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Models now underwrite the loan and chat windows increasingly recommend the lender, while regulators tighten every word in between. In lending’s next chapter, the advantage moves from price to explanation.
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine Issue #25 (September 2026) as part of their Lending, Credit & PropTech edition. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share our perspective with the European fintech community.As part of our partnership with FinanceX Magazine, we’re pleased to share our article from Issue #25 exploring how credit gets underwritten and shopped for in 2026.
How does a loan begin in 2026? Rarely with a branch visit, and decreasingly with a search. Credit has slipped into the moments around it. At the checkout, buy now pay later has grown from a £0.06bn UK market in 2017 to over £13bn in 2024 in the UK alone, used by 10.9 million adults, roughly one in five, in the year to May 2024 (FCA, 2026). Behind the application form, underwriting is quietly passing to models that read bank transactions and cash flow rather than payslips alone. And since spring, the shopping itself has begun moving into chat windows. In May, US lender Newrez introduced a custom mortgage assistant inside ChatGPT. Trade press highlighted it as the first top-ten originator to launch a consumer-facing GPT, answering borrowers’ early-stage scenarios against its own lending criteria (National Mortgage Professional, 2026).
The common thread is that credit is increasingly arranged in places where no human representative is in the room. The initial discovery belongs to an algorithm, and early triage relies on a model, even if final underwriting remains bound by formal human and regulatory oversight. What remains of the lender, in that crucial first moment, is whatever it has written down.
The Same Window, Now With a Regulator in It
At the very moment lenders’ words became their front line, regulators moved to police them. In the UK, the FCA’s buy now pay later regime took effect on 15 July, bringing deferred payment credit under the Consumer Duty: clear upfront disclosure of payment schedules and the consequences of missed payments, proportionate affordability checks, and access to the Financial Ombudsman (FCA, 2026).
Across the Channel, the second Consumer Credit Directive (CCD2) applies from 20 November 2026 and reaches further into marketing: adverts mentioning a cost trigger standardized warnings (with exact phrasing specified by national transpositions) alongside mandatory APR disclosures, while sub-€200 loans and BNPL fall fully under the regime. Crucially, CCD2 also establishes a consumer right to human review for adverse automated credit decisions (Mason Hayes & Curran, 2026).
Read together, the two regimes say something bigger than compliance. The language around credit is becoming a regulated surface precisely as it becomes the growth surface. Lenders can no longer win attention by promising ease; the rules increasingly require them to explain cost, risk and consequence in plain terms. The old marketing instinct, say less about the hard parts, now runs against both the rulebook and the machine reading on the borrower’s behalf. The firms best placed for both regimes are the ones with nothing to blur.
Making the Explanation the Product
Let’s look at who is moving first: Newrez did not build another rate calculator. Instead, it put its lending guidelines to work where borrowers already ask questions, letting an assistant explain in plain language, without a form or a sales call, what those guidelines actually say. The calculus is relatively straightforward: a borrower who understands you sooner chooses you sooner. Neither firm is European, but the pattern could travel across the Atlantic quickly.
Property is running the same play with its paperwork, too. As the UK works through home-buying reform, movers are backing digital property packs, verified information about a property, its title and its finances, assembled upfront rather than dripped out over months (Mortgage Soup, 2026). The PropTech firms and lenders behind these packs are moving the explanation to the start of the transaction, where it can win trust rather than merely survive due diligence.
None of this is a campaign in the traditional sense. There are no slogans in an underwriting guideline. What is being published is substance: criteria, costs, data, process. Which is exactly why it works in a market where an assistant summarises you to your customer, a regulator reads your adverts, and a borrower has learned to distrust anything glossy. In sum, explanation has become distribution.
The Lesson for Every B2B Brand
Any business selling something considered, credit, software, advice, insurance, now writes for three readers at once: the customer deciding whether to trust you, the regulator or procurement team checking what you claim, and the AI assistant deciding whether to mention you at all. The content that satisfies all three is the same content: clear, specific, verifiable, and published where the questions are actually asked.
That is a different discipline from filling a blog. It means treating your criteria, pricing logic and process as publishable assets, and then writing them plainly enough for a machine to repeat with confidence. The lenders doing this are not louder than their competitors. They are easier to check. In a market where the best-explained loan wins, being easy to check is the sharpest marketing there is.
Ready to be the answer?
When a prospect asks an AI assistant who to trust with their money, their mortgage or their marketing, the reply is drawn from what you have published. Contentifai helps B2B firms make their expertise clear, credible and readable by humans and machines alike, starting with an AI Readiness Check of your website. See how your firm reads at contentifai.agency.
Jeremy Rodgers is Creative Director at Contentifai, a UK content marketing agency for B2B firms. Contentifai pairs human writers with AI-supported workflows, helping brands stay visible as search gives way to AI answers.
Every year in finance has its buzzword. The first half of 2026 had something rarer: a buzzword that started writing cheques. For two years, agentic AI lived in conference demos and proof-of-concept decks. This year it went to work.
The clearest signal came in March, when Santander and Mastercard completed Europe’s first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent, the first agentic payment carried out within a regulated banking framework using Mastercard Agent Pay. This was a controlled pilot, not a commercial rollout, and both companies said as much. But it was no mere demo either: the payment ran on Santander’s live infrastructure, under real conditions, set in motion by software acting for a customer.
By June, the whole industry had caught up. Money20/20 Europe in Amsterdam built its agenda around four themes: AI and the agentic age, the rebundling of financial services, stablecoin infrastructure, and faster-moving regulation. Three of those describe how money moves. One describes who now decides where it goes. That fourth shift is the one we think finance will still be talking about in December, because it changes something every business quietly depends on: how customers find you in the first place.
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine Issue #24 (July 2026) exploring key themes in European finance and fintech during the year to date. We’re grateful to share our insights and commentary around how AI is becoming increasingly embedded in financial infrastructure and consumer and banking practices throughout Europe. The article is republished here with permission.
When the Buyer Is an Algorithm, Who Are You Talking To?
Here is the part that should make any marketing director look up. For as long as commerce has existed, selling has meant persuading a person. We have built whole disciplines around human attention: the headline that stops the scroll, the case study that earns the click, the logo that feels trustworthy at a glance.
Agentic commerce quietly removes the person from that moment. When an AI agent compares the options and completes the purchase, it does not pause on a clever tagline or warm to a polished brand. It reads, ranks and recommends based on what it can actually parse and verify. And the scale is not small. McKinsey research suggests AI agents could mediate between $3 trillion and $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.
So the question changes. It is no longer only “how do we persuade the buyer?” but “how do we get recommended by the thing the buyer now trusts to choose?” The customer relationship does not disappear. It goes quiet. The brand has to show up earlier, further upstream, inside the answer the agent gives before a human is even in the room.
The Firms Building to Be Found
The firms getting ahead of this have noticed that visibility now has two audiences: people, and the machines acting for them. They are building for both.
The marketing world has even named the discipline. Writing for the World Economic Forum in January, Stagwell’s Mark Penn argued that search engine optimisation has given way to answer engine optimisation. The shorthand is AEO, and the principle behind it is plain: if an AI cannot read your content clearly, it cannot recommend you with confidence.
In practice this looks less like a campaign and more like housekeeping. Clean descriptions. Clear specifications. Claims a machine can check. Even Mastercard, building the payment side of all this, was careful to describe its agents as “visible, governed participants” in the flow. Visible is the word that keeps recurring.
For a B2B firm the parallel is direct, and slightly uncomfortable. When a prospect asks an AI “who are the best advisers for a problem like ours?”, your firm is either named in that answer or absent from the shortlist. There is no second page to drift onto. The agent offers a handful of options, and the criteria for making the cut are increasingly the clarity, structure and credibility of what you have already published.
Becoming the Answer: What This Means for Every B2B Brand
At Contentifai we spend our days helping B2B firms with a version of exactly this problem, and the first six months of 2026 have sharpened it. The lesson we take from the agentic half-year is not that marketing is finished. It is that visibility is being re-platformed.
For most of the past decade, being found meant ranking on a results page a person would scroll. Increasingly, it means being the answer a machine returns when nobody is scrolling at all. That is a different job. It rewards clarity over cleverness and substance over noise, and it favours content credible enough for an AI to repeat with confidence.
For smaller firms, this is quietly good news. An agent does not care how big your marketing budget is. It cares whether your expertise is legible, specific and trustworthy. The businesses that write clearly about what they do, and prove it, will get recommended. The ones hiding behind vague claims will slip out of the conversation without ever knowing why.
That is the work we care about at Contentifai: helping firms become the answer, not the result no one reaches. If your business depends on being chosen, it is worth a conversation; contact us today to discuss your content goals.
Europe is overhauling its financial market infrastructure at a pace not seen in decades. The firms that communicate this change clearly will shape the market. The rest risk being shaped by it.
What happens when the foundation of European finance gets rebuilt and most of the firms standing on it say nothing? That is the question facing exchanges, CSDs, clearinghouses, custodians, and the thousands of businesses that depend on them right now. The plumbing is being replaced. The silence from the firms closest to it is the real story.
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine Issue #21 (April 2026) exploring financial markets infrastructure across Europe. We’re grateful to share our insights and themes about how Europe is developing and advancing its financial infrastructure. The article is republished here with permission.
The European Commission’s Market Integration Package, adopted in December 2025, proposes the most far-reaching changes to EU trading, post-trade, and supervisory architecture in years (European Commission, 2025). ESMA would gain direct oversight of major market infrastructures. A new Pan-European Market Operator status would allow firms to run trading venues across multiple member states under a single licence, replacing the current patchwork of national licensing. And the DLT Pilot Regime would see its activity thresholds raised from €6 billion to €100 billion, removing one of the biggest barriers to adoption (DLA Piper, 2025).
The urgency is not hard to understand. EU stock exchange market capitalisation sits at 73% of GDP, compared with 270% in the US (European Commission, 2025). That gap reflects decades of fragmented rules, duplicated systems, and missed economies of scale. The Commission’s package is an admission: the plumbing needs replacing, not patching.
Two Deadlines, One Industry, and a Silence Problem
What makes this moment unusual is the collision of timelines. Firms are not preparing for one change. They are preparing for several at once, each with different demands on their operations and their messaging.
T+1 settlement arrives on 11 October 2027 across the EU, UK, and Switzerland. A Firebrand Research report, published in collaboration with Clearstream, DTCC, and Euroclear, found that 28% of firms had not yet started planning (Firebrand Research, 2025). The same study concluded that the European transition will be more complex and costly than North America’s, given the higher number of FMIs, regulators, and currencies involved.
At the same time, the ECB confirmed its Pontes DLT settlement platform will go live in Q3 2026. This week, ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone published the Appia roadmap, framing tokenised central bank money as the settlement anchor for Europe’s future wholesale markets (ECB, 2026). That is not a technology announcement. It is a statement about financial sovereignty.
These are not back-office stories. They affect clients, partners, regulators, and investors. Yet most FMI providers and the firms that depend on them are still communicating in generalities, if they are communicating at all. In a sector built on trust and precision, the gap between what is changing and what is being said is itself a kind of risk.
