Founder & Chief Executive Officer, COMO Group, operating COMO Digital Life
“If your regulator feels like an outsider, you’ve already made a mistake. We aim to make them feel like co-authors—not just of what we launch, but of what we’re becoming.”— Angela Nickel
AmCham: Vision and regulation often clash. How do you keep them allies, not adversaries?
Angela Nickel: They only clash if you separate them. At COMO, we don’t treat regulation like an obstacle course we have to navigate after the race. It’s part of the race design. From the first whiteboard sketch, our compliance leads sit alongside product and engineering teams. That means the rules don’t just get translated later—they’re fluently spoken from day one.
We think of regulation as architecture, not red tape. When we build for resilience and clarity early, we’re not slowing down—we’re buying future speed. That mindset has made our conversations with regulators feel more like partnerships than permissions, especially in Luxembourg, where the ecosystem is incredibly dynamic and responsive. It’s not unusual to sit down with the CSSF and discuss a new approach rather than pitching a workaround to align on intent. That kind of transparency builds trust.
There’s also something energizing about designing products that are both bold and compliant. It’s easy to be visionary if you ignore the rules. It’s harder—and more rewarding—to bring vision and regulation into harmony. For us, it’s a creative challenge. When you pull compliance upstream, what you often find is that it clarifies the design rather than constraining it.
So, our rule is: if your regulator feels like an outsider, you’ve already made a mistake. We aim to make them feel like co-authors—not just of what we launch, but of what we’re becoming.
AmCham: AI is everywhere in the finance sector. How do you keep it “invisible” rather than overwhelming?
Angela Nickel: AI should feel like a silent co-pilot, not a spotlight-hungry showrunner. At COMO, our AI is engineered to enhance—not intrude. That means no extra dashboards, no surprise decisions, and no digital fireworks. Instead, it quietly monitors patterns across trillions of transactions, catches subtle anomalies, preempts reconciliation errors, and flags potential AML risks—long before a human would need to be concerned.
The magic lies in frictionless integration. Our AI doesn’t ask for permission to be useful—it simply is. It resolves instead of alerting. It nudges rather than interrupts. One example: rather than dumping “suspicious activity” into a bloated queue, our AI auto-tags transactions based on contextual learning from the client’s behavior. It’s like having a compliance analyst, an auditor, and an operations assistant working 24/7 without ever needing to log in.
We don’t believe in algorithmic vanity metrics. If a client notices the AI, we’ve missed the mark. Good automation vanishes into the workflow. Great automation clears the clutter from your brain.
AmCham: Mid-sized corporations and regional banks are often called the “forgotten middle” in financial innovation. What does COMO offer them that the industry has historically overlooked?
Angela Nickel: Mid-sized corporates and regional banks often find themselves in a precarious middle ground: too complex for off-the-shelf retail banking tools, yet lacking the scale or capital to build bespoke treasury infrastructure like their global counterparts. That middle-market squeeze creates fragmentation, compliance fatigue, and missed opportunities. The opportunity is enormous—and overdue.
In-House Banking as a Service from COMO is a modern remedy to that chronic pain. It’s not just a tech offering, it’s a rethink of financial operating models. With our platform, these institutions can offer regulated, ready-to-use multi-currency virtual IBANs, real-time sub-accounting, AI-powered compliance, and SWIFT/SEPA connectivity—without requiring them to touch their legacy systems or apply for a banking license.
That’s the beauty of our modular design: they can “plug-in” capabilities like treasury netting, intercompany lending, or cash pooling as needed, scaling with confidence and cost-efficiency. We turn capital expenditures into operational ones and static institutions into adaptive ecosystems.
And here’s where design matters. We’ve taken inspiration from the Bauhaus principle that form must follow function. So, every component of our system is clean, purposeful, and intuitive.
AmCham: Design metaphors bring color to much of your language. Where did that lens come from?
Angela Nickel: The Bauhaus movement didn’t just influence how I think—it gave language to a sensibility I’ve always lived by: form must serve function, yes, but even more crucially, function must serve people. That’s a North Star for me.
At COMO, we’ve embedded this ethos deep into our design culture. Every screen we ship goes through what we call our “Triple Test”:
Is it clear? Is it kind? Will it disappear after helping?
