While there have been numerous high-profile announcements about AI in recent years, 2025 marked a major shift in the finance sector. The industry stopped talking about AI and started quietly rebuilding its base around it. The debate is over for people in charge of banking, insurance, and payments. The most important question right now is how to set up a business where smart systems and human knowledge can work together safely, profitably, and on a large scale.
When I look back, I see that 2025 was not marked by one big change but by the strong coming together of three main big shifts. They have all worked together to make the financial world very different by 2026.
Shift One: AI Reached the Backbone
The most significant change was that AI went from being an experiment to something that was necessary for infrastructure. It’s not just for chatbots or innovation labs anymore. Now at the end of 2025, AI is a big part of how most major institutions work. For example, it is used to check credit and market risk in real time, run fraud detection systems that learn with each transaction, and automate complicated IT tasks.
Actions like BNY Mellon’s direct integration of Google’s advanced Gemini AI into its systems <Newswire>make the signal clear. This isn’t about making a new tool for customers; it’s about creating a new structure of AI agents that can look at research, find trends, and act on huge amounts of data. In the same way, Swiss regulator FINMA said that more than half of the institutions it oversees already use AI, and most of them also use generative AI <FINMA>. Even the people in charge are starting to use AI to keep an eye on things.
The target for 2026 is clear. It won’t be difficult to count how many AI projects you have; the challenging part will be making sure that AI is at the heart of your company’s architecture, processes, and risk controls, and on top of that, the main discussion will revolve around value. Yes, value that AI can generate for financial institutions.
Shift Two: Money Grew a Brain and Multiple Personalities
As AI was getting used to things, the way money worked was changing. The global payments system has been transformed into a web of different “rails,” such as digital wallets and assets and instant bank transfers, beside traditional cards. These payment flows have become more important because they are full of data and can be programmed. <McKinsey>
Imagine that money is getting “smart.” Payments can now have conditions, triggers, and logic. This lets you make decisions in real time about how to route, price, and assess the risk of a payment as soon as it is made. It lets you set up personalized financial flows that automatically send money to savings, investments, or paying off debt. It makes embedded finance possible, which means that a ride-hail app or software platform can easily start a financial transaction.
For financial leaders, this means a fundamental change because their customers are shifting from recognizing the bank as a place; they are about to forget that and start to think only about value moving freely across many apps and channels. In 2026, those who see payments as a boring utility will lose. Instead, they should see them as a strategic, AI-driven digital product. Making smart choices at the “edge” of each transaction, backed up by strong technology and ethical data use, will be key to success.
Shift Three: Regulators Stepped Into the Cockpit
Perhaps the most underrated shift of 2025 was the changing role of the regulator. They have gone from being distant observers to active co-pilots on the AI journey. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK is doing more than just putting out rules. It is running live tests on AI, working with banks to design trials for AI budgeting tools, and warning about the risks that come with having many autonomous agents work together.
Supervisors around the world now want to know when AI is used in important tasks. The question is no longer “if” you use AI, but “how” you control it
2026 Preview: The Year of Discipline and Intelligent Value
Putting things together in 2025 was the goal; putting them together wisely in 2026 will be the goal. To be successful, leaders need to focus on three important things.
- They need to make an AI platform, not a collection of tools. A random mix of chatbots, fraud models, and pilot projects can’t last. The goal for 2026 is to have a single platform with shared development tools, common data, and a list of AI services that can be used again. This process speeds up and lowers the cost of deploying every new use case. So this maybe is a very good news for IT personnel in financial institutions. That reminds me of the early internet times when they were all competing to offer their mobile and remote services online, now it is time to make all of this smarter.
- They need to build smart guardrails. More automation means that people need to keep a closer eye on things. This means having clear rules for when AI provides suggestions and when it makes decisions, keeping an eye out for bias or mistakes, and training staff to understand what AI says. In 2026, people won’t trust AI just because it’s perfect. They’ll trust it when it shows strong controls and clear responsibility when something goes wrong. Maybe there is still a mountain to climb here for policymakers.
- They need to think of products as smart journeys. Old-fashioned things like static loans and accounts are no longer useful. Value now comes from ongoing, proactive journeys, like helping a customer optimize a business’s cash flow using live data automatically. This needs teams from different fields that can combine data, AI, and human help to create customer experiences that are really useful. So, data personnel, get ready to work even closer with the experts.
The convergences of 2025 have changed the map. The successful organization of 2026 and beyond will see itself as a conductor of smart value flows. It will use AI as its brain, programmable payments and data as its blood, and strong governance and human judgment as its immune system.
The race is no longer about who has the most money or the most advanced technology. It’s about who can best combine strict architecture, ethical oversight, and creative imagination to make the promise of smart money into a business that lasts and is trusted. The quiet rewiring is done. The real test starts now.
If you want a broader map of how these shifts in finance connect to the wider transformation of work, families, and society, I go deeper into this in my book Life in the Digital Bubble. And if your organization is ready to turn these ideas into a concrete roadmap, my digital transformation and AI consulting services focus exactly on helping leaders design that next phase with clarity and confidence.