What tendencies are driving fintech innovation within the UK and Europe as 2026 begins?
With FinovateEurope 2026 kicking off in simply two weeks, we’re showcasing a few of the main themes in banking and monetary providers that can be addressed—on the demo stage in addition to by means of our keynote addresses, hearth chats, and panel discussions—when the convention begins on Tuesday, 10 February.
From agentic AI to post-quantum cryptography, the enabling applied sciences of right now are reworking banking and monetary providers. Benefiting from these improvements to higher serve clients, create new income streams, and efficiently compete in an ever-more complicated market is the objective of each banker and monetary providers skilled. Come see the options for your self this 12 months at FinovateEurope 2026.
Improvements in Verification, Fraud Prevention, and Workflow Automation
From the demo stage, anticipate to see a variety of improvements in identification verification and fraud prevention. With the proliferation of applied sciences starting from sooner funds to agentic AI to digital belongings, making certain that buyers and companies are in a position to interact in these providers safely has develop into more and more essential. Moreover, with applied sciences like AI empowering a brand new era of fraudsters and monetary criminals, a variety of innovators are growing options that concentrate on particular vulnerabilities and assault vectors with steady surveillance and protection.
Additionally among the many high tendencies mirrored within the demoing firms at this 12 months’s FinovateEurope are improvements in embedded finance and open finance. As paths towards unlocking new income streams and deepening buyer engagement, each embedded finance and open finance provide monetary establishments distinctive alternatives and are more and more supported by regulatory steerage in each the UK and throughout Europe.
One other space the place we are going to see a substantial amount of innovation this 12 months at FinovateEurope is in workflow automation and system modernization. Quite a few firms can be demoing options that do every part from enhancing developer productiveness to accelerating compliance readiness to managing complicated fashions and calculations for banks and different monetary establishments. The sheer number of startups on this area—a lot of them hailing from Jap and Central European nations—is a testomony to the vary of challenges that fintech is able to fixing. It additionally speaks effectively of the variety of technologists from exterior of fintech which might be turning their abilities towards issues in banking and monetary providers.
Modernization and Transformation within the Age of AI
Most of the similar themes from the dwell demos can even be manifest on the plenary stage. With regard to modernization, for instance, FinovateEurope will look at the ways in which fintech, AI, and the cloud may assist rework legacy banking. The convention can even have a look at the problem of modernizing legacy authentication, particularly by transferring to applied sciences like post-quantum cryptography (PQC) which might be designed to safe methods in opposition to threats from quantum computer systems. To the issue of fraud and monetary crime, audio system will focus on using community APIs to battle scams and the way banks and fintechs can work collectively to satisfy the distinctive cybersecurity challenges of the AI age. Carrying out all of this whereas avoiding further friction for the person is a high theme and chief concern for banks and monetary providers firms alike.
Different key themes equivalent to personalization, open banking, and open finance can even be subjects of dialogue at this 12 months’s convention. Each within the context of wealth administration and retail banking, open knowledge guarantees not solely extra participating, personalised experiences for purchasers, but additionally supplies monetary establishments with higher, extra data-driven decision-making; extra environment friendly operations; and higher danger administration.
Unsurprisingly, AI continues to be a principal theme in any dialog on know-how, banking, and monetary providers. FinovateEurope’s keynotes and particular addresses will examine points equivalent to how generative AI is shaping the way forward for cell banking in addition to the rise of agentic AI and the problem of “nonhuman clients” equivalent to AI-powered bots and brokers. Different shows will focus on the EU’s AI Act and its implications for banks and monetary providers suppliers, in addition to “classes discovered” from tech giants like Google, Meta, and Microsoft and their AI innovation journeys.
It’s truthful to say that improvements in AI proceed to drive what’s attainable in fintech, and the variety of mainstage particular addresses at FinovateEurope protecting completely different use instances and purposes of AI replicate this truth. Certainly, for one more 12 months, FinovateEurope is that includes an business stage devoted particularly to purposes of AI for banking and monetary providers. However whereas AI is a clearly main drive in technological innovation, it is only one of numerous applied sciences—together with open finance/banking/knowledge, embedded finance, and DeFi—that continues to remodel fintech.
FinovateEurope 2026 involves London’s Intercontinental O2, 10 February by means of 11 February. Tickets to the convention are on sale now. Register right now to save lots of your spot on the first huge fintech occasion of the 12 months!
Picture by Samuel Candy
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