If the answer isn’t yes–yes–yes, we redesign. Simplicity is not just aesthetic—it’s ethical. A well-designed financial tool should empower, not confuse. It should give users confidence, not complexity.
The Bauhaus lens also allows us to speak in metaphors that are not just poetic but also practical. For instance, we often compare our platform to a finely made chair—sturdy, balanced, and free of excess. Or to a “financial GPS,” guiding you through the fog of fragmented systems toward clarity. These images make finance feel human. Because behind every transaction is a decision, a risk, a hope. Our job is to make that experience transparent and humane.
This mindset is reflected in everything from our motion-led explainer videos, which utilize clean geometric forms, to our app UI, which is minimalist by design yet deeply functional. We don’t do ornamentation. We do utility—with beauty.
Ultimately, what Bauhaus taught me—and what we convey through our products—is that clarity is a form of care. Clarity, especially in finance, is a transformative act.
AmCham: Growth often dilutes culture. How will you keep COMO’s values intact as headcount soars?
Angela Nickel: It’s a real risk—and we talk about it all the time. But here’s our view: culture isn’t a poster on the wall; it’s a living muscle. And like any muscle, it only gets stronger through repeated, deliberate movement. At COMO, that means daily micro-rituals, not big-bang town halls.
We promote five-minute gratitude circles. We have “open mic” feedback sessions where titles step aside, and honesty takes center stage. Our performance reviews include kindness audits in addition to key performance indicators (KPIs). And we genuinely celebrate quiet impact, not just flashy wins.
The beauty of these habits is that they don’t get harder as we grow—they get more powerful. When 20 people practice daily kindness, it’s a vibe. When 200 do it, it’s a force. So, we don’t try to freeze our culture in amber—we design it to scale.
We also document what we care about. Our onboarding doesn’t just cover systems and protocols; it tells stories, such as why we designed our finance tools to “disappear after helping” or why our engineers use the phrase “clear before clever” when reviewing each other’s code. That shared language becomes a compass, even for people who joined yesterday.
In short, our values aren’t being stretched by scale—they’re being amplified by it. That’s the goal.
AmCham: What’s the biggest misconception people have about fintechs?
Angela Nickel: That speed equals sloppiness. People often assume that if something moves fast in finance, it must be cutting corners. But at COMO, we think of speed differently—it’s not adrenaline, it’s architecture.
True speed comes from discipline, not chaos. Our team doesn’t chase velocity; they create it by building foundations that are strong, scalable, and secure. It’s a bit like high-speed rail: the train can only glide if the tracks are aligned down to the millimeter. For us, that means clean codebases, modular architecture, and ethics baked right into the product layer—from compliance to customer experience.
The paradox is this: the more deliberate you are in how you build, the faster you can go without wobble. That’s the kind of speed we’re after. The kind where clients get results in seconds because the system is doing exactly what it’s supposed to—not because we skipped a safety check.
One once said, “We design for clarity, and clarity is fast.” That stuck with me. Because when you reduce friction—not just technically, but ethically—velocity doesn’t feel risky. It feels inevitable. And that’s how fintech should work: not recklessly, but gracefully.
AmCham: COMO’s leadership team is comprised of 60% women, a rarity in the fintech sector. Has diversity influenced outcomes?
Angela Nickel: Absolutely—and not in the abstract. Diversity has shown up in our decisions, our products, and our resilience. When your leadership team includes people with different life experiences, you naturally get broader pattern recognition. You spot edge cases faster. You anticipate user friction before it becomes a problem. And you design with empathy—not as a nice-to-have, but as a competitive edge.
At COMO, inclusion is not a banner we wave; it’s a system we operationalize. It shapes how we conduct product reviews, handle customer support edge cases, and even how we write compliance logic. Diverse teams ask better questions—especially the kind that keeps you out of trouble and closer to your users.
People often discuss diversity in moral terms—and yes, kindness is essential. But we’ve seen firsthand that inclusion is also the shortest path to better performance. If you’re trying to build tools for a messy, multi-currency, multi-market world, you want a leadership table that reflects that complexity—not filters it out.
So yes, we’re proud of the numbers. But we’re even prouder of the outcomes they’re driving.
Disclaimer
The views expressed here are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect AmCham Luxembourg’s official policy.
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