
I’ve been thinking about HENRYs recently. Not the Henry who asked me to marry him - I was 8, he was 5 - although he does cross my mind occasionally. HENRYs, short for ‘High Earners Not Rich Yet’, was coined as a label by Shawn Tully in 2003.

If you listened to the headlines, you'd think the competitive race in financial services is about one thing: building the smartest AI. We think that's the wrong way to look at it.

Embedded banking without strategic intent is expensive theatre. Lots of APIs, lots of partnership announcements, lots of pilots, but not much revenue. And that’s the risk facing corporate banks right now.

AI assistants already help people compare products, check availability and plan purchases. Agentic commerce extends that role to placing the order: a customer sets a budget and a few conditions, then gives the software permission to complete the purchase.

For most people, the month falls into two phases - before and after payday - when balances jump, debts feel manageable, and financial intentions come back within reach. But in most banking apps, payday is treated as a passive event.

Financial institutions are moving quickly into agentic AI. Coding agents, workflow agents, document agents, service agents and operational agents are already entering the enterprise. Many will create useful gains, some of them genuinely impressive. But that is not the real test.
Barclays is acquiring the UK arm of GoHenry, a money app for 6 to 18-year olds. With a reported price tag of £180 million for around 500,000 active accounts, £360 per head is a chunky investment.

For the past decade, the banking industry has been focused on developing frictionless interfaces. Financial institutions have prioritised seamless transactions, instant gratification, and engaging gamified features in a bid to build the ultimate digital financial experience.

The need for better, tailored support through the customer experience is clear, but few are accounting for the fundamental shift that financial services has experienced with the introduction of AI.

Loyalty is defined as “a strong feeling of support or allegiance”. However, in the context of financial services, it is more accurately defined as engineered persistence: a series of subconscious cues that steer customers toward familiar choices.

For years, banks have relied on OTPs as a second factor for logins and sensitive actions. Sent via SMS, these short codes were designed to add security on top of a password. But they have become one of the weakest and most frustrating parts of the banking experience.

The people using business banking tools don’t necessarily have financial backgrounds. Many smaller businesses can't afford a dedicated finance team. Yet banks keep building products that assume expertise their customers don't have, leaving them to figure things out on their own.

As our financial lives become more complex, there is a growing expectation for banks to offer more support, be more relevant, and generate greater everyday value. One of the clearest places this shift is starting to show up is in subscription banking.

David Brear, Simon Taylor and Jason Bates are here to answer all of your questions on our new Ask Me Anything episode. Tune in to hear more!

In the fourth roundtable episode of Fintech Marketing Podcast, your host Mariette Ferreira takes a look at how fintechs use performance marketing for growth. Mariette is joined by a great panel of guests to help unpack this and dive a bit deeper into- wide array of tools and tactics, and every company will have its own flavour, from SEO, to PPC, to paid social, to affiliates. Some call it growth marketing, paid marketing, even (sadly) digital marketing.

In this week's episode of the Fintech Marketing Podcast, your host Eric Fulwiler is joined by Chris Pitt, CEO at First Direct - to discuss all things marketing - what makes it good, what makes it bad, and what every marketer needs to know to keep levelling up.

In the second roundtable episode of Fintech Marketing Podcast, your host Mariette Ferreira takes a look at what it really takes to build a finance brand. Mariette is joined by a great panel of guests to help unpick this and dive a bit deeper into trust - the core to brands in financial services, how to maintain your customer connection and your brand identity through a rebrand, building an impactful but lean brand, and much much more.

In this week's episode of the Fintech Marketing Podcast, your host Eric Fulwiler is joined by Carla Zakhem-Hassan, CMO at Citi - to discuss all things marketing, and find out what inspires and motivates her.

In the first roundtable episode of Fintech Marketing Podcast, your host Mariette Ferreira takes a look at what good content marketing looks like. Mariette is joined by a great panel of guests to help unpick this and dive a bit deeper in the quality, quantity, and growing trends.

For the season 2 première of the Fintech Marketing Podcast, your host Eric Fulwiler is joined by David Wheldon - WFA President Emeritus and Former CMO at RBS - to discuss all things marketing, and find out what makes him tick.

Simon Taylor are joined by some great guests from Google, Fronted and Synctera to talk about how banks structure their technology and why this can make transformation so difficult.

Adam Davis and Kate Moody are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: TransferWise goes Down Under as they join Australia's real-time payments network, Stripe gets into business lending and Mogo goes into Rainforest Mode in their new app!

David Brear and Mel Stringer are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Google takes on Venmo and Square with new payments features, Starling hits profit for the first time, and the Queen of England unexpectedly takes an interest in blockchain.

Sarah Kocianski and Kate Moody joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Santander buys Wirecard’s core European business for €100m, PNC buys BBVA USA and the FCA says no, as Lanister launches its new polymorphic payment card.

Simon Taylor and Adam Davis are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: WhatsApp gets approval for payments in India, the US government want to block Visa’s $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid, and Klarna gets sued by Pablo Escobar’s brother

Sam Maule and Sarah Kocianski are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Goldman bets on Banking as a Service, British banks stay bullish despite Lockdown 2, and Ant’s record-breaking IPO has been blocked by the Chinese regulator.

Sarah Kocianski and Nigel Walsh are joined by a panel of guests to talk about travel insurance, and how Covid-19 has changed the face of the industry. All this and much much more on today's Insurtech Insider!

Ross Gallagher and Simon Taylor are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Ant Group and the biggest IPO of all time, cryptocurrency initiatives amongst industry giants PayPal and JP Morgan, and raccoons break into California bank.

The UK banking battlefield has never been more competitive. Customers expectfinancial apps that are personalised, seamless, and that genuinely make a differenc...


The UK banking battlefield has never been more competitive. Customers expectfinancial apps that are personalised, seamless, and that genuinely make a differenc...

