ASIF SIDDIQUI
NATWEST BOXED
Asif Siddiqui, Director of Engineering, Banking as a Service at NatWest Boxed, has led much of the engineering work behind that expansion. Having spent around two decades working for global brands including Amazon and Emirates Airline, he has experience with highstake, high-transaction-volume systems: experience and understanding he applied when he transitioned into finance. This prepared him for the complexity of banking infrastructure and the demands of operating at scale.
“ What I really wanted to do wasn’ t just modernise a legacy technology platform, but build a new, transformational, next-generation embedded finance platform,” Asif says.
Building a platform for embedded finance NatWest Boxed was established around 2022, initially working with a major European technology provider to launch its embedded finance offering. The original model divided responsibility between the two organisations. NatWest would own its core banking engine, while the technology partner would operate the embedded finance orchestration layer. This approach helped the business launch its firstproducts and also allowed NatWest Boxed to begin developing a platform that it could own and operate internally.
Over the next two years, the business matured from its original strategy, rebuilding its platform in-house while continuing to operate and scale products already launched with customers – something Asif describes as a
ASIF SIDDIQUI
DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING
With more than 26 years of experience building complex, highvolume systems, Asif Siddiqui leads engineering for Banking as a Service at NatWest Boxed. Previously, he held technology roles at global brands including Amazon and Emirates Airline. At NatWest Boxed, Asif is spearheading the development of a resilient, cloud-native embedded finance platform that empowers major UK brands to deliver seamless financial services at scale. His work combines architectural innovation with rigorous operational standards, driving the next generation of intelligent, customer-centric financial infrastructure.
‘ large-scale migration carried out while the business was already live’. Because of this, NatWest Boxed’ s technology team could not simply pause operations and replace one platform with another.
“ We had to refactor many processes, for example the customer onboarding process,” Asif reflects.“ So, we came up with a phased blueprint.” The blueprint began with micro-domains: separate areas of functionality – such as identity management, customer management or account onboarding – which can be owned and changed by dedicated teams. NatWest Boxed then created an
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