Clarity as Competitive Advantage
The firms standing out in this environment are not necessarily the ones with the biggest technology budgets. They are the ones translating complexity into clarity.
Euroclear is committing resources to T+1 readiness while co-publishing client-facing research that positions it as both infrastructure provider and educator. Its collaboration on the Firebrand report is a case in point: thought leadership that serves a commercial purpose without reading like a sales pitch. The research became a conversation starter, framing Euroclear as the firm that understood the problem, not just the one that operated the pipes.
SIX Group is coordinating the T+1 transition across Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Spain, producing accessible, jargon-light guidance that frames the CSD not as a utility but as a trusted partner in the transition.
And the ECB itself is making deliberate messaging choices. Cipollone’s blog this week positioned Pontes not as a pilot project but as the foundation of European financial autonomy. That framing matters. It tells the market where Europe is heading and invites participants to build alongside it.
The pattern is consistent. Each of these organisations leads with the “why” before the “what.” They frame infrastructure change as an opportunity worth preparing for, not a compliance burden to react to.
When the Rules Change, the Narrators Win
At Contentifai, we work with B2B firms facing a version of this same challenge: how do you explain something complex, in-progress, and high-stakes to an audience that does not have time for jargon?
In regulated industries like financial services, the brands that communicate clearly during periods of structural change do not just win attention. They win trust. And trust, in wholesale markets, is the asset that underpins every other transaction.
For every Euroclear publishing T+1 readiness research, there are dozens of firms in the same ecosystem saying nothing, or worse, saying everything in language that communicates nothing. The FMI overhaul makes this visible. The organisations publishing, educating, and framing the conversation now are the ones clients will turn to when the deadlines arrive. Waiting for certainty before communicating is itself a form of risk.
If your firm is facing this kind of complexity and wants to turn it into content that builds authority, reach out to Contentifai.
Embedded insurance is Europe’s fastest-growing distribution model, with market growth of approximately 35% year on year. But as policies vanish into platform checkouts, the brands behind them face a question no API can answer: who remembers your name?
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine Issue #19 (March 2026) as part of their InsurTech edition. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share this exploration of brand visibility in embedded insurance with the European financial services community.
Insurance is becoming invisible. Not in the way the industry always feared (people dropping cover altogether), but in a way nobody planned for. Across Europe, coverage is now woven into e-commerce checkouts, travel bookings, and gig-economy platforms, sold at the exact moment a customer isn’t thinking about insurance at all.
That’s the point. And it’s also the problem.
The European embedded insurance market is growing at a compound annual rate of approximately 35%, according to Mordor Intelligence (2025). API-first architectures have slashed deployment timelines from months to weeks. Zurich’s 2025 alliance with Budapest-based Ominimo launched AI-tuned motor insurance across three countries in just eight weeks. EU regulatory tailwinds are accelerating this further: PSD3 and the Financial Data Access Regulation (FIDA) will enforce interoperability across insurance data by 2026, making point-of-sale coverage even easier to integrate.
The distribution problem is being solved at speed. But the brand problem? That’s a different story.
The InsurTech Brand Invisibility Problem
When your product becomes invisible, so does your company. And in an industry where consumer trust has been stuck in neutral for half a decade, that’s a precarious position.
The Edelman Trust Barometer has tracked global P&C insurance scores between 53 and 59 out of 100 for five consecutive years (Actuarial Review, 2025). That range sits firmly in “neutral,” never crossing into “trusted.” Forrester’s 2025 survey is sharper still: only 25% of non-customers described health insurers as trustworthy (Forrester, 2025).
Guidewire’s 2025 European Consumer Survey found that the view of insurers as “necessary but inconvenient” fell from 36% to 30% year on year (Guidewire, 2025). That’s progress. But 52% of European consumers still plan to cut insurance spending. Positive perception is growing. Willingness to pay is not.
For insurers building their future on embedded distribution, this creates an uncomfortable tension. You’re reaching more customers than ever, but through someone else’s checkout, under someone else’s brand, with no direct relationship to protect if trust wavers.
The InsurTechs Who Stayed Visible
The challengers pulling ahead aren’t just embedding products into platforms. They’re building brands that carry weight even when their coverage is out of sight.
Lemonade remains the clearest example. In 2017, the company published “Transparency Chronicles”, revealing a 368% loss ratio in its first quarter. Rather than eroding confidence, that radical openness became a trust-building tool. Fast-forward to late 2025: Lemonade’s pivot to entertaining, culturally aware content yielded a 758% increase in impressions and a 1,373% increase in engagements between November 2024 and November 2025 (Sprout Social, 2025). When your product is a commodity, your content becomes the brand.
Zego tells a different story. Founded to serve gig-economy drivers in the UK, the company achieved profitability in Q4 2024 with a combined operating ratio of 90% and a 4.5-star customer satisfaction rating (Insurance Edge, 2025). In a market where incumbents struggle to articulate why premiums rise, Zego’s direct, customer-first communication style becomes a differentiator by default.
Alan, the French health insurtech now covering 700,000 members across France, Belgium, and Spain, takes a third path (TechCrunch, 2025). Its digital health plans bundle telemedicine with AI symptom checks, and its brand is built entirely on making a complex product feel simple. In a category where jargon is the norm, plain language is itself a form of marketing.
What This Means for B2B Communicators
At Contentifai, we work with B2B firms facing a version of this same paradox. As services become more automated and more invisible to the end user, the question shifts from “How do we deliver?” to “How do we stay present in the relationship?”
The embedded insurance story offers three clear signals.
Transparency builds trust faster than technology. Lemonade’s willingness to publish unflattering numbers created more loyalty than any chatbot. Clients trust firms that explain, not just execute.
Content fills the gap that automation opens. When coverage is sold at someone else’s checkout, the insurer who educates between transactions owns the relationship. For any B2B firm whose delivery is becoming more “embedded,” content is the thread that keeps the connection alive.
Clarity is a measurable advantage. J.D. Power’s 2024 Home Insurance Study found that when homeowners fully understood the reasoning behind a premium increase, customer satisfaction scores jumped 184 points on a 1,000-point scale compared with those who did not (J.D. Power, 2024). Clear communication isn’t a soft skill. It’s a retention metric.
The InsurTech sector is proving something the rest of B2B is still catching up to: the best technology in the world can’t replace a brand that people trust. And trust is still built with words. If your firm’s expertise risks becoming invisible behind the platforms that deliver it, let’s talk about making your story heard. Reach out to Contentifai.
At Contentifai, we help B2B firms in financial services and professional services stay visible through clear, consistent content, even as their delivery becomes more automated and integrated. If your expertise is at risk of becoming invisible behind the platforms that deliver it, we’d like to help you tell that story. Visit contentifai.agency to find out more.
A year after fintech pioneers announced plans to build ‘Monzo for HNWs,’ the wealth-tech race has become a battle of narratives. With $124 trillion changing hands by 2048, the firms winning next-generation clients aren’t just building better platforms. They’re telling better stories.
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine’s WealthTech Edition (February 2026). We’re grateful for the opportunity to share these insights on financial services communication with the European fintech community.
Last year in these pages, we shared David Brear’s withering assessment of private banking: wealthy clients receive “reporting that looks as if it was faxed in from the 1990s.” Twelve months on, that critique has become a rallying cry. The fintech veterans behind Project Arnaud, Bank Velorai, Finary, and a new wave of challengers aren’t just building technology to fix these problems. They’re crafting messages that make traditional banks look like relics.
The stakes have grown considerably. According to Cerulli Associates, the Great Wealth Transfer now stands at $124 trillion passing between generations by 2048, with millennials set to inherit $46 trillion. These inheritors grew up with Monzo notifications and Revolut splits. They expect their wealth managers to communicate with the same clarity and speed.
The question facing every wealth-tech challenger is no longer just “can we build a better product?” It’s “can we tell a more compelling story?”
The Messaging Playbook: Four Narratives Reshaping Wealth-Tech
Across wealth-tech, four distinct messaging strategies have taken shape. Each targets a specific weakness in traditional private banking, and each tells a different story about what wealth management should look like.
Here’s how challengers are framing the conversation.
Pricing in Plain Sight
The transparency offensive attacks private banking’s historic opacity head-on. Wealthfront’s explicit 0.25% annual fee messaging stands in stark contrast to relationship-dependent pricing that often requires a phone call to understand. Betterment emphasises having “no funds of their own to push,” positioning fiduciary advice as their competitive edge. For millennials shaped by the 2008 financial crisis, this candour builds trust faster than any heritage brand.
Algorithms vs Advisers
The automation narrative divides challengers into distinct camps. Wealthfront positions explicitly against human advisers: “Software can handle routine financial tasks better than a person ever could.” Their messaging emphasises PhD-built algorithms and anywhere-access. Kitces Research shows traditional wealth advisory customer acquisition costs average $2,167 or higher, making pure-digital models attractive for cost-conscious inheritors. Betterment’s hybrid model, offering human CFP access at 0.65% through Betterment Premium, suggests the market may ultimately reward firms that blend both approaches.
Private Banking for the Merely Affluent
The democratisation message frames wealth-tech as a movement rather than merely a service upgrade. Simon Taylor, head of strategy at Sardine and author of FintechBrainfood, described Robinhood’s expansion into private banking capabilities as a “Kodak moment” for the industry. Sifted reports that UK-based Sidekick raised £4.5 million explicitly to “bridge the gap between robo-advisors and private banks” for millennials with £10,000-£500,000 in savings. The implication is clear: what was once reserved for the ultra-wealthy is now within reach for the merely affluent.
When the Tools Let You Down
The experience gap argument positions challengers as the antidote to operational dysfunction. According to Capgemini research, 77% of relationship managers in North America report losing business due to inadequate digital tools. Challengers are building their entire brand identity around solving this gap, promising to deliver wealth management that actually works like modern software.
One Year On: Where Are They Now?
The ventures we profiled last year have taken divergent paths, with one clear winner in the messaging stakes.
Finary: From YouTube to €25 Million
Finary has emerged as the breakout success, securing a €25 million Series B from PayPal Ventures in September 2025 and reaching profitability. Their secret weapon? Content. Finary’s YouTube channel has become France’s leading personal finance destination with over 75 million views and approaching 600,000 subscribers. By educating first and selling second, they’ve built the trust that traditional banks assume comes only with heritage. The lesson for competitors: authority can be earned through consistency, not just longevity.
Bank Velorai: Strength, AI, and Shared Ownership
Anthony Thomson’s venture has revealed its name: Bank Velorai (from Latin “Velora” meaning strength, plus “AI”). The bank closed a $20 million initial round in December 2025, with plans to raise an additional $80 million before a September 2026 launch. Their positioning is distinctive: a client-co-owned structure where family offices become both shareholders and customers. Thomson’s messaging targets the industry’s bloated cost structures directly. With traditional private banks operating at cost-to-income ratios of 75-85%, his promise of radical efficiency resonates with clients tired of subsidising legacy infrastructure.
The Rest of the Field
Project Arnaud remains in fundraising mode with £50 million earmarked from 11:FS Holdings, though no launch timeline has been announced. Meanwhile, UK-based Finlight was acquired by ALTSMARK in February 2022, with its NLP technology now integrated into their private capital platform. Swiss-based Altoo continues steady growth, reporting mobile app usage up 300% and a Net Promoter Score above 50.
