By Michael Dowling, CEO & Co-Founder Narrative There was a time when small businesses relied on the quiet power of a local banking relationship. A baker or shop owner could sit across from a bank manager who understood their street, their margins, and their worries. That relationship created loyalty and growth. When banking became centralised and cost-driven, that human layer disappeared. Michael Dowling wants to bring it back. Dowling’s inspiration comes from his childhood i

The European banking system is undergoing a structural transformation that goes far beyond the digitalisation of channels or the evolution of financial product offerings. In wealth management, the true competitive arena is no longer defined solely by performance, but by the ability to preserve existing relationships and cultivate new ones with younger generations, protecting assets under management and ensuring long-term continuity. This is the space in which WealthTech opera

By Jörg Held, Head of Portfolio Management at ETHENEA Independent Investors Many investors primarily view risk as a threat. As a result, they try to avoid uncertainty as much as possible, even though returns can only be generated when risks are consciously assumed. Warren Buffett aptly summarizes this relationship: risk arises when investors do not know what they are doing. It is therefore not essential to ignore risk, but rather to understand it, classify it, and manage it

Vincent Grard, Country Manager France - Trade Republic When Trade Republic is mentioned, it is often described as a bank. According to Vincent Grard, Country Manager France and Belgium, that label misses the point. “We position ourselves as a tech company with a full banking license,” he explains. “That changes everything—from how we build our infrastructure to how we price our products.” This positioning is more than semantics. It reflects a deliberate strategic choice that

It’s 2026. A client opens an app and asks, “Can I retire at 58, help my daughter with a down payment, and still take that Japan trip?” A digital assistant runs the numbers in seconds, then tees up the human advisor to handle the part no model truly nails: priorities, trade-offs, and emotions. That handoff, automation with empathy, is where WealthTech is headed. Here are four shifts likely to define the competitive landscape in 2026. The advisor copilot becomes standard equi

By Gabriel Schild , Said El Addaoui, and Michel Straga - DXC In Brussels, it is easy to think of innovation as something we can sequence: consult, draft, implement, supervise. That rhythm has served Europe well. It produced legal certainty, rule-based supervision, and a financial system designed to move at human speed. What changes the conversation is not simply “more AI,” but the way AI compresses time and reallocates power inside financial markets.  The question is no long

The integration reduces checkout steps while preserving merchant control over payments and risk Press release: Bolt , the checkout, identity and payments leader powering faster, smarter commerce, and Paysecure , the cutting-edge payment orchestration platform built for modern global merchants, today announced a strategic partnership. Through the integration,  Paysecure  will embed Bolt One-Click into its Cashier, allowing merchants using Paysecure’s checkout to offer Bolt’s o

Verifiable organizational identity underpins trusted eBLs, reducing risk and inefficiencies across global trade and supply chains Press release: The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) and AEOTrade (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (AEOTrade) have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Together, they will explore how verifiable organizational identity can promote the development of an open, inclusive, and secure infrastructure for trusted global digita