FinovateEurope 2025: Fintech funding trends, embedded lending, and agentic AI in the spotlight
FinovateEurope 2025 continued into its second day at the Intercontinental O2 in London on Wednesday, with discussions covering a wide range of fintech’s hottest topics – from agentic AI and quantum computing to embedded lending and investment trends.
FinovateEurope 2025 featured a range of discussions covering trending fintech topics
Building on the momentum from Tuesday’s demo day, the event offered deep-dive discussions through a series of power panels, keynote speeches, and fireside chats.
For the love of lending
On the lending stage, panellists from HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Rabobank, and Infosys joined together to examine the rise of embedded lending, which involves the integration of lending into various customer journeys beyond traditional buy now, pay later (BNPL) models.
Joris Hensen, initiator and API programme co-lead at Deutsche Bank, kicked off the conversation by outlining historic scepticism around the use of open banking and APIs in lending, before noting how the advent of the technology has given rise to solutions for “very individual cases”, such as servicing thin-file clients.
Despite the advantages of embedded lending APIs outlined by Hensen, with contributions from fellow panellist Olaf ten Duis, who leads embedded lending at Rabobank, the speakers were quick to account for the various challenges hindering the technology’s proliferation across the industry.
Ram Devanarayanan, head of business consulting at Infosys Finacle Europe, put forward data management and the scalability of API-based products as among the most prominent of these challenges, stating that “some banks struggle to even have a proper data source where you can run these models”.
For Ishtiaq Ahmed, senior product manager of emerging technology, innovation and ventures at HSBC, this is not only a challenge experienced by large financial institutions, but by fintechs too.
Ahmed described the process of cultivating “clean data that can help you make effective decisions” as a code needing to be cracked, before adding that “we’re far from reaching that state”.
Despite this, he emphasised the benefit of AI’s increasingly established place within lending strategies, namely within credit assessment and borrower profiling, and how the technology could be used to harness clean data more effectively.
The panel continued on this topic by examining how AI could enable stronger connections between banks and their consumers. Devanarayanan pointed specifically to the use of explainable AI in conveying lending decisions to borrowers, stating: “Whether you’re making a decision, whether you’re approving or rejecting a loan, there is logical and transparent explanation to it [for the consumer]. This will definitely help to build transparency and trust.”
All in for AI
With the technology continuing to climb to new heights in fintech, the topic of AI was a key discussion point during day two’s proceedings.
Nombuso Matsape and Rahul Aggarwal discuss AI implementation strategies
This discussion was most notably led by a keynote address from ICBC Standard Bank, in which Nombuso Matsape, head of corporate and risk IT production and innovation, and senior solution architect Rahul Aggarwal outlined a roadmap for implementing AI in financial services, with an emphasis on the need for a clear AI strategy aligned with business goals, stakeholder buy-in, and robust data governance.
“I think the first thing, or the best pillar that we’ve seen, is being able to define an AI strategy,” explained Matsape. “Most organisations, they’ve implemented AI, but they do not have a key engagement strategy.”
She expressed the need for this strategy to be joined by a robust and unique AI framework, “specific and tailored to what works for your area”, while also being inclusive of key stakeholder interests.
“You need to make sure that all the people, all the stakeholders within the bank are aligned to what you’re trying to do,” Matsape advised, encouraging collaboration with compliance and HR departments to ensure regulatory adherence.
Picking up on the links between AI and good data, she went on to address various data strategies for guiding implementation.
“Your AI model is as good as the data that you’re putting in,” she said. “So if you don’t have a clear, defined strategy on where your data sets are and how you plan to implement them, it becomes a real challenge.”
For Matsape, the final piece of the implementation puzzle must come in supporting infrastructure and security. With this, she went on to weigh the pros and cons of on-cloud versus on-premises deployment, and put forward an argument for hybrid as the optimal model for implementing AI.
This keynote was followed by a special address from Varun Ghai, associate vice president at NewGen Software, who took to the stage to discuss how agentic AI is currently being leveraged to reinvent business lending processes.
Presenting NewGen’s solution, Ghai outlined the technology’s application in analysing and authenticating customer documents, performing penetration analysis on customer data, and in predicting different behaviours under various economic scenarios.
He stated that agentic AI could generate “a whole ecosystem of lending transformation using the combined power of data science, decision making, low code, and contained AI and process AI, end-to-end”.
The outcome of this application, according to Ghai, would see financial institutions increase their lending productivity, achieve straight through processing within applications, and expand the scope of their business initiatives.
Investor insights
The Investor All Stars panel capped off day two at FinovateEurope 2025
2024 marked the third consecutive year in which global fintech investment saw a decline, falling significantly from the record $136.5 billion pumped into the industry in 2021.
With a wide variety of banks and fintechs in attendance, FinovateEurope 2025 sought to cap off day two on Wednesday with an Investor All Stars session attended by Katherine Wilson, senior principal at Illuminate Financial; Robin Scher, head of fintech investment at Lloyds Banking Group; and Juliette Souliman, principal at Portage Ventures.
Chaired by Houlihan Lokey MD David Kelnar, the panel discussed current investor attitudes towards fintech and hinted at the future direction of capital flow within the sector.
For Portage, Souliman outlined vertical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), embedded finance, and the wealth sector as three of the primary areas of interest for 2025, with specific attention to agentic AI.
Scher followed this through with his own predictions, which circled authentication technology, regtech, and “AI enablers” as three core points of focus.
Like Souliman, Scher agreed with the growing promise of the wealth sector, before expressing his prediction that capital inflow into climate-focused fintechs would decline within the coming year.
FinovateEurope 2025 delivered another fascinating day of discussions covering key trends and emerging technologies. The conference is set to return for its Spring edition, which is scheduled to take place in San Diego, US, from 7 to 9 May.