Gaining Ground with in the Age of AI
The brands winning this race aren’t just adopting AI; they’re rethinking how they communicate. If you’re a B2B firm working out where your brand fits in an AI-shaped market, our free whitepaper, Brand Survival in the Age of AI, breaks down the strategies that separate the firms gaining ground from those losing it.
The wealth-tech messaging battle offers lessons for any B2B firm competing against established players with deeper pockets and longer histories.
Build Credibility Without a Century-Old Brand
Content substitutes for heritage. Finary’s path from YouTube channel to €25 million raise shows that consistent educational content can build the credibility that takes incumbents decades to establish. Research confirms this pattern across industries: firms publishing blogs consistently experience significantly stronger lead generation than non-blogging competitors. For challengers without century-old brands, content is the most scalable trust-building mechanism available.
Make Clarity Your Feature
Transparency has become a competitive weapon. In sectors historically marked by complexity and opacity, simple pricing communication creates immediate differentiation. The “0.25% annual fee” message works precisely because traditional pricing requires explanation. When your competitor’s fees need a relationship manager to decode, clarity becomes a feature.
Borrow Trust From Where Your Founders Have Been
Founder pedigree borrows trust. Bank Velorai prominently features Thomson (Metro Bank, Atom Bank founder) and Stuart Grimshaw (ex-Commonwealth Bank of Australia CFO). Finary’s announcement of Axel Weber (former UBS chairman and German central bank president) as an angel investor serves the same purpose. Challengers lacking institutional credibility can borrow it from the institutions their founders once led.
Show Up Where Your Audience Already Lives
Channel choice signals values. Some 23% of Gen Z refuse to consider advisers without social media presence. YouTube serves 33% of Gen Z seeking financial advice. Wealth-tech firms meeting inheritors on their preferred channels aren’t just marketing differently. They’re demonstrating that they understand how their audience thinks and communicates.
The $124 Trillion Story
Traditional banks are responding. UBS has appointed its first Chief AI Officer, Daniele Magazzeni, effective January 2026. Julius Baer continues developing its “Spark” digital advisory platform, first launched in 2019 and now central to their efficiency strategy. JPMorgan Private Bank won Euromoney’s Best Digital Solutions 2025 award. Incumbents clearly understand the threat.
But they face a structural messaging challenge. Their cost-to-income ratios of 75-85% make it difficult to credibly claim efficiency. Their relationship-manager-dependent model sits awkwardly against automation narratives. Their century-old brands, once unambiguous assets, now risk signalling “your grandfather’s bank” to inheritors who trust fintech brands more readily than traditional institutions.
Capgemini research shows 81% of inheritors plan to change wealth management firms when receiving their inheritance. The firms that capture these relationships now will hold them for decades. In this race, the ability to articulate value clearly may prove as decisive as the ability to build superior technology.
The wealth-tech revolution was never just about better platforms. It was always about better stories.
The Next Chapter Needs a New Narrative
At Contentifai, we help financial services firms articulate their differentiation in crowded markets. Just as wealth-tech challengers are winning clients through clearer communication, we help B2B firms tell stories that build trust before the first sales conversation. Our human+AI content approach delivers the consistency of Finary’s YouTube success at the quality your brand demands.
Your Story is Your Competitive Advantage
The $124 trillion wealth transfer will reward firms that communicate with clarity, not just those with the best technology. At Contentifai, we help B2B firms in financial services craft the content strategies that build trust before the first sales conversation, combining human expertise with AI-enhanced workflows to deliver consistency at the quality your brand demands.
From regulatory breakthroughs to instant payments everywhere, 2025 delivered the infrastructure that makes 2026’s predicted innovations inevitable
Consider a typical cross-border euro transfer; On January 1st, 2025, sending €1,000 from Berlin to Barcelona took three days and cost €35. Today, it takes 10 seconds and costs nothing. A year ago, operating crypto services in Europe meant navigating 27 different regulatory regimes. MiCA is creating a single passportable licence across the EU, with the regime fully biting from 2026. Twelve months ago, AI in banking was mostly chatbots. Today, 93% of Lloyds Banking Group’s staff who use AI save 46 minutes daily using Microsoft Copilot (Lloyds Banking Group, 2025).
These aren’t isolated victories. They’re coordinates on a map showing where finance is heading.
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine’s “2025: Wrap Up Edition” Edition #18 (December 2025), exploring a special wrap-up of 2025 with a clear outlook on what’s coming in 2026 for finance and fintech. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share what happens when AI agents gain spending power and demand new liability, trust, and discovery models.
2025 marked fintech’s graduation from startup disruption to essential infrastructure. Two achievements stand out for reshaping the entire European financial system.
First, Europe’s regulatory framework finally caught up with innovation. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) key CASP provisions start applying on 30 December 2024, and within eight months, 54 crypto-asset service provider authorisations were processed across 11 EU jurisdictions (European Banking Authority, 2025). Meanwhile, the EU AI Act’s first legally binding obligations came into force on February 2, 2025, with high-risk AI requirements following on August 2, 2026 (DLA Piper, 2025). The first obligations: bans on prohibited AI uses and AI literacy rules, apply from 2 February 2025, GPAI rules from 2 August 2025, and most high-risk AI obligations from 2 August 2026, with some product-linked cases extended to 2027. For compliance teams across Europe, guesswork gave way to clear rulebooks.
Second, instant payments became the new normal. On October 9, 2025, the EU’s Instant Payments Regulation mandated that all euro-area payment service providers that offer regular euro credit transfers, offering standard credit transfers, must provide SEPA Instant payments priced no higher than standard credit transfers. This created a 10-second settlement, available 24/7/365, with mandatory payee verification to prevent fraud (European Central Bank, 2025).
Real-time payment isn’t a premium feature anymore; it’s the baseline expectation.
The Mainstreaming Moment for Embedded Finance
What seemed experimental in January 2025 became operational necessity by December.
Embedded finance exploded to a market size between $112 and $148 billion in 2025, with projections showing 12% to 31% compound annual growth through 2033 (HSBC Innovation Banking, 2025). Banking disappeared into the platforms where people already spend their time. Your morning coffee app became your payment provider. Your accounting software became your lender. Financial services stopped being a destination and became invisible infrastructure.
AI transformation accelerated beyond projections. By January 2025, 54% of financial services firms had deployed AI initiatives, up from 40% a year earlier (S&P Global, 2025). Global AI spending in financial services reached $35 billion in 2024, up from $28 billion in 2023, with the AI fintech market projected to hit $79.4 billion by 2030 (Fintech Futures, 2025).
At Lloyds Banking Group, 30,000 colleagues now use Microsoft 365 Copilot; 93% of them are regular users, with early analysis showing average time savings of around 46 minutes per day. The bank reports genuine productivity gains, not pilot programme promises (Lloyds Banking Group, 2025). The conversation shifted from “should we use AI?” to “how do we govern it?”
Finance Initiatives That Actually Delivered in 2025
Cutting through 2025’s hype reveals what created lasting value.
Biometric authentication reached mainstream adoption with the market hitting $46.38 billion and over 2 billion biometric payment transactions projected globally. Crucially, 83% of consumers now perceive biometric payments as safer than traditional PINs or passwords (Juniper Research, 2025).
Security and convenience finally aligned.
Tokenisation moved from crypto speculation to serious infrastructure. Recent reports estimate today’s tokenised real-world asset market at roughly $0.5-0.6 trillion in notional value, with Standard Chartered forecasting $2 trillion by 2028 (Standard Chartered, 2025). The UK Treasury advanced its Digital Gilt Instrument pilot, aiming to deliver the first government bond on blockchain via distributed ledger technology (HM Treasury, 2025).
Even the funding environment showed maturity. While H1 2025 saw the lowest global fintech funding since H1 2020 at $44.7 billion, AI-related fintechs attracted $7.2 billion, nearly matching all of 2024 in just six months (KPMG, 2025). Less froth, more focused infrastructure investment.
2026: The Year The Financial Acceleration Begins
The financial foundations laid in 2025 make for some highly promising predictions for 2026 and where financial innovation in Europe will go next.
Implementation Becomes Everything
The regulatory framework switches from adoption to enforcement. MiCA’s an 18-month transitional period runs into mid-2026, with some NCAs choosing shorter windows, meaning no licence equals no business by 2026 (Norton Rose Fulbright, 2025). The AI Act’s high-risk system obligations hit in August 2026, forcing every bank to map and remediate their AI deployments (European Banking Authority, 2025). Financial institutions won’t debate whether to comply; they’ll compete on how well they implement.
AI Becomes the Control Environment
Gartner forecasts 90% of finance functions will deploy at least one AI-enabled technology by 2026, while over 80% of enterprises will have GenAI APIs in production, up from less than 5% in 2023 (Gartner, 2025). AI stops being a productivity tool and becomes part of the risk framework itself. Supervisors will treat AI as a systemic theme, not an innovation curiosity.
Tokenisation Gets Serious
The European Central Bank expects digital euro pilot exercises could begin in 2027 if legislation passes during 2026 (European Central Bank, 2025). Combined with advancing wholesale CBDC trials and tokenised market infrastructure, every institution faces a strategic choice: experiment now or scramble to catch up later. This isn’t about cryptocurrency speculation anymore; it’s about the fundamental redesign of market infrastructure.
Cross-Border Goes Instant
Project Nexus, linking instant payment systems across continents, expands beyond its initial Asian cluster. With instant payments now standard within Europe, competition shifts to cross-border corridors and who controls the interface. The battle won’t be about speed or price, already commoditised, but about data ownership and customer relationships.
The Preparation Imperative
Three actions separate 2026’s leaders from its followers:
Build implementation roadmaps now. Compliance deadlines are fixed. Systems integration takes longer than expected. Start yesterday.
Establish AI governance before regulators force it. Model risk management, bias detection, and explainability aren’t optional extras anymore.
Run tokenisation experiments. Even small pilots provide learning that money can’t buy later. The question isn’t if you’ll need this capability, but when.
Laying the Groundwork for a European Finance Renaissance?
In 2025, finance finally delivered on decades of digital promises. Real-time payments work. AI delivers measurable productivity. Regulatory clarity exists. Tokenisation shows genuine utility beyond speculation.
In 2026, the question isn’t whether you’ll adopt these technologies. It’s whether you’ll lead with them or scramble to keep up with competitors who started preparing today.
The infrastructure is built. The rules are written. The only variable left is execution.
What will you choose, and who will you be, when the acceleration hits?
Translating Complexity into Engaging Narrative Arcs
At Contentifai, we translate complex fintech innovation into narratives that resonate with sophisticated audiences. We articulate not just what you’re building, but why it matters. Our human+AI content approach helps financial services companies navigate the shift from experimental technology to essential infrastructure. Whether you’re implementing new regulatory frameworks or building tomorrow’s financial systems, we help you tell the story of transformation.
Contact us to learn how we can help you share your expertise and inspire your users.
