25 Questions: The Neobank Executive Interview

25 questions to help you plan your next interview with a Neobank leader.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

1. How is your organization using generative AI to improve customer service or product development?

2. What guardrails are in place to ensure ethical use of AI in your credit decisioning models?

3. How are you leveraging AI to personalize the customer banking experience at scale?

4. What’s your position on the risks of algorithmic bias in AI-powered underwriting or fraud detection?

5. Have you adopted any AI copilots internally to enhance employee productivity or operations?

6. How do you balance explainability with performance when deploying machine learning models in banking?

7. Are you building proprietary AI models or relying on third-party platforms like OpenAI or Anthropic?

8. What role does AI play in your roadmap for customer acquisition and retention?

9. How are regulators reacting to your use of AI, and how are you preparing for increased oversight?

10. What impact do you expect foundation models to have on your competitive edge in fintech?

Cybersecurity

11. What are the biggest cybersecurity threats facing organizations like yours today, and how are you addressing them?

12. How has your cybersecurity posture evolved in response to increasingly sophisticated fraud tactics?

13. How do you protect customer data while still enabling seamless digital experiences?

14. What investments are you making in zero-trust architecture or secure-by-design frameworks?

15. What’s your approach to ransomware prevention and incident response readiness?

16. Are you collaborating with government or industry consortia on threat intelligence sharing?

17. How are you ensuring that third-party vendors or APIs do not become attack vectors?

18. How does your CISO organization interact with your AI and risk management teams?

Risk Management

19. How do you model credit risk when customer data is limited or unconventional?

20. What frameworks are you using to assess AI model risk in regulatory and operational contexts?

21. How do you stress test your portfolio and liquidity against market shocks or interest rate changes?

22. How do you evaluate systemic risk exposure as a digital-first financial institution?

23. How are you responding to heightened regulatory scrutiny following recent neobank failures or fines?

24. What is your governance structure for managing operational and technology risks at the board level?

25. How do you prioritize between innovation risk and compliance risk when scaling new products?