Building Albania's first digital bank with JetBank's Fatbardha Rino

After more than two decades inside established banks, Fatbardha Rino founded Jet Bank - Albania's first fully licensed digital bank - to build what she had always believed banking could be.

In this episode of Banking Reinvented, host Tim Rutten sits down with her to unpack what it takes for a bank to go from initial setup to live operations in six months, without branches, legacy debt, or inherited processes.

Fatbardha speaks about the decisions that made that possible - from hiring for character and emotional readiness over experience alone, to outsourcing development and IT entirely, to designing the full architecture upfront and confirming what was genuinely needed before buying anything.

The episode also covers how Jet Bank chose its hero products based on specific customer behavior in the Albanian market, and why 50,000 people registered on the waiting list in the first two to three weeks - before the bank had processed a single transaction.

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