How Infrastructure-First Thinking Could Inform Banking Resilience
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESS Newswire / July 9, 2025 / As the banking sector shows renewed stability in 2025-with only one bank failure compared to the dramatic collapses of Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic, and Signature Bank in 2023-industry observers continue analyzing what went wrong and how to build more resilient institutions. The infrastructure-first philosophy that Kotaro Shimogori has championed throughout his career in technology and business development offers a valuable lens for understanding these challenges.
“When people talk about fintech success, they often focus on vision, funding, or flashy front-end features,” Shimogori has observed. “But the real story is written in infrastructure.” This perspective, developed through his work on machine learning systems and cross-cultural business platforms, emphasizes building for longevity rather than just immediate growth, principles that have broader relevance for financial institutions.
The Infrastructure-First Mindset
Kotaro Shimogori’s approach to system design has consistently prioritized resilience over rapid scaling. His philosophy that “innovation that ignores infrastructure isn’t innovation-it’s a liability” reflects the thinking that could inform how financial institutions approach growth and risk management.
The 2023 banking failures revealed institutions that had prioritized rapid expansion while accumulating vulnerabilities in their underlying structure. Silicon Valley Bank’s concentration of uninsured deposits and significant unrealized losses on long-term bonds exemplified how growth strategies can create systemic weaknesses when infrastructure planning doesn’t keep pace.
This pattern mirrors challenges Shimogori has observed in technology development, where organizations that optimize for favorable conditions often find themselves unprepared when circumstances change. The principle applies whether building software systems or financial institutions: sustainable success requires designing for stress scenarios, not just normal operations.
Building for Resilience
Shimogori’s emphasis on creating systems that “don’t flinch” under pressure-drawn from his experience with complex technical systems-suggests approaches that could strengthen banking infrastructure. Rather than optimizing purely for growth or efficiency, institutions might benefit from design principles that prioritize stability and adaptability.
The rapid pace of deposit withdrawals during the 2023 crisis, accelerated by digital banking and social media, highlighted how quickly modern systems can amplify traditional risks. This evolution reflects the kind of unexpected operational challenges that infrastructure-first thinking is designed to anticipate and manage.
