either a reusable pattern or a one-off configuration. That call is cheap to make during design and expensive to unwind after go-live, and it does not get made unless someone is accountable for asking.
- Project management is not platform judgment
- A program manager can run a plan. Sequencing, estimating and defending that plan requires knowing what the platform can absorb, which is a different skill and usually the missing one.
- AI arrives mid-program
- Platform vendors are shipping AI into onboarding, servicing and lending. Some of it is real and some is roadmap. Deciding what to adopt, what to build and what to wait for is now part of every platform decision.
Where we come in.
Sometimes the platform is already chosen and the work is making the implementation land. Sometimes the decision is still open. We work at either stage, and the value is the same: we have been on both sides of the contract.
Choosing the platform
Vendor evaluation run from the inside out. Fit assessment against how your institution operates rather than a feature matrix, honest scope and cost expectations, and a clear read on what each vendor will need from you to succeed.
Current across digital banking, account opening and origination providers, including nCino, Alkami, Narmi, Q2, Backbase, MANTL, Temenos and Finastra.
Setting the compliance baseline
The highest-leverage work in any digital program, and the least likely to be staffed. We sit with risk, legal, compliance and fraud and work through what each requirement is actually trying to accomplish, then design the experience to meet the intent rather than inherit the script. It is how a nineteen question intake becomes three, without giving anything up.
Running the implementation
The business side of the program. Requirements discipline, sequencing across lines of business, reuse and exception criteria, and the interface with the vendor. This is where a program either compounds or fragments.
We work alongside your program manager and the vendor's delivery team, not in place of them.
Fintech and partner integration
Identity, fraud, funding and engagement layers rarely come from one provider. Selecting partners, designing the integration so providers can be swapped without rebuilding the journey, and keeping the experience coherent across vendors.
AI in the platform decision
Separating shipped capability from roadmap, deciding where AI belongs in onboarding, servicing and lending, and setting evaluation criteria before the pilot rather than after. Grounded in hands-on work: we build and run our own AI pipelines for anomaly detection and structured risk narratives.
A second read on the plan
For institutions already underway. An independent assessment of scope, sequencing and vendor commitments, delivered in weeks rather than quarters, with a clear view of what is on track and what will not hold.
Independence
Boka takes no fees, commissions or referral compensation from any platform vendor, fintech provider or systems integrator. We have no reseller agreements and no implementation partnerships.
Our only revenue comes from the institutions we advise. That is the entire reason a vendor evaluation from us is worth more than one from a firm that also implements.
What this looks like in practice.
Two decades across card issuing, deposits, digital account opening, treasury and cloud banking. A selection of the work.
Turning a digital banking program into deposit growth
Took over a digital banking implementation already in flight at a $1.5 trillion North American bank. Sequenced the work into stabilization and transformation tracks, delivered real-time identity verification and instant account funding, then redesigned the acquisition experience end to end.
Time to open down 36%. Submit rates up from 6% to 17% across four products. $1.4 billion in digital deposits within twelve months.
Reframing compliance to cut a nineteen question intake to three
Worked directly with risk, legal, compliance and collections leadership to separate what regulation actually required from what a decade-old phone script had accumulated. Rebuilt the enrollment experience around the intent of each requirement rather than the wording of the existing process, and built the first digital hardship servicing experience in the card industry.
25% of enrollments moved to self service. 70% lift in monthly digital payments. Reached cardholders who had gone ninety days or more without contacting anyone.
Fintech integration built for substitution, not lock-in
Owned the integration of identity, funding and engagement partners into a single digital account opening experience on a cloud banking platform. The identity layer shipped with five verification and fraud prevention providers configured out of the box, so institutions could change providers without rebuilding the journey. Instant funding removed the trial deposit wait, and in-session co-browse and chat kept applicants from abandoning mid-flow.
Account opening time down roughly 30%. Product adoption up 22%. Deposit contract value up 50% year over year.
Digital risk and identity at issuer scale
Modernized the digital risk and identity decisioning platform at a top-five US card issuer, replacing legacy authentication to enable real-time fraud detection and meet FFIEC expectations across digital and call center channels. Led the customer-facing response to large-scale merchant compromise.
Three million accounts reissued. Behavioral analytics introduced as a first-of-its-kind capability for the issuer.
Bank connectivity and money movement
Owned the connectivity platform moving client funds and data across twenty-two bank connections spanning payments, cash positioning and FX. Expanded real-time payment capability and stood up a center of excellence to industrialize delivery and bring the work in house.
Faster client onboarding and cross-product expansion across a Fortune 500 client base.
Engagement as an economic lever
Launched a credit health platform that became the most-visited digital product at a forty million cardmember issuer. Converted passive cardmembers into active digital users and connected engagement directly to portfolio performance.
Eleven million monthly active users. Measurable reductions in charge-off rates alongside increases in balance transfer activity and receivables.
Who you are working with.
Boka Digital Advisors is an independent advisory practice for credit unions, community banks and mid-size banks navigating digital platform change.
The practice was founded by Tatjana Dragovic, a product executive with two decades in regulated financial services. She has led digital product at a top-five US card issuer, run deposits and account opening inside a $1.5 trillion North American bank, and led product for a cloud banking platform serving financial institutions. She has also owned bank connectivity and payments infrastructure for a treasury technology provider.
Most advisors have seen digital transformation from one side. Tatjana has sold the platform, built the platform, bought the platform, and run the implementation. That perspective is what the practice is built on.
Every engagement is led personally. Larger programs are staffed with specialists we have worked with before.
If a platform decision is in front of you, it is worth a conversation.
Whether you are evaluating vendors, preparing to implement, or already underway and want an independent read on the plan.
tatjana@bokadigital.comA first conversation is thirty minutes, at no cost, and usually ends with a straight answer about whether you need outside help at all.