
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.

Sarah Kocianski is joined by some great guests to discuss the first 2 years of Open Banking in the UK - what's worked, what hasn't and how many more opportunities and innovations are yet to come.

David Brear and Sarah Kocianski are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Open Banking passes a million customers on its second anniversary, shakeups at RBS as Bo exec to step down, and BlackRock to shift away from fossil fuel investments.

In this week's Insights show, Adam Davis is joined by some great guests to discuss the future of investing.

We. Are. Here. Today we bring you: The currency cold war, tokenising your future income, and when will we see a digital dollar? All this and much more on today's Blockchain Insider!

Fintech Insider is stateside this week as hosts Will White and Sam Maule are joined by a panel of great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Visa acquires Plaid in $5bn deal, banks tell us how they did in Q4 2019, and the new bank for the 60+ set.

Simon Taylor is hosting solo this week and is joined by some great guests to talk about the future of fintech VC investment.

In the first Insurtech Insider episode of the year, host Sarah Kocianski is joined by a panel of guests to talk through how the direct-to-consumer insurance model has evolved in a digital-first world. All this and much much more on today's Insurtech Insider!

We. Are. Here. Today we bring you: Where Libra go from here, Telegram’s TON takes another blow, and the Venezuelan President is all in on petros. All this and much more on today's Blockchain Insider!

Laura Watkins is at Fintech Connect 2019 at the ExCeL London where she is joined by Kosta Peric, Deputy Director of Financial Services for the Poor at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Sarah Kocianski and Adam Davis are joined by some returning guests to predict all the things that could happen in the fintech world in 2020!

We. Are. Here. Today we bring you predictions! Host Simon Taylor is joined by Mike Dudas and the pair are predicting all the things that could happen in the world of blockchain in 2020.

We. Are. Here. Today we bring you: a live panel from this year's Money20/20! We also have some incredible interviews with Asaf Meir, CEO at Solidus Labs and Max Boonen, CEO at B2C2.

Sarah Kocianski and Nigel Walsh are joined by some returning guests to predict all the things that could happen in the insurtech world in 2020!

David Brear and Simon Taylor are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: RBS to pay £40 million for foreign exchange rigging, WeLab raises $156 million ahead of virtual bank launch, and MasterCard launches mobile gift card ahead of Christmas. All this and much more on today's Fintech Insider News!

On this week's insights show, David Brear and Simon Taylor sit down to reminisce about the past 12 months of fintech. As always, they are joined by an incredible panel of guests and together they take a look back at 2019's most notable fintech stories.

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...