The age of autonomous commerce has arrived: your AI agent is now making payments and purchases without your direct command. From India’s national pilot integrating UPI with ChatGPT to the regulatory confusion in Europe, this shift to agentic payments is triggering a multi-trillion dollar disruption, forcing global finance to urgently address liability, fraud, and the existential threat to core business models.
Your phone pings at 8:47 on Tuesday morning. “Running late. Ordered your flat white from Costa on Church Street instead of Pret. Queue’s shorter. Ready when you arrive. Charged to Mastercard ending 4782.”
You didn’t open an app. You didn’t tap anything. You didn’t even ask. Your AI agent simply knew. And paid.
This isn’t speculation. As of this morning, it’s reality. India launched the world’s first national pilot integrating its UPI network directly into ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Europe’s financial institutions face a question nobody asked five years ago: What happens when your AI has spending power?
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine’s “Payments Edition” Edition #17 (November 2025), exploring insights on payments and the innovations transforming how money moves globally. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share what happens when AI agents gain spending power and demand new liability, trust, and discovery models.
Think about how you pay for things now. Even the slickest mobile checkout requires you to click “buy”. Agentic payments flip that entirely. Your AI shops, pays, and confirms everything before you’ve thought about opening an app. As Javelin Strategy & Research puts it, we’re moving “beyond card-not-present to person-not-present” (Visa, 2025). The AI agent becomes the buyer.
The race to build this infrastructure is already on.
Organisations Racing to Build Agentic Payments Infrastructure
Mastercard Agent Pay launched in April 2025, partnering with Microsoft, Stripe, and Google. Their example: a woman planning her 30th birthday party chats with an AI about outfit ideas. The AI curates selections from multiple retailers, checks the weather forecast, and completes purchases across merchants. No apps. No checkout pages (Mastercard, 2025).
Google’s AP2 Protocol brings together over 60 organizations including American Express, PayPal, and Coinbase. It creates cryptographically signed “intent mandates” providing proof you authorised each transaction (Lexology, 2025).
Visa Intelligent Commerce uses tokenised credentials with spending controls and authentication. Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product Officer, frames the challenge: “These agents will need to be trusted with payments, not only by users, but by banks and sellers as well” (Visa, 2025).
Boston Consulting Group identifies agentic AI as one of five structural forces reshaping global payments, which BCG projects will reach $2.4 trillion by 2029 (BCG, 2025). This is the future of how money moves.
You tell ChatGPT: “Help me order ingredients for a Thai-style vegetable curry for four people from BigBasket.” The AI checks catalogues, presents options, and completes the purchase via India’s UPI network. Everything happens inside the chat window (Business Standard, 2025).
And the scale is staggering. UPI processes over 20 billion transactions monthly (Economic Times, 2025). Unlike Europe, where payments fragment across multiple rails, India runs on a single government-backed infrastructure.
The stated goal is evaluating “how UPI can enable AI agents with payment credentials to autonomously complete transactions on behalf of users in a safe, secure, and user-controlled manner” (Business Standard, 2025). Notice that word: autonomously. Your AI isn’t asking permission for every click.
India isn’t experimenting in a vacuum. It’s ChatGPT’s second-largest market. OpenAI recently launched ChatGPT Go at ₹399 ($4.57) monthly with UPI support, removing barriers for millions who lack credit cards (TechCrunch, 2025).
Europe’s AI and Finance Regulatory Maze
Europe won’t find replicating India’s approach straightforward. The reasons go deeper than different payment infrastructures.
European payments fragment across Visa, Mastercard, SEPA, national schemes, and open banking APIs. Then add currency complications between eurozone and non-euro countries. But the real barriers are regulatory.
As law firm Linklaters observes: “Existing UK payments regulation and our current payment infrastructure are designed for human-initiated transactions” (Linklaters, 2025). Everything breaks when AI becomes the buyer.
PSD2’s Strong Customer Authentication assumes a human verifies each transaction. How does that work when your AI agent buys something while you’re in a meeting? PSD3, currently under debate, must clarify whether AI agents can satisfy authorisation requirements (Linklaters, 2025).
GDPR creates further complications. Agentic AI continuously learns and adapts, potentially violating purpose limitation principles. When AI makes emergent decisions, explaining them under transparency requirements becomes genuinely difficult. Data minimisation clashes with AI’s need for real-time information (Kennedy’s Law, 2025).
The EU AI Act adds another layer. Agentic payment systems likely qualify as high-risk AI, triggering strict requirements: Article 12 demands record-keeping, Article 13 requires transparency, Article 14 mandates “effective human oversight” (CMS Law Now, 2025). Article 5 prohibits AI that manipulates behaviour or exploits vulnerabilities. Where’s the line between “helpfully suggesting you reorder coffee beans” and “manipulating behaviour”?
The liability question towers over everything. When an AI agent errs, who’s responsible? The user? The developer? The payment provider? The protocol? Linklaters puts it plainly: “The use of an AI agent within the contracting process raises questions as to the valid formation of these contracts” (Linklaters, 2025).
These aren’t theoretical puzzles. They’re immediate barriers preventing European deployment at India’s scale.
The Agentic Payments Business Model Earthquake
McKinsey’s analysts understand what’s actually at stake: two core revenue engines for traditional financial institutions face existential threats (McKinsey, 2025).
Two Traditional Financial Instruments Threatened by Autonomous Commerce
Credit cards work because of inertia. You get a card, maybe earn some points, stick with it. You’re not constantly calculating optimal rewards. AI agents will be. They’ll automatically route each purchase to whichever card offers the best terms in that moment. In North America, where interchange fees range from 1.30% to 3.25%, the arbitrage opportunity becomes massive (McKinsey, 2025).
As open banking expands, AI agents can bypass card networks entirely through account-to-account payments. Why pay interchange when direct bank transfers work?
Deposit accounts face similar pressure. Banks globally derive roughly 30% of retail profit from net interest income (McKinsey, 2025). That works because consumers don’t obsess over interest rates. AI agents will obsess. They’ll automatically move money to highest-yield accounts, updated daily.
New winners emerge. Digital wallet platforms positioned as “AI agent conduits” gain advantages. Payment orchestration platforms controlling routing decisions capture value. The platform question remains open: Who will “own the agent”? AI companies? Banks? Payment providers? E-commerce platforms?
Platform lock-in might simply replace card scheme dominance with AI platform dominance.
Trust, Fraud, and Human Override: AI and Consumer Readiness
Consumers aren’t ready for this. Research from Javelin Strategy & Research shows 88% worry AI will facilitate identity fraud (Visa, 2025). And only 36% trust their financial institution’s current use of AI.
The concerns aren’t paranoia. AI-driven fraud already accounts for over 50% of financial fraud in 2025 (Keyrus, 2025). Synthetic identity fraud, powered by generative AI, creates fake identities at scale. Combined with deepfakes bypassing biometric verification, 40% of financial institutions report increased GenAI-related attacks (Datos Insights via Visa, 2025). UK banks lost £571 million to fraud in the first half of 2024 alone (UK Finance via Keyrus, 2025).
Essential safeguards must include strict spending controls: dollar limits, merchant restrictions, time-based permissions, real-time approval prompts for unusual purchases.
Transparency mechanisms will become critical. Complete audit trails showing what AI agents purchased and why. User dashboards providing instant visibility. Clear revocation capabilities allowing instant cancellation of agent permissions.
Human oversight means fallback to human review for abnormal patterns. Natural language explanations when you question transactions. Simple override mechanisms requiring no technical knowledge.
Visa tokenises payment credentials locked by default. Each token requires explicit activation for specific purchase types (Visa Navigate, 2025). Google’s AP2 protocol uses cryptographically signed mandates creating “tamper-proof chains” linking your intent, the agent’s action, and the transaction outcome.
The challenge isn’t just building compliant agents. It’s ensuring the entire trust lifecycle remains crystal clear to users who reasonably worry about invisible systems spending their money.
The AI Strategic Window: Finance Professionals First Movers
The strategic window is closing. India’s pilot launched this morning. Mastercard and Visa announced frameworks in April. Google’s protocol is live. You’re already late.
How Finance Professionals Can Harness AI Agents for Financial Disruption
Banks and payment providers: Participate in pilot programmes. Partner with AI platforms to influence protocol development rather than accepting standards defined by tech companies. Invest in API infrastructure supporting agent interactions. Build consent frameworks now, before regulation mandates approaches that don’t fit your systems.
Fintechs: Focus on orchestration layers. Develop agent-friendly APIs. Position as the “agent payment provider” partner for institutions lacking capability. Build differentiation through transparency and trust mechanisms.
Merchants: Understand agent discovery differs from SEO. You’re optimising for AI systems evaluating structured data, not humans typing queries. Prepare for agent-to-agent negotiations where value proposition matters more than brand. Build trust signals AI can evaluate: clear policies, verified credentials, transparent pricing.
Regulators: Clarify liability frameworks urgently. Adapt Strong Customer Authentication for autonomous commerce systems without killing innovation. Ensure consumer protection extends to agent actions. Create sandboxes for controlled experimentation.
Those waiting for regulatory clarity may find themselves disrupted by those helping shape it. As David Birch observes, Google’s AP2 protocol “will reshape the very nature of e-commerce” (Lexology, 2025). The question is who controls that reshaped landscape.
Agentic Payments and the Human Question
Return to that coffee scenario. Your AI ordered it, paid for it, sorted everything before you consciously registered you’d need caffeine.
The India pilot proves AI agents can handle payments. Technology will improve. Regulations will adapt. But what happens to consumer behaviour, brand loyalty, and financial relationships when commerce’s interface is no longer human?
Visa’s Jack Forestell suggests AI will “transform shopping and buying” as profoundly as e-commerce transformed physical retail (Visa, 2025). That transformation means a power shift: who controls the transaction moment, who captures the data, who owns the customer relationship.
For decades, banks owned customer relationships through current accounts. Card networks inserted themselves into every transaction. Digital wallets created new intermediaries. Now AI agents threaten to become the ultimate intermediary, sitting between consumers and everyone else.
For Europe’s finance professionals, the choice is stark: help build the guardrails for this future, or watch others build them for you.
India’s experiment launched this morning. How long before Europe follows?
Human plus AI Bridges Technical Capability and Impact
At Contentifai, we translate complex fintech innovation into narratives that resonate with sophisticated audiences. We articulate not just what you’re building, but why it matters, whether you’re a payment provider preparing for the agentic future or a fintech building the infrastructure. Our human+AI content approach bridges technical capability and human impact, just as agentic payments must bridge autonomous commerce, intelligence and human trust.
Contact us today to learn more and discover how we can help translate your innovation into engaging narratives.
Fintech pioneers who revolutionised consumer banking are now turning their attention to the antiquated world of private wealth management.
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine’s “All About Technology” Edition (October 2025) exploring the next frontier of financial innovation. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share how Europe’s fintech pioneers are bringing long-overdue disruption to private wealth management with the European financial services community.
A wealthy client can order a Tesla in three clicks on his phone, but adjusting his investment portfolio takes three weeks of phone calls, emails, and scanned forms. This grim reality, shared by David Brear, group CEO of consultancy 11:FS, encapsulates the paradox facing Europe’s high net worth (HNW) individuals in 2025.
