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Category: Expertise strategy

Finance News Digest – Summarising financial innovation

This is emagine’s Finance News Digest, highlighting recent news from the industry in Europe and beyond that show key developments impacting the direction of travel.

As the financial services landscape continues to evolve each day, knowledge is key. emagine partners with hundreds of financial institutions, including global banks, asset managers and fintech firms across 10 European countries and can easily spot changes.

“What we are seeing is a trend of consolidation in the sector. Coupled with ever-growing compliance requirements, the consolidation represents the most substantial challenge now and over the next 3-5 years,” says Klaus Jul Cassøe, Business Unit Director, Financial Sector at emagine Denmark.

This competitive industry insight and experience means our experts deeply understand the unique pressures facing financial organisations, whether driven by complex regulatory challenges, operational risk, digital innovation, or cost-efficiency.

This bank of sector knowledge enables us to rapidly deploy the right talent and solutions to deliver measurable impact, at the same pace as the industry moves.

This time, we take a sector-wide temperature check.

 

Banks get ready for ISO 20022

November 2025 marks a key milestone in the global transition to ISO 20022, the new standard set to modernise cross-border payments by enabling better quality and more structured data.

Banks choosing early adoption are already seeing benefits, including improved transaction automation, enhanced cash flow visibility, and a reduction in manual errors. Critically, ISO 20022 supports better fraud detection and compliance through enriched data intelligence, helping institutions strengthen their risk and AML frameworks.

However, challenges remain. Many corporates have yet to fully transition, creating potential friction where legacy MT messages may cut out key data. Swift is offering interim solutions, but these come at a cost. Conversion fees, increased failure risk, slower processing, and reputational exposure are all potential barriers.

Full-scale adoption requires industry-wide coordination and organisational synergy. Banks must maintain readiness and support clients throughout this phased shift to unlock the standard’s transformative potential.

Read more in this article

 

UK aligns with US on crypto regulations

The UK Government launched a draft legislation to tighten potential oversight of the crypto sector, aiming to enhance consumer protection and investor confidence. The proposed rules would bring crypto exchanges and related firms under a regulatory framework similar to traditional financial institutions.

Approximately 12% of UK adults now own or have previously owned cryptocurrency, which is a sharp rise from just 4% in 2021. However, the regulatory framework has lagged, leaving consumers vulnerable to risk and fraudulent activity.


 

  In a market where financial companies strive for volume and economies of scale, merging products, business units, and system landscapes offer innovative opportunities but do not come without significant challenges.

 


Expected to go live in 2026, this move aligns with the government's broader strategy to position the UK as a leading hub for financial innovation.

Read the full story here

 

AI for resilience

Despite challenges for adoption, such as budgetary constraints and demonstrating return on investment, tech leaders in the financial services sector are revisiting technology strategies in order to implement more AI solutions.

A key driver is to achieve greater operational resilience to protect against IT outages that have plagued the industry. These outages can incur a significant cost to resolve, as well as damage customer trust with the high risk of them moving to another provider.

AI can be used to detect potential outages before they occur, so that preventative measures can be taken.

“We are witnessing a financial market evolving with the advent of AI tools and machine learning solutions, leading to increased consolidation,” says Klaus Jul Cassøe, Business Unit Director, Financial Sector at emagine Denmark.

“In a market where financial companies strive for volume and economies of scale, merging products, business units, and system landscapes offer innovative opportunities but do not come without significant challenges,” Cassøe adds.

Read the article in ITPro here

Agentic AI and financial services

Banks and insurance firms have not delayed in leveraging generative AI. Agentic AI is the next phase of innovation to impact the financial services sector. With access to an immense volume of data sources and multiple large language models (LLMs), agents constantly improve their own performance and work collaboratively with other agents.

The advantages for financial services include the potential to significantly increase the speed and accuracy of processes. For example, agents can directly improve client services by supporting relationship managers dealing with customer queries, or on a much larger scale, improve the speed and efficiency of major digital transformations.

Nonetheless, when using agentic AI there are pitfalls and it will be crucial for financial services to ensure they retain control, and that they prioritise data maturity and security.

We wrote about the impact of agentic AI in a previous blog.

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Expertise strategy

Finance News Digest – Summarising financial innovation

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