Financial institutions are actively moving key customer-facing processes to AI agents, marking a rapid transformation in how customers interact with banks and insurers. According to the Capgemini Research Institute’s World Cloud Report in Financial Services 2026, the top processes for banks to deploy cloud-native, AI agents at scale include customer service (75%), fraud detection (64%), loan processing (61%) and customer onboarding (59%).

Finastra, a global leader in financial services software, today announced the appointment of three senior technology executives to its leadership team: a new Chief Data Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, as well as a Chief Information Officer. These appointments reinforce Finastra’s commitment to delivering modern, secure, and trusted financial technology that enables its 8,000+ customers worldwide to innovate, scale and grow.

Salica Investments today announced that Barclays has joined as a cornerstone investor in its £150m Growth Debt Fund II, expanding access to flexible growth capital, to support the next generation of the UK’s high-growth, innovation-led businesses.

60% of hospitality businesses say speed is their key reason for investing in smarter point-of-sale (POS) systems ahead of the 2025 holiday shopping season, according to new research from Lloyds Merchant Services. As festive trading ramps up, businesses are upgrading their checkout technology to handle higher volumes, reduce wait times and deliver a more seamless payment experience across busy venues.

Episode Six and Fireblocks today announced the co-development of a unified payments solution at Singapore Fintech Festival. The payments solution seamlessly integrates traditional and digital finance, bringing fiat, stablecoins, loyalty points, and other digital assets onto a single, programmable platform—empowering financial institutions to operate across asset classes with speed, security, and flexibility.

Sygnum, a global digital asset banking group, has revealed the results of its Future Finance 2025 global institutional investor report. The late-Q3 survey analyses the core interests, market sentiment and behaviour of 1000+ institutional and professional investors active in the crypto market across 43 countries. The 38-page report has six major themes; asset allocation, investment strategies, products and services, investment barriers, market outlook, plus a new spotlight on High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs).

UniCredit has been recognised as the Best Bank in Trade Finance for Corporates in Germany,[i] according to data from Crisil Coalition Greenwich, a leading provider of strategic benchmarking, analytics and insights to the financial services industry, owned by S&P Global. The report also showed UniCredit as joint second Share Leader for corporate trade finance in Europe[ii] (with 27% of businesses citing the bank as an important trade finance provider), ranking #1 for Germany (with 70%) and #2 in Italy (80%).

LHV Bank has strengthened its UK lending team with the appointment of Callum Livingstone as Lending Director, further enhancing its capability to support brokers and business clients nationwide.

Based in Manchester and reporting directly to Conor McDermott, Director of SME Lending, Callum will work across both trading and real estate businesses, focusing on term debt and investment lending, including growth, acquisition and expansion finance.

Napier AI, the London-based financial crime compliance RegTech, has appointed seasoned professional Stacy Lowe as Chief People Officer to lead the company’s hiring and retention strategy.