While Monzo, Starling, Revolut, and N26 have transformed consumer banking into a seamless digital experience, the world of private wealth management remains stubbornly analogue. Now, the same fintech pioneers who disrupted retail banking are setting their sights on a much larger prize: the £5.5 trillion that will change hands between generations in the UK and EU by 2030.
The Consumer Banking Revolution: Mission Complete
The consumer fintech revolution has reached its saturation point. In 2024, the value of investments into UK tech companies plummeted by 36% to £18.5bn (Beauhurst, 2025). The consumer banking market has been thoroughly disrupted, margins squeezed, and incumbents forced to modernise.
Indeed, Revolut has reached a stage of growth where it can offer a private banking offering for wealthy individuals (Beauhurst, 2025), signalling that even consumer-focused challengers recognise where the next opportunity lies.
The question facing fintech innovators is clear: where next?
The £5.5 Trillion Opportunity
The answer lies in the vast, underserved wealth management sector. The global combined corporate and private balance sheet has ballooned in the last 20 years, from net worth and liabilities of €450 trillion in 2000 to €1,530 trillion in 2020 (McKinsey, 2023). In the UK alone, over £1.3 trillion sits in wealth management, with an estimated £5.5 trillion set to pass between generations by 2030.
Yet this enormous market operates on technology and processes that would be unrecognisable to users of modern consumer banking apps.
“It Was Faxed in from the 1990s”
The problems facing HNW individuals read like a catalogue of banking archaeology:
Manual onboarding and KYC: Private banks often require weeks of paperwork for account setup, contrasting sharply with challenger banks’ instant digital onboarding.
Inefficient reporting: Portfolio statements still arrive as mailed documents or PDF attachments with delayed information, lacking real-time access.
Hidden fees and opacity: 78% of the surveyed banks in the US believe digital transformation is essential to meet changing customer expectations (KPMG via McKinsey, 2023), yet most private banks still operate with opaque fee structures.
David Brear of 11:FS doesn’t mince words: “The likes of Monzo and Starling are light-years ahead for basic retail banking but when high net worth individuals graduate to the organisations looking to serve them, they are often full of hidden fees, archaic account opening and reporting that looks as if it was faxed in from the 1990s.”
Europe’s New Wealth-Tech Vanguard
The response to this opportunity has been swift and ambitious. Leading the charge is Project Arnaud, spearheaded by Jason Bates (co-founder of Monzo and Starling), David Brear (11:FS), and Max Koretskiy (Blackshield Capital). With £50 million already earmarked and another investment round imminent, they’re building what they call “Monzo for HNWs.”
Max Koretskiy frames the opportunity: “The largest wealth transfer in history is colliding with rising client expectations, shaped by consumer tech. Over £1 trillion will change hands over the 2020s in the UK alone, resulting in a five times increase of wealth held by millennials.”
Not to be outdone, Anthony Thomson, founder of Metro Bank and Atom Bank, is launching the Family Offices Bank with a targeted go-live in late 2026. The Family Offices Bank executives include ex-CEO of Virgin Money Paul Pester, ex-CFO of Commonwealth Bank of Australia Stuart Grimshaw, Barclays 19-year veteran Samantha Bamert & ex-CTO of UK Monument Bank Sudip Dasgupta (Caproasia, 2025).
Thomson’s research revealed a clear message from family offices worldwide: “Their needs have evolved but their banks haven’t. Too many family offices and UHNWIs are oversold, underserved, misunderstood, or treated like an afterthought.”
Across Europe, the momentum is building:
Finlight (UK): A digital operating system for family offices that integrates risk, performance, reporting, and operations, helping wealthy clients avoid the inefficiencies of fragmented, manual wealth management processes.
Altoo (Switzerland): A Zug-based fintech providing an independent digital wealth platform specifically for HNWs and family offices, focusing on portfolio consolidation and reporting: areas where traditional private banks still rely on PDFs and legacy portals.
Finary (France): A Paris-based platform for affluent investors and family offices, providing modern tools for tracking and analysing assets across multiple banks and geographies in a single digital dashboard.
The Millennial Catalyst
The urgency for change is driven by a generational shift. According to Deloitte’s 2023 Global Wealth Management Study, 67% of HNW clients under 40 consider leaving their wealth manager due to poor digital experience. Capgemini’s World Wealth Report 2024 found that 71% of millennial HNWs expect digital-first engagement, compared with only 27% satisfaction with current wealth manager platforms.
This isn’t just about convenience; it’s about fundamental expectations. The next generation of wealth holders are digitally native. They expect 24/7 mobile access, automated rebalancing, ESG integration, and transparent fee structures as standard, not luxury features.
Furthermore, PwC’s Future of Private Banking Report delivered this sobering statistic: over 70% of private banks in Europe are running on platforms that are 15+ years old. The technology gap between what clients expect and what banks deliver has never been wider.
The Race Against Time
The window for transformation is narrowing. Private banks are pouring money into protective measures; industry experts predict spending on financial cybersecurity will top $43 billion by 2026 (Global Finance Magazine, 2025), yet much of this investment goes towards patching legacy systems rather than fundamental modernisation.
Traditional private banks face a choice: modernise rapidly or watch as nimble wealth-tech startups capture the most valuable clients of the next generation. As Ryan Lemand, co-founder and CEO of Neovision Wealth Management, notes: “Given that family offices control assets worth more than $6 trillion globally, any shift in this dynamic could seriously impact bank revenues”(Global Finance Magazine, 2025).
The consumer fintech revolution took less than a decade to transform retail banking beyond recognition. With trillions at stake and a new generation of wealth holders demanding change, the wealth-tech revolution promises to move even faster.
For Europe’s HNW individuals, the message is clear: the same innovation that transformed consumer banking is finally coming to private wealth. The only question is whether traditional banks will lead this transformation or become its casualties.
The Next Chapter of Fintech Innovation Needs a New Narrative
At Contentifai, we understand that wealth-tech isn’t just about digitising old processes; it’s about reimagining how technology serves human ambition at scale. Just as Project Arnaud and Family Offices Bank are bridging the gap between Tesla-speed consumer tech and fax-era private banking, we bridge the gap between complex financial innovation and compelling human stories. Our human+AI content approach helps wealth-tech pioneers and forward-thinking financial institutions articulate not just their technological advantages, but the fundamental shift they’re bringing to how wealth is managed, preserved, and transferred across generations.
Ready to position your firm at the forefront of the wealth-tech revolution? Let’s craft content that speaks to both the innovators disrupting the industry and the sophisticated clients demanding change.
The Credit Trap That Sparked a Revolution: From Credit-Invisible to Credit Innovator: How a Founder Turned a “Computer Says No” Moment into Abound.
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine Issue #15 (August 2025) as part of their summer edition exploring inclusive fintech innovations across the UK market. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share Abound’s inspiring journey from personal frustration to profitable scale with the European fintech community.
When Dr Michelle He arrived in the UK, she carried a solid job, a PhD in AI, and years of experience at EY, yet she couldn’t secure a basic loan. She was “credit invisible.” That moment stuck with her. It wasn’t her finances that were the problem; it was the system itself.
From that experience, Abound was born: a fintech that finally sees the person behind the score.
Two Ex-Consultants Who Decided to Stop Advising and Start Building
Michelle He isn’t just another fintech founder. She’s lived through the broken system she’s now fixing. A former EY director in lending analytics, she understands both the technology and the human side of credit. Her co-founder, Gerald Chappell, brings McKinsey-honed strategy as the former Global Head of Digital Lending. Together, they’re not chasing glamour but pursuing fairness.
They launched Abound in 2020 to redefine how credit decisions are made, particularly for those overlooked by conventional credit scoring.
Render: The Platform That Reads Your Bank Statements Like a Human Would
Traditional credit scores reduce people to numbers. Abound’s proprietary platform, Render, goes deeper. Using Open Banking, Render analyses real-time transaction data: income patterns, spending habits, essentials versus discretionary expenses, to assess what each person can truly afford.
The results speak for themself: approximately 70-75% fewer defaults compared to industry averages. To Abound, a borrower isn’t a risk category. They’re a story that deserves fair, reasonably priced credit.
From Zero to £900 Million in Loans (and Actually Making Money)
Fast forward from a spark of an idea to figures that command attention. By 2024, Abound achieved profitability, just three years after launch. The company has issued over £900 million in loans, and in the 12 months to February 2025, net profit rose to £7.5m (from £0.3m) on revenue of £66.8m (+151%).
Investors aren’t just watching; they’re backing this vision. Support comes from Citi, GSR Ventures, Waterfall Asset Management, and Sir Tom Hunter. In March 2025, Deutsche Bank committed a £250 million credit facility, pushing lending capacity to £1.6 billion. Render’s success demonstrates that treating people as individuals, not statistics, doesn’t just work. It scales brilliantly.
Meet Zara: Part-Time Tutor, Single Mum, Finally Approved
Consider Zara, a part-time tutor and single parent whose income fluctuates monthly. She’s responsible, consistently pays rent and bills, yet traditional banks view her with suspicion. Enter Abound. Zara connects her bank account, and Render sees beyond the irregular income: consistent earnings, prudent spending, clear priorities. Within hours, she’s approved for a loan that helps manage childcare costs and consolidate debt, without crushing interest rates.
It’s more than finance; it’s validation that someone recognised the real Zara, not just a credit profile.
Open Banking Finally Found Its Killer App (Hint: It’s Not Payments)
Growth-at-any-cost is fading, and Abound represents something refreshing: profitable, scalable, and inclusive. While Open Banking payments still trail cards in the UK, lending use-cases like Render show how cash-flow data can deliver tangible value. Abound demonstrates what works: practical, humane use of data. With Render already licensing to lenders across Europe, Abound isn’t merely building a business. It’s building a better financial system.
When financial services feel increasingly impersonal, their approach reminds us that fairness and efficiency can coexist.
The Future Where Your Life Story Matters More Than Your Credit Score
From Michelle’s personal struggle to a business supporting thousands of stories like Zara’s, Abound embodies a shift in fintech, from hype to humanity. The next time someone arrives with patchy credit but a full life, systems like Render will offer more than rejection. They’ll offer opportunity.
In that sense, Abound isn’t just lending money. It’s restoring dignity to credit, one person at a time.
Your Fintech Story Deserves More Than a Traditional Case Study
At Contentifai, we specialise in telling the human stories behind financial innovation. Just as Abound saw beyond Michelle’s credit score to recognise her true potential, we see beyond product features to uncover the transformative narratives that make fintech meaningful. Our human+AI content approach helps financial services companies articulate not just what they do, but why it matters to real people facing real challenges.
Ready to tell your story of financial transformation? Let’s turn your vision into content that connects.
How two engineers built a fintech empire from $500k by turning Turkey’s investment market from fool’s gold into digital treasure.
This article was originally published in FinanceX Magazine Issue #14 (July 2025) as part of their summer edition exploring fintech success stories across emerging markets. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share this inspiring transformation story with the European fintech community.
