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Beyond Banking: The New Boundary of Financial Services Is Data
- Andrew Quinn
- Jun 5
- 5 min read
By Andrew Quinn, Managing Director & Co-Founder at FIDEO Global
Banks once competed on balance sheets, branch networks and product breadth.
That is no longer enough.
In 2026, the defining question for financial institutions is not whether they can offer more financial products, but whether those products appear at the exact moment customers need them: inside platforms, marketplaces, supply chains, accounting systems, mobility apps and property journeys.
This is what “beyond banking” really means. It is a structural shift in where financial services live, how they are distributed, and how data is used to build trust. Embedded finance is moving banking into the customer workflow. Open banking and open finance are turning financial data into programmable infrastructure. ESG integration is reshaping how products are designed and assessed.
And sustainability reporting is exposing a harder truth: the future of sustainable finance will depend on data quality. The bank is no longer simply a destination. It is becoming an invisible layer within the wider economy.
Embedded Finance and the Battle for Customer Context
Embedded finance is not replacing banks. It is changing who owns the customer moment. For years, embedded finance was framed as a Fintech disruption story in which non-financial platforms would absorb payments, lending and insurance while banks became invisible utilities.
The reality is more nuanced. Banks still provide the regulated infrastructure, capital, compliance and trust that underpin the financial system - but increasingly, the moment of demand belongs to someone else.
A small business does not wake up wanting a loan - it needs to buy inventory, pay suppliers or manage cash flow.
A consumer does not wake up wanting credit - they want to complete a purchase, repair a home or finance a trip.
The most attractive financial product is the one that appears naturally inside that journey.
The opportunity is substantial. But so is the strategic risk.
If banks only provide the regulated rails, they will retain the complexity of compliance while losing customer intimacy and behavioural insight. Platforms, meanwhile, gain the advantage of context, timing and data. That is why the key question for banks is no longer simply which Fintech’s to partner with. It is whether they can still own meaningful parts of the customer relationship.
Open Finance Is Becoming Core Infrastructure
Open banking has already moved beyond its first phase of account aggregation and compliance-led APIs. In the UK, Open Banking Limited reported 13.3 million active users by March 2025, with open banking payments growing strongly year on year. 1 That matters because open banking is no longer only about access to account information. It is increasingly tied to payments, identity, affordability assessments, cash-flow intelligence and personalised financial services.
In Europe, the proposed Financial Data Access framework (FiDA) - alongside PSD3 and the revised Payment Services Regulation - signals a broader move toward open finance.
The direction is clear: financial data is becoming a regulated and portable asset.
For banks, this creates an important strategic divide.
Institutions that treat open finance purely as a compliance obligation will expose data reluctantly and defensively. Those that treat it as a product and customer strategy will build new propositions around trust, consent, portability and intelligence. The difference will ultimately appear in growth, retention and revenue.
ESG Is Moving From Narrative to Product Design
Sustainable finance is also entering a more mature phase.
The first wave of ESG in financial services was often built around high-level commitments, labelled products and public targets. Green loans, sustainability-linked lending and net-zero frameworks helped establish direction, but markets and regulators are becoming less tolerant of vague or unsupported claims. The European Banking Authority’s ESG risk management guidelines, published in 2025, reinforce that ESG considerations are moving directly into governance, risk management, credit assessment and capital planning. 2
This is the decisive shift.
ESG is no longer a communications layer placed on top of existing products. It is becoming part of product architecture. Mortgage lending increasingly needs to consider building energy performance. SME finance may require greater understanding of transition exposure. Insurance products depend more heavily on climate-risk modelling. Corporate banking is increasingly expected to connect financing terms with credible transition pathways.
The competitive advantage will not come from sustainability language alone. It will come from the ability to translate sustainability data into better underwriting, pricing, advisory services and risk management. 3
Sustainability Data Has Become Strategic Infrastructure
This is where the industry faces its biggest operational challenge. Banks and insurers are now being asked to measure financed emissions, climate exposure, transition readiness and supply-chain dependencies. Yet much of the underlying sustainability data remains fragmented, estimated or inconsistent across jurisdictions.
At the same time, reporting expectations continue to evolve. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive is expanding disclosure requirements, even as policymakers explore ways to reduce unnecessary reporting burden.
This creates a tension across the market. Regulators want more decision-useful sustainability information. Companies want less administrative complexity. Financial institutions, however, still need better-quality data because their risk models, product claims and transition strategies increasingly depend on it.
As a result, sustainability data is becoming the new infrastructure. Not a CSR exercise. Not an annual reporting project. Infrastructure.
Financial institutions will need systems capable of collecting, validating and reconciling sustainability information across customers, portfolios and third-party providers. They will need governance around estimates, audit trails for claims and stronger links between sustainability metrics and financial performance. The institutions that succeed will be able to demonstrate measurable impact. Those that fail will struggle to defend the claims they make.
The New Competitive Advantage Is Transparency
This is where the “beyond banking” agenda comes together. Embedded finance requires banks to operate through partners. Open finance requires them to share and consume data responsibly. ESG integration requires measurable outcomes rather than broad commitments.
The common denominator is transparency. Customers want to know what they are consenting to. Regulators want clearer evidence of risk management. Investors want sustainability claims that are financially material and verifiable. Corporate clients want financing partners capable of supporting transition rather than simply evaluating it from the outside.
In this environment, trust becomes programmable. It is built into APIs, consent frameworks, data controls, audit trails, risk models and impact metrics. That represents a very different version of banking from the one the industry inherited.
The Next Boundary of Banking
The future of financial services will not be defined by a clean line between banks, Fintech’s, platforms and sustainability providers - it will be defined by orchestration.
Banks will continue to matter because regulation, capital, liquidity and resilience matter.
Fintech’s will continue to matter because speed, infrastructure abstraction and user experience matter.
Platforms will matter because they own customer context.
Sustainability data providers will matter because measurable impact depends on credible information.
The winners will be the organisations that understand the new boundary.
Banking is no longer simply where money is stored, moved or lent - It is where financial capability meets customer context, trusted data and measurable impact. That is what lies beyond banking.
1 - Open Banking Limited (2025), Impact Report 7: Open Banking Delivers Real-World Impact as Adoption Accelerates Year-on-Year, May 2025. Available at:
2 - European Banking Authority (2025), Guidelines on the Management of ESG Risks (EBA/GL/2025/01), published 9 January 2025. Paris: European Banking Authority. Available at:
3 - European Union (2022), Directive (EU) 2022/2464 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 amending Regulation (EU) No 537/2014, Directive 2004/109/EC, Directive 2006/43/EC and Directive 2013/34/EU, as regards corporate sustainability reporting (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive – CSRD). Official Journal of the European Union, L 322, 16 December 2022, pp. 15–80. Available at:
