Nathdanai Kwansiripat, Assistant Managing Director at Krungsri Nimble, shares his playbook for modern IT leadership. He discusses the evolution of IT into a product engineering team, the mistake of micromanaging technical decisions, and why flexibility is a leader’s most critical skill.
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- The Biggest Leadership Mistake is Micromanaging Technical Decisions. A leader’s job is not to dominate the technical design but to trust and empower their tech team, creating an environment where they can work creatively.
- The Future of IT is the Product Engineering Team. Tech professionals must now understand both the business and the customer, proactively identifying technology solutions to address business problems, rather than merely executing on requirements.
- The Most Critical Leadership Skills are Learning and Flexibility. In a world of rapid technological and generational change, leaders must constantly learn and adapt their management style to be effective.
Could you please introduce yourself and share a bit about your journey in the IT field?
I am currently the Assistant Managing Director at Krungsri Nimble, the technology subsidiary of Krungsri Bank. My primary responsibility involves overseeing all of the bank’s digital platforms, including our mobile banking app and websites.
I began my career as a software engineer at a global financial infrastructure and data company. Later, I transitioned into management, where I worked on large-scale transformation programs, helping organisations shift from traditional waterfall methodologies to agile practices. Over the past twenty years, I have gained experience in various sectors, including insuretech, retail tech, and banking.
One of my notable achievements was leading the transformation of Krungsri’s mobile app to Flutter, which modernised the customer experience and significantly reduced technical debt. Additionally, at Krungsri Nimble, I oversee other areas of the company such as finance, human resources, and marketing. This combination of technology and business responsibilities allows me to align our strategic goals across the entire organisation.
Reflecting on my journey, I see it as a continuous effort to bridge the gap between technology and business, utilising my technical expertise to deliver platforms that are scalable, secure, and meaningful for our customers.
What are the most significant challenges you are currently facing in the IT landscape?
The challenge in technology is always rapid change, but AI has shifted the landscape faster than expected. The impact is clear in three areas:
- People: AI is automating many junior tasks, so we need talent with stronger fundamentals and the ability to adapt. The learning curve is steep, and our job as leaders is to help teams keep pace.
- Process: Banks must strike a balance between agility and governance. We are adopting AI and modern tools, but we must integrate them into processes that still meet compliance and risk standards.
- Technology: Fraud, particularly through deepfakes and AI-generated scams, has escalated. One of our priorities this year is to strengthen fraud detection capabilities without adding friction for customers.
The biggest challenge, therefore, is not technology itself; it’s helping people, processes, and systems adapt at the right pace.
What emerging technologies and innovation opportunities should businesses focus on?
The opportunity lies in building once and adapting for multiple business cases. For example, we built an open banking API hub (Jupiter) that serves various business lines—retail, corporate, and partner integrations, maximising ROI on a single investment.
For banks, the twin focus must be AI and security. AI is enabling productivity in development and customer service, but it also fuels fraud. The companies that can innovate responsibly, while protecting customer trust, will be the ones that succeed.
What is the biggest IT-related mistake you see other companies make?
The biggest mistake is when management micromanages technical design. Leaders should not dominate engineering decisions. Our role is to set direction, ensure alignment with business outcomes, and create an environment that enables engineers to innovate.
At Krunugsri Nimble, we learned this when building our standard components. If leadership had dictated the design, the modules would not have met the real needs of developers. Instead, we empowered engineering teams to define and test the architecture. The result was a reusable library that now accelerates projects across the bank.
How do you envision the IT sector evolving over the next three to five years?
IT is evolving from a back-office support role into a product engineering function. Engineers are no longer just implementing software according to the requirements; they must also understand customers and the direct business impact.
In the banking sector, I see IT moving toward:
- Ecosystem integration – banks collaborating with other industries via APIs.
- Customer-driven engineering – IT teams building features with direct business and user insight.
- Cloud-native and AI-powered workflows – to scale faster and reduce cost.
In three to five years, every IT professional will need to be both technically strong and business-aware.
What specific trends or technologies will have the most profound impact?
AI will reshape the entire software development lifecycle. Tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor already help our developers code faster and more securely. Beyond development, knowledge management, and automation tools will streamline testing, deployment, and monitoring.
We are experimenting with AI in quality assurance to automate regression testing. This not only reduces cost but also allows engineers to focus on building new value instead of repetitive tasks.
How are IT leaders navigating the ever-changing regulatory environment?
The biggest unknown is the issue of AI ethics and responsibility. We need clear rules on data usage, intellectual property, and open-source licensing when AI generates code.
As a bank subsidiary, we are proactively working with regulators to ensure our innovations are safe and compliant. For example, in mobile banking, we align every AI initiative with strict data privacy frameworks, even before regulation catches up. Regulators and industry must move in parallel, as adoption is already underway.
How do you balance the need for innovation with the demand for stability and security?
In banking, trust is non-negotiable. That means innovation cannot come at the cost of security or reliability. Our approach is to test new technologies in controlled pilots and then scale them gradually. For instance, we initially applied some SDKs to selected features of the Krungsri app. Only after validating stability and performance did we expand it across the platform. This approach enables us to innovate while ensuring that customers consistently experience stable and secure banking services.
What do you consider to be the most critical skill that IT leaders should have today?
The top skill is continuous learning with flexibility. What worked five years ago may not work today. Leaders must learn, adapt, and adjust their management style to different generations—Gen X, Y, and especially Z, who value empowerment and psychological safety.
I focus on being a coach rather than a commander—setting a clear direction, but giving my teams the space to make their own decisions. As a coach, I see my role not just in guiding, but also in providing constructive feedback, helping them reflect on their approach, and supporting them to grow into stronger leaders themselves.
What is one question all IT leaders should be asking themselves today?
“How can I design an organisation that is flexible enough to adapt to any change in the next two to three years?”
It’s not just about updating structures, skills, or processes. The real priority is building a culture where people are empowered, resilient, and willing to learn. Change is no longer the exception—it’s the constant—and organisations that can adapt through their people will always stay ahead.
How do you approach mentoring and developing the next generation of leaders?
My approach is to create the stage for people to learn and grow, rather than directing every step. We focus on three forms of learning:
- Structured training for foundational knowledge.
- Communities of Practice where peers share and exchange skills—for example, our Clean Coding CoP.
- Learning by doing, through internal projects and hackathons that allow diverse teams—engineers, designers, product managers—to solve real problems together.
These hackathons are a win-win: people gain hands-on experience, and the company benefits from fresh ideas. Our next hackathon will focus on sustainable software, which is another opportunity for employees to learn by doing while contributing directly to the bank’s future.
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