In Greek mythology, King Midas’s touch turned everything to gold, a blessing that became a curse when he couldn’t eat, drink, or embrace his loved ones. In modern Turkey, a different Midas has performed an equally transformative feat, but this time the golden touch is democratising wealth rather than hoarding it. The fintech startup Midas has turned 2 million Turks into investors in just three years, proving that sometimes the best disruption comes not from financial insiders, but from engineers who see a broken system and simply decide to fix it.
When electrical engineer Egem Eraslan returned to Turkey after working in Boston, he discovered a financial kingdom that seemed designed to keep its citizens out. In 2020, only 1.5 million people in this nation of 80 million were investors, a penetration rate that would embarrass most developing economies. The barriers were absurd: $25 per transaction fees for US stock trades, $25,000 minimum balance requirements, and a five-day onboarding process that felt more like applying for a mortgage than opening an investment account.
“Mobile banking in Turkey is very good and widespread,” Eraslan told TechCrunch, “but there was a lack of investment in equities products because of a lack of infrastructure.” This wasn’t just a technology problem; it was a generational injustice. While Turkish millennials watched their global peers build wealth through fractional shares and commission-free trading, they were locked out by legacy systems that treated investing like an exclusive club for the wealthy.
The irony wasn’t lost on Eraslan. In a country where inflation regularly hits double digits (reaching 50% by 2022), Turks desperately needed investment options to protect their savings. More than half the population already stored wealth in foreign currencies as a hedge against the volatile lira. Yet the very tools that could help them grow that wealth remained frustratingly out of reach.
Building the Golden Infrastructure
Unlike the mythical Midas who received his power from the gods, Eraslan and co-founder Umut Bozkurt had to build their transformation engine from scratch. With less than $500,000 (pocket change by Silicon Valley standards) they created something that would have cost Western fintechs millions: complete self-clearing, self-custody, and self-execution infrastructure.
“We had to launch multiple products with our own self-clearing, custody and with the entire value chain,” Eraslan explained. “If you’re Robinhood, you don’t have to do self-custody or self-clearing.” This wasn’t a choice; it was necessity. Turkey’s financial infrastructure simply didn’t offer the plug-and-play solutions that American or European fintechs take for granted.
The engineering feat they pulled off was remarkable. They slashed fees from $25 to $1.50 per trade, eliminated minimum balance requirements entirely, and compressed the onboarding process from five days to under ten minutes. By April 2021, when Midas launched with a massive waitlist, they had created Turkey’s first truly digital brokerage, one that made “download-to-first-trade in less than 10 minutes” a reality.
The Golden Generation
The transformation Midas triggered reads like a financial fairy tale. Within their first year, over $100 million was traded on the platform. By 2024, they had 2 million users, more than doubling Turkey’s entire investor population. But the most striking statistic isn’t the growth rate; it’s the demographics. Half of Midas users are first-time investors under 30. While nationally only 30% of Turkish investors are under 35, on Midas that number jumps to 70%.
This isn’t just market expansion; it’s cultural revolution. Midas didn’t just make investing cheaper. They made it comprehensible. The company produces daily podcasts, weekly newsletters, detailed company profiles, and educational content that breaks down market complexities in digestible Turkish. They’re not just processing trades; they’re teaching an entire generation how to build wealth.
The impact is measurable in cold, hard cash. In 2023 alone, Midas saved Turkish investors $70 million in commissions. For young Turks facing 50% inflation, this platform isn’t just convenient. It’s essential financial armour against currency devaluation.
From Seed to Series A: The Midas Touch Attracts Gold
Investors recognised the alchemy at work. Just eight months after inception, Spark Capital and Earlybird Digital East Fund led an $11 million seed round, one of the largest fintech seed investments in Turkish history. The real validation came in April 2024 when Portage led a $45 million Series A, the biggest ever for a Turkish fintech. The funding was so significant that Nasdaq celebrated it on their Times Square billboard, a moment of recognition that would have seemed impossible just three years earlier.
But perhaps the most impressive feat? Midas hit profitability in 2023. In an industry where growth-at-all-costs is gospel, these engineers built a sustainable business while revolutionising an entire market.
The Expanding Kingdom
Today, Midas is expanding beyond equities into cryptocurrency, mutual funds, and high-yield savings accounts. They’re also looking beyond Turkey’s borders to other emerging markets where similar barriers lock out retail investors. Their infrastructure-as-a-service model already powers investment offerings for one of Turkey’s largest banks, with more partnerships in the pipeline.
“We believe every consumer finance company should work on growing their customer’s wealth, and Midas is here to help,” Eraslan declared. It’s an ambitious vision, but given their track record, not an unrealistic one.
The Real Midas Touch
Unlike the cursed king of myth, this Midas has created prosperity that can be shared, not hoarded. By building infrastructure where none existed and simplifying processes that were needlessly complex, two engineers have given millions of Turks the tools to protect and grow their wealth.
For European fintech founders facing their own regulatory mazes and infrastructure challenges, the Midas story offers a powerful lesson: sometimes the biggest opportunities lie not in competing with existing systems, but in building entirely new ones. With just $500,000 and a clear vision, it’s possible to transform not just a market, but an entire nation’s relationship with money.
In mythology, King Midas learned too late that true wealth isn’t gold you can’t share. Turkey’s Midas understood this from the start, building a platform that turns financial barriers into bridges. That’s a transformation worth more than all the gold in ancient Phrygia.
At Contentifai, we believe the most compelling fintech stories come from understanding both the human challenges and technological solutions. Through our human+AI approach to content creation, we help financial services companies tell their transformation stories in ways that resonate with audiences and inspire action. Whether you’re disrupting traditional banking or building infrastructure for the future, we can help articulate your vision clearly and compellingly.
Open banking in Europe is moving from PSD2 to a new rulebook: a revised Payment Services Directive (PSD3) and a directly applicable Payment Services Regulation (PSR). Here is where things stand, what changes for banks and fintechs, and why clear communication matters as much as compliance.
This article first appeared in FinanceX Magazine (issue 13) as part of our partnership. It was updated in October 2026 to reflect the PSD3 and PSR agreement and the latest UK figures.
Open banking in Europe at a glance (October 2026)
PSD2 (adopted 2015, applied from 2018) opened payment account data and payment initiation to licensed third parties through APIs.
PSD3 and the PSR: political agreement reached on 27 November 2025; the European Parliament’s ECON committee approved the texts on 5 May 2026. Most PSR rules apply around 18 to 21 months after entry into force, so firms are planning for 2028.
What changes: permission dashboards, better-performing bank APIs, payee name checks on credit transfers and more protection against impersonation fraud.
Open finance (FiDA): the proposal to extend data sharing to savings, investments, pensions and insurance is still being negotiated.
UK: outside the EU framework, UK open banking passed 16 million users in 2025 (Open Banking Limited, 2025).
The European Union adopted the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in 2015, and it applied from 2018. It ended the banks’ exclusive hold on customer payment data. With the customer’s consent, licensed third parties could read account information and start payments through bank APIs.
Two changes followed. Account data that had been locked inside individual banks could now move securely between authorised providers. And payment initiation opened up to non-banks, which made room for services banks had not built themselves, from account aggregation to pay-by-bank checkout.
The UK, which built its own open banking regime alongside PSD2, shows how far adoption can go. Open Banking Limited reported that more than 16 million people used open banking services in 2025, with payments up 53% year on year (Payment Expert, 2025).
PSD2 also had well-known gaps: API quality varied from bank to bank, strong customer authentication added friction, and the scope stopped at payment accounts. Those gaps shaped the next round of rules.
Who Shapes Open Banking in Europe
Established banks: adapting legacy systems
Banks bring customer relationships and regulatory experience, but often move slowly on technology. BBVA is a well-known example of a bank that went beyond minimum compliance, opening its API Market to partners and building embedded banking services.
Fintechs and aggregators: connecting the market
Aggregators such as Tink (acquired by Visa) connect thousands of European banks through a single integration, so other firms can build on open banking without negotiating bank by bank.
Specialists: solving one problem well
Focused firms use open banking for a single job. Yokoy applies it to business spend management, and Minna Technologies to subscription management. Strategic focus often brings stronger returns than trying to cover everything.
From PSD2 to PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation
In June 2023 the European Commission proposed PSD3 and the PSR to fix PSD2’s weaknesses. The package splits the rules in two: PSD3 covers licensing and supervision of payment institutions, while the PSR sets most conduct rules, including open banking access, and applies directly in every member state.
The Parliament and Council reached a provisional political agreement on 27 November 2025 (Open Banking Tracker, 2026). The Council published the final compromise texts in April 2026, and the Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs committee approved both texts on 5 May 2026 (PaymentBrief, 2026). Formal adoption and publication in the Official Journal complete the process. Most PSR rules then apply about 18 to 21 months after entry into force, with payee verification later still, so most firms are working to 2028 timelines.
What changes for open banking under the PSR
Permission dashboards: banks must give customers a dashboard to see and withdraw the data access they have granted to third parties.
API performance: banks’ data-access interfaces must perform at least as well as their own apps and websites, measured against common indicators.
No standing fallback interface: a contingency mechanism, triggered by supervisors, replaces the permanent fallback requirement.
Payee verification: checking the payee’s name against the IBAN becomes a standing requirement for credit transfers.
Fraud protection: customers gain a right to a refund when a fraudster impersonates their bank, and the burden of proving customer fraud moves to the provider.
Source: Open Banking Tracker, August 2026. Check final texts and dates with your compliance team.
Open Finance: The Next Step
Open banking covers payment accounts. The proposed Financial Data Access regulation (FiDA) would extend consent-based data sharing to savings, investments, loans, insurance and pensions. Progress has been slower than for PSD3: by early 2026 trilogue talks had paused, and the proposal remained pending (Powens, 2026). Firms that build strong consent, data and API practices under the PSR will be better placed whatever form open finance takes.
Sustainability and Open Banking
Open banking data can support more than payments. Nordea launched a carbon footprint tracker in 2019 that estimates customers’ footprints from their transaction data (Nordea, 2019). The Open Finance Association argues that data sharing can support more transparent financial services. As open finance develops, expect more services of this kind.
Choosing Your Position in the Market
The European market rewards institutions that pair compliance with a clear strategy. Treating the PSR as a box-ticking exercise leaves the commercial opportunity to competitors.
Where does your institution fit?
A platform builder like BBVA, providing infrastructure others build on?
A connector like Tink, linking previously separate financial services?
A specialist like Yokoy, getting the most from one market segment?
Whichever path you choose, the closed, single-bank model is not coming back.
Communicating Your Open Banking Strategy
Regulation this detailed is hard to explain. Customers, partners and regulators all need to understand what you offer, how you protect their data and why they should trust you. Firms that explain PSD3, the PSR and open finance clearly earn attention that compliance alone does not.
At Contentifai we help banks and fintechs turn complex regulation into clear, expert content that buyers and AI assistants can understand. Monthly Blog Content starts from £440 a month, and you can see all our services here. Contact us to talk about your open banking message.
How human expertise and technological efficiency work together for stronger regulatory outcomes and competitive edge.
