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Open banking infrastructure · MENA · 2025

Lean Technologies: taking horizontal infrastructure into one vertical.

SECTOR

Open banking, financial data

MARKET

UAE and KSA

COMPANY

Lean Technologies

ROLE APPLIED FOR

PMM Lead

DATE

Aug 2025

Fintech & PaymentsOpen Banking

The situation

Infrastructure gets pitched by its parts.

Lean sells infrastructure: regulated APIs that let a business connect to its customers' bank accounts in real time. Infrastructure gets pitched by its parts, so the pitch becomes a list of endpoints and the buyer is left to work out what it is for.

The brief asked for positioning and messaging for the core data product, a go-to-market for one vertical, a sales enablement plan, the strategic narrative, and how I would build and lead the product marketing function itself.

Everything below came from public sources and the brief. No customer interviews, no pipeline, no win rates.

01 · What this engagement produced

11 of 34 outputs

Research

Competition

Segment, position and price

Message

Launch and enable

Measure and maintain

Solid is what the brief produced. Dashed is what it did not reach, and could not from outside.

02 · The decision

Which vertical the horizontal product enters first.

A connectivity API is relevant to every digital financial service, which is the problem. Sold to everyone it sounds like plumbing, and plumbing is bought on price. The brief was an opportunity to pick one vertical, name the companies in it, and write for them.

Struck

Stay horizontal, sell to all fintech

Every segment hears a feature list, and the pitch competes on price.

Struck

Lead with payments and BNPL

The most crowded end of the market, and the least dependent on data.

Chosen

Enter through wealth

Underserved by legacy onboarding and funding, and reachable by name: Sarwa, Baraka, StashAway, Vault Wealth, Malaa, Drahim.

Open finance rules in the UAE and the SAMA sandbox set the timing. The vertical was chosen because it could be named, not because it was largest.

03 · What the brief gave me

The figures the brief carried.

98%

UAE coverage claimed

250+

clients cited, including Careem, Binance and e&

8

competitors assessed

Coverage and client figures are Lean's own published numbers, carried into the work as theirs.

04 · What I built

6 workstreams

Six workstreams, from the core positioning to running the function.

01Positioning and messaging for the core productOne line, one elevator pitch, one set of proof.

03 Segment, position & price

  • Digital-first financial services named as the buyer: fintechs, neobanks, wallets, investment apps, BNPL, crypto exchanges
  • Goals, pains and the Lean answer written as four matched pairs rather than a feature list
  • The one-liner and the elevator pitch built on grow faster, reduce risk, gain customer trust
02The wealth vertical, definedWho it is for, and why they buy now.

03 Segment, position & price

  • Primary buyers named individually; secondary buyers separated as private banks, family offices and advisory firms digitising
  • The API suite translated into what a wealth platform can do with it: onboarding, funding, aggregation, advice, compliance, experience
  • Why now argued from open finance adoption and demand from mass affluent and high net worth segments
03The competitive landscapeWhere Lean sits against regional, emerging and global players.

02 Competition

  • Regional leaders, emerging local players, global benchmarks and adjacent credit bureaus separated rather than listed together
  • Plotted on regulatory depth and coverage against product breadth
  • Named: Tarabut, Spare, Sanam, Spire, Plaid, Tink, TrueLayer, plus payments and BNPL players as potential overlap
04Sales enablementFrom product-heavy pitching to value-driven storytelling.

05 Launch & enable

  • Structured vertical training, delivered live and recorded, with objection handling
  • Story-driven demo flow: investor signs up, links a bank, funds the account, sees the portfolio
  • Battlecards against named competitors, one page, in Slack and Notion
  • An ROI calculator taking drop-off and funding delay as inputs, moving the conversation from cost to value
  • Collateral refresh: one-pagers, a whitepaper, and client story templates
05The launch roadmapFour months, laid out by workstream.

05 Launch & enable

  • September to December across pilots, internal rollout, collateral and external launch
  • Pilots first, success stories captured before the public moment
  • Industry events, PR, thought leadership and targeted campaigns sequenced after enablement, not before
06Leading the functionBootstrapping, then handing over.

06 Measure & maintain

  • 0 to 30 days foundation, 30 to 60 co-creation, 60 to 90 handover, with each PMM owning a launch by the end
  • Phase one builds the playbooks and personally drives one or two launches; phase two hands the swimlanes over and shifts to coaching
  • Success measured as market impact, sales confidence and team development, including whether the materials actually get used

05 · The judgment call

Measuring the function on whether anyone used the work.

The easy version of the measurement slide is a list of things produced: decks written, battlecards shipped, launches run. It is easy to fill and it tells a hiring panel nothing about whether the work reached a customer.

So the measures went the other way: adoption of the launched feature at one, three and six months, sales cycle time, surveyed confidence in the material, and the share of the team actually using the playbooks. Content usage sits beside content delivery, because a deck nobody opens is a cost.

06 · What this proves

Narrowing, translation, enablement, measurement.

I narrow before I write.

One vertical, named companies, rather than all of fintech.

I translate infrastructure.

APIs turned into what a wealth platform can do with them.

I plan the enablement, not just the message.

Training, demo flow, battlecards, ROI calculator, collateral.

I measure usage.

Sales confidence and material adoption, not assets shipped.

Scope

Briefed by the company. Unpaid, and answered from outside: no customer interviews, no pipeline data, no access to their team. Coverage, client and market figures are Lean's own published numbers.