Originally published in FinanceX Magazine 2025 issue #12
As part of our new strategic partnership with FinanceX Magazine, we’re pleased to share our recent article from their latest issue exploring how financial institutions can balance technological solutions with human expertise in regulatory compliance. This piece highlights the challenges in RegTech implementation and offers practical approaches that align with Contentifai’s human+AI philosophy.
Despite significant investment in regulatory technology solutions, many European financial institutions still struggle with implementation. The often overlooked success factor? The human element in how RegTech is communicated, understood, and integrated into organisational culture.
The Communication Gap: Why Great Technology Goes Unused
Financial professionals know the compliance burden all too well. The promise of regulatory technology to ease this challenge is compelling, which explains why institutions that successfully implement RegTech solutions report high satisfaction. According to the European Banking Authority, 70% of financial institutions express satisfaction with RegTech’s value once implemented (EBA, 2022).
Yet the path to adoption remains surprisingly difficult for many organisations. 67% of financial institutions cite a lack of awareness about available solutions as their primary barrier to RegTech adoption (Aspectus Group, 2024). This knowledge gap exists not because the technology is unavailable, but because the conversations around it often miss what matters most to institutions.
The EBA’s analysis uncovered something particularly revealing. There’s a fundamental misalignment between how RegTech providers promote their solutions and what financial institutions actually value. While providers frequently emphasise cost reduction in their messaging, institutions care more about enhanced risk management, improved monitoring capabilities, and reduced human error.
When we look closely at this misalignment, we find it creates roadblocks during the procurement and implementation phases. Technical capabilities that aren’t translated into institutional value propositions mean potentially transformative solutions remain on the shelf.
Trust Matters: Can We Rely on Algorithms for Compliance?
But awareness is just the beginning of the challenge. At its core, this is about trust. Financial institutions must navigate the delicate balance between leveraging technology for compliance efficiency and maintaining the human judgment that builds stakeholder confidence.
For compliance professionals, the question isn’t simply whether RegTech solutions work. They need to know if these systems can be trusted with high-stakes regulatory responsibilities. This trust factor becomes increasingly important as we approach 2025, which brings significant regulatory changes across Europe.
The European Commission has introduced multiple regulations with phased implementation approaches that will see major obligations come into effect throughout 2025 (Akin Gump, 2025). These developments include the anticipated “Competitiveness Compass” initiative and an “Omnibus” bill, alongside updated frameworks for cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and artificial intelligence applications.
As compliance requirements grow more complex, the institutions that effectively balance technological capabilities with human oversight gain a significant advantage. Building trust in RegTech requires transparency about both capabilities and limitations, with clear communication about where human judgment remains essential.
How to Foster A Human-Centred Approach to RegTech
How can institutions address these challenges? Consider this structured approach that addresses both technical capabilities and human concerns:
Strategic Alignment Conversations: Before engaging with RegTech providers, establish clear internal alignment between compliance objectives and technological capabilities. This preparation helps your team communicate actual priorities effectively, ensuring providers focus on relevant solutions rather than misaligned features.
Transparent Value Communication: Develop communication approaches that clearly connect technological capabilities to specific regulatory requirements. Quantify potential benefits using metrics meaningful to your stakeholders and acknowledge implementation challenges alongside benefits.
Multi-Level Stakeholder Engagement: Tailor your message to different audiences, from regulators requiring evidence of compliance to operational teams concerned about workflow changes. Successful RegTech implementation requires buy-in at all organisational levels.
Technology-Human Balance Messaging: Explicitly address how RegTech solutions complement rather than replace human judgment. Emphasise how technology enhances human decision-making, clarifies which processes remain under human oversight, and demonstrates safeguards against algorithmic biases.
Effective RegTech for Competitive Edge
Financial institutions that effectively communicate about RegTech, both internally and externally, gain significant competitive advantages. They accelerate the adoption of solutions that enhance compliance outcomes while building the stakeholder trust necessary for successful implementation.
As updated European regulations continue to roll out throughout 2025, this balanced approach will be increasingly valuable. By addressing both technological capabilities and human elements in RegTech communication, institutions can navigate complex requirements while maintaining the trust that underpins financial stability.
Compliance isn’t about choosing between human expertise and technological efficiency. It’s about showing how they work together to create stronger regulatory outcomes. Financial institutions that strike this balance position themselves for a significant competitive advantage, especially as compliance requirements continue to increase in complexity.
A Strategic Approach to Complex Financial Communications
At Contentifai, we help financial institutions transform how they communicate complex topics. Our unique blend of human expertise and AI capabilities enables banks, fintechs, and financial teams to explain technical concepts clearly while maintaining regulatory compliance and building trust with stakeholders.
We deliver strategic inbound content marketing campaigns, train brand-aligned agentic AI models, and AI content training. Our team combines human expertise with AI capabilities to help financial institutions communicate complex topics clearly and compellingly.
Want to learn how our approach could improve your financial communications? Book a discovery call to discuss your specific challenges and opportunities.
Newcastle is the centre of a North East tech scene of about 45,000 digital jobs, backed by devolved funding, an AI Growth Zone and a strong university base. Here is what the latest figures say, where the region is strong, and where founders can find support.
63 equity deals worth £141 million into North East smaller businesses in 2024 (British Business Bank, Nations and Regions Tracker 2025).
£4.2 billion devolution deal over 30 years for the North East Combined Authority, in place since May 2024.
Up to £30 billion of private investment and more than 5,000 jobs expected from the North East AI Growth Zone announced in September 2025 (UK Government, September 2025).
From coal to code: how Newcastle became a tech hub
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Newcastle and the wider region were defined by coal, shipbuilding and heavy engineering. Today the same city is home to software consultancies, fintech firms, data science centres and a growing cluster of AI businesses.
Opencast is a good example. The digital consultancy works from Hoults Yard, a former industrial yard in the east end of Newcastle, and has grown from 12 people in 2017 to 503 permanent staff, with revenue expected to pass £50 million for 2025 (Opencast, December 2025).
Newcastle’s tech scene has grown from existing strengths rather than copying London. A few traits show up again and again:
Practical products: many firms solve specific problems for businesses, government and the NHS.
Close university links: spinouts and graduate talent from Newcastle, Northumbria, Durham, Sunderland and Teesside universities.
A collaborative culture: active networks such as Dynamo North East, CyberNorth and Sunderland Software City.
Lower costs than London: office space and salaries go further, which extends a startup’s runway.
The North East tech sector by the numbers
Regional tech data comes from several sources, each with a different boundary and time period, so it is worth knowing which figure means what.
Measure
Figure
Source
Digital sector jobs (North East Combined Authority area)
About 45,000, plus 8,400 in broader AI sectors
NECA Local Growth Plan evidence base, November 2025
Digital enterprises (former North East LEP area, 2023)
At UK level, the Tech Nation Report 2025 named the North East among the fastest-growing tech regions in the country, alongside the East Midlands and Scotland.
Where the North East is strong
AI and data
Newcastle Helix is home to the National Innovation Centre for Data (NICD). An independent study published in September 2026 estimated that NICD has added £141 million in net GVA since 2018, £116 million of it in the North East, with a projected £1.2 billion over the next decade (Newcastle Helix, September 2026).
The biggest change is the North East AI Growth Zone, announced in September 2025 alongside the UK-US tech partnership. It covers data centre sites at Blyth (Cambois) and Cobalt Park in North Tyneside, with partners including Blackstone and QTS, Nscale, OpenAI, NVIDIA and Microsoft (North East Combined Authority).
Fintech
Newcastle has one of the UK’s larger fintech clusters outside London, anchored by employers such as Sage and Atom bank and a growing group of startups. Kani Payments, Neptune North and Noggin HQ all reported growth or new funding in 2025 and 2026; you will find them in our 2026-27 list of North East tech startups.
Cybersecurity
Newcastle University and Northumbria University are both on the National Cyber Security Centre’s list of Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (NCSC). The CyberNorth cluster runs CyberFest each October, which drew more than 1,000 attendees in 2025.
Life sciences and healthtech
The region has strong research in diagnostics and ageing, through Newcastle Helix, The Biosphere and the International Centre for Life. It has also been a hard two years for funding: several local life sciences startups closed or were sold in 2025 and 2026, while others, such as InvenireX and Magnitude Biosciences, raised new rounds.
Green energy and advanced manufacturing
The North East Investment Zone, live since April 2024, brings £160 million of government funding over ten years and focuses on the green economy and advanced manufacturing, with sites on the River Tyne corridor, NETPark, Blyth and the International Advanced Manufacturing Park (Invest North East England). It is separate from the Tees Valley Investment Zone, which covers digital and creative.
Devolution and the North East Combined Authority
The North East Combined Authority (NECA) was set up in May 2024 and covers seven councils. Kim McGuinness was elected as the first North East Mayor on 2 May 2024.
The devolution deal is worth £4.2 billion over 30 years, including a £1.4 billion investment fund (£48 million a year), about £1.8 billion for adult skills and £900 million for transport (South Tyneside Council, 2023). The Local Growth Plan, launched in March 2025, names tech, digital and AI as one of six priority sectors.
Funding for North East tech companies
Most early-stage tech funding in the region comes through a small number of regional funds and investors:
North East Investment Fund: £70 million, launched in November 2025 through The North East Fund, with loans up to £1 million (North East Elevate) and equity from £50,000 to £1 million (North East Accelerate, managed by Mercia) (The North East Fund).
Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II: £660 million across the North, launched in March 2024. In the North East, NEL Fund Managers run loans and Maven runs equity of up to £5 million (British Business Bank).
Regional venture investors: Northstar Ventures, DSW Ventures and the Venture Sunderland Fund back many of the region’s seed rounds, often alongside Innovate UK grants and angel investors.
The gap is larger rounds. The North East took about 3.1% of UK smaller-business equity deals in 2024 but only 1.3% of the value (British Business Bank, 2025), and companies looking for Series B money and beyond usually still look to London or overseas.
Universities, talent and innovation spaces
Newcastle University: home to the National Innovation Centre for Data and the National Innovation Centre for Ageing, both based at The Catalyst on Newcastle Helix.
Northumbria University: strengths in computer and information sciences, cybersecurity and design.
Durham, Sunderland and Teesside universities: spinouts such as Magnitude Biosciences at NETPark, plus software and digital skills courses.
Innovation spaces: Newcastle Helix, The Catalyst, PROTO in Gateshead, NETPark in County Durham and Sunderland Software City.
Spinout support: Northern Accelerator helps the region’s universities turn research into companies.
Events and networks worth knowing
TechNExt: the region’s tech festival. The 2026 edition ran from 15 to 19 June with more than 3,000 attendees; TechNExt 2027 is planned for 14 to 18 June 2027 (TechNExt).
Thinking Digital: a conference on how technology shapes work and society, held at The Glasshouse in Gateshead (20 to 21 May in 2026) (Thinking Digital).
CyberFest: CyberNorth’s annual cybersecurity festival, each October.
BSides Newcastle: a community information security conference, next on 28 November 2026 (BSides Newcastle).
Dynamo North East: the not-for-profit that champions the regional tech sector and runs the Dynamites awards.
Sunderland Software City: business support and skills programmes for software companies across the region.
Challenges and opportunities
The challenges are familiar: limited local scale-up capital, skills gaps in areas such as AI and advanced cybersecurity, and a national profile that still lags behind the region’s results. The life sciences closures of the last two years show how hard the gap between seed funding and Series A can be.
The opportunities are bigger than they were two years ago. The AI Growth Zone brings data centre investment and international partners, the devolution deal gives the region long-term funding of its own, and the new North East Investment Fund adds early-stage money. Lower living and office costs than London still help companies attract and keep talent.
Telling your story in a growing tech region
As more North East tech firms compete for customers, investors and staff, the ones that explain what they do clearly have an advantage. That now includes how your business appears when buyers ask AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Perplexity for a supplier.
Yes, for many. Newcastle offers university talent, lower costs than London, active networks and regional funds. The North East’s digital sector employs about 45,000 people (North East Combined Authority, 2025). The main weakness is limited local funding for larger growth rounds.
What is the North East AI Growth Zone?
Announced by the UK Government in September 2025, the North East AI Growth Zone covers data centre sites at Blyth and Cobalt Park in North Tyneside. It is expected to bring up to £30 billion of private investment and more than 5,000 jobs.
How much is the North East devolution deal worth?
The North East devolution deal is worth £4.2 billion over 30 years. It includes a £1.4 billion investment fund, about £1.8 billion for adult skills and £900 million for transport, managed by the North East Combined Authority.
Where can North East tech startups get funding?
Common sources include the £70 million North East Investment Fund, the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II, Northstar Ventures, DSW Ventures, the Venture Sunderland Fund, Innovate UK grants and angel investors.
Fifteen North East tech startups and scale-ups with verified growth news from 2025 and 2026, from fintech and AI software to life sciences and clean tech.
Our annual roundup looks for North East tech companies with evidence of growth in the last 18 months: a funding round, a new product, new jobs, a major customer or industry recognition. We checked each company against public sources, including Companies House, investor announcements and regional business press, in October 2026.
The list is not a ranking. It mixes early-stage startups with a few scale-ups that started in the region and still employ people here, because both tell you something about where North East tech is heading. Most are in or around Newcastle; where a company is based elsewhere in the region, we say so.
Based: Newcastle. What it does: disease detection technology built on DNA nanostructures it calls “Nanites”, designed for faster and cheaper diagnostic testing.
Latest: raised a £2 million seed round in November 2025, led by DSW Ventures with XTX Ventures, Cambridge Technology Capital and angel investors, alongside an Innovate UK grant (Tech.eu, November 2025).
Leadership: CEO Dr Dan Todd.
Why it is on the list: the round is aimed at commercialising the platform, which moves InvenireX from research towards revenue.
Based: NETPark, Sedgefield, County Durham. What it does: drug discovery and ageing research services using automated analysis of nematode worms, which lets pharmaceutical and academic clients test compounds quickly.
Latest: raised £1.3 million in September 2026, led by Northstar Ventures with the North East Spinout Inspire Fund, the North East Innovation Fund, Maven-managed funds and angel investors (NETPark, September 2026).
Leadership: CEO Dr Fozia Saleem.
Why it is on the list: a Durham University spinout with backing from most of the region’s main investors and a clear plan to scale its platform.
Fintech and proptech
Newcastle’s fintech cluster keeps growing, helped by a mix of established financial employers, university talent and regional funds such as the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II.
Based: Bank House, Newcastle. What it does: a technology and consulting business set up in 2024 as a joint venture backed by Rokos Capital Management and Oliver Wyman, building analytics and technology for financial markets.
Latest: had more than 100 staff by October 2025 and took a second floor at Bank House (Bdaily, October 2025). In October 2026 it announced a US hub in Columbus, Ohio, with 75 jobs planned by 2029 (Ohio Tech News, October 2026).
Leadership: CEO James Beard.
Why it is on the list: it is not a typical startup, given its backers, but it is one of the fastest-growing tech employers in the city, and Newcastle remains its headquarters.
Based: Collingwood Street, Newcastle. What it does: automated payment reconciliation and reporting for card issuers, payment firms and banks.
Latest: closed a Series A led by Maven Capital Partners with Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II in February 2025 to expand into the US, followed by a further Maven-led investment in March 2026 (Prolific North, March 2026). It appointed a new CTO in July 2025 and appears on Prolific North’s 2026 Tech Companies to Watch list.
Leadership: CEO and co-founder Aaron Holmes.
Why it is on the list: repeat backing from the same investor is a strong signal, and the US push is under way.
Noggin HQ
Based: Newcastle. What it does: alternative credit scoring that uses banking data customers choose to share, so people with thin credit files can be assessed fairly. It is FCA-authorised as a credit reference agency.
Latest: raised £2.3 million in August 2026, led by Blackfinch Ventures with Oxford Capital and Bethnal Green Ventures (UKTN, August 2026).
Leadership: co-founders Evangeline Atkinson and Laura Mills.
Why it is on the list: new to the list this year, with a regulated product and national investors behind it.
Based: Newcastle. What it does: bundles household utility bills into one payment, with split billing for shared houses and student lets.
Latest: marked ten years in April 2025 with 183 staff, plans to pass 220, and accreditation as a Living Wage Employer (Prolific North, April 2025).
Leadership: CEO and co-founder Chris Dawson.
Why it is on the list: steady growth in headcount without leaving the region it started in.
Software, AI and cybersecurity
This is the biggest group on this year’s list, and the most AI-heavy. Several of these firms sell to marketing, sales and compliance teams, which says a lot about where B2B software demand sits in 2026.
Based: founded in Newcastle, now global with a Newcastle office. What it does: a partnership automation platform that helps brands run and pay affiliate and partner programmes.
Latest: bought Konnecto, an AI and data intelligence startup, in an all-cash deal in June 2025 (Hello Partner, June 2025).
Leadership: CEO Matt Gilbert.
Why it is on the list: a mature scale-up rather than a startup, but one of Newcastle’s best-known software exports and still adding capability.
Based: Middlesbrough, Teesside. What it does: quality assurance and coaching software for contact centres.
Latest: ranked 17th on G2’s list of top UK software companies for 2026, up from 43rd in 2025 (evaluagent, February 2026). Its last disclosed funding was a $20 million Series A led by PeakSpan Capital in 2023.
Leadership: co-founder Jaime Scott.
Why it is on the list: a fast climb in customer-review rankings, from a Teesside base.
MySalesCoach
Based: Newcastle. What it does: a sales coaching platform that pairs AI tools with human coaches.
Latest: raised £1.5 million in March 2026: £1 million from NPIF II – Maven and £500,000 from Northstar and Creative UK, after a £1.1 million round in March 2025 (Prolific North, March 2026).
Leadership: CEO Kevin Beales.
Why it is on the list: two rounds in two years, with the latest aimed at international growth.
PolyBox
Based: Newcastle. What it does: an AI marketing analytics and reporting platform.
Latest: raised £700,000 in July 2026: £150,000 from Northstar’s North East Innovation Fund, £250,000 from angel investors and a £300,000 Innovate UK grant (Bdaily, July 2026).
Leadership: CEO Rojin Yarahmadi.
Why it is on the list: an early-stage company in a crowded market, with a mix of public and private backing behind its growth plan.
OneClickComply
Based: Sunderland. What it does: automates cyber security compliance across Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and AWS.
Latest: raised £1 million in September 2026 from the North East Accelerate Fund (Mercia), the Venture Sunderland Fund and the Northstar EIS Growth Fund. Founded in 2024, it has 12 staff and doubled its monthly recurring revenue in six months (Sunderland Echo, September 2026).
Leadership: CEO Connor Greig.
Why it is on the list: fast revenue growth in a sector where the North East has real depth.
Moralbox
Based: Sunderland. What it does: an AI-supported workforce training and compliance platform.
Latest: raised £550,000 in 2025, including £350,000 from the Venture Sunderland Fund (Northstar Ventures, 2025).
Leadership: founder-led.
Why it is on the list: one of a growing group of Sunderland software firms backed by the city’s own venture fund.
Based: Newcastle. What it does: the jobs and hiring platform for the games and esports industry.
Latest: launched Hitmarker Pro, a subscription hiring platform with AI tools for employers, in April 2026 (Business Wire, April 2026). Duncan Ironmonger took a stake and became Executive Chairman in 2025.
Leadership: founded by Philip Huggan in 2017; Executive Chairman Duncan Ironmonger.
Why it is on the list: a move from jobs board to software subscription, which changes the shape of its revenue.
Clean tech and advanced materials
Dragonfly Advanced Materials
Based: Prudhoe, Northumberland. What it does: a Newcastle University spinout making aerogels for coatings, insulation and fire resistance.
Latest: raised £1 million in September 2026: £500,000 from Northstar and a £500,000 Innovate UK grant (Bdaily, September 2026).
Leadership: CEO John Baines.
Why it is on the list: deep tech from a regional university, with funding to move into production.
Lithium Salvage
Based: Sunderland. What it does: recovers and recycles material from lithium-ion battery waste.
Why it is on the list: battery recycling sits close to the North East’s electric vehicle and battery manufacturing base, which gives it a local market.
How the list changes each year
We refresh this list every year so it always shows the North East tech companies with the most recent, verifiable growth. Companies leave the list when we can no longer find current growth news for them in the region, and new ones join when they raise funding, launch products or add jobs. The 2026-27 edition keeps eight companies from last year and adds seven.
What the 2026-27 list tells us about North East tech
AI is now part of the product, not a separate sector. MySalesCoach, PolyBox, Moralbox and Hitmarker all build AI into tools for sales, marketing, training and hiring teams.
Regional funds do much of the heavy lifting. Northstar, Maven (through NPIF II), Mercia’s North East Accelerate Fund and the Venture Sunderland Fund appear again and again.
Sunderland and Teesside are part of the story. Four of the fifteen are outside Newcastle, which reflects a wider North East scene rather than one city.
Scale-up capital is still the gap. Most rounds here are under £2.5 million; bigger rounds tend to come from outside the region.
Telling your story as a North East tech company
Most of the companies above sell something technical to busy buyers. The ones that grow fastest tend to explain what they do in plain language, on their website and in the places buyers now research, including AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Are you part of a growing North East tech company that should be on next year’s list? Get in touch and tell us your story.
Frequently asked questions
Which Newcastle tech startups raised money in 2026?
Companies on our 2026-27 list that announced funding in 2026 include Noggin HQ (£2.3 million, August), MySalesCoach (£1.5 million, March), Magnitude Biosciences (£1.3 million, September), OneClickComply (£1 million, September), Dragonfly Advanced Materials (£1 million, September), PolyBox (£700,000, July) and Kani Payments (a further Maven-led round, March).
Who invests in North East tech startups?
The most active investors on this list are Northstar Ventures, Maven Capital Partners (including through the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II), Mercia through the North East Accelerate Fund, DSW Ventures and the Venture Sunderland Fund, often alongside Innovate UK grants and angel investors.
Is Newcastle a good place to start a tech company?
Newcastle offers university talent, lower costs than London and a strong network of regional funds and support organisations. The main gap is larger growth rounds, which often still come from London or overseas investors.
How often is this list updated?
We publish the list once a year and check each company’s status when we do. This edition was updated on 6 October 2026.
