“There’s nothing quite like IFGS!”

As attendees headed home from yesterday’s 12th edition of the Innovate Finance Global Summit, this was the message we heard loud and clear, and we couldn’t agree more!

The beautiful historic venue of the Guildhall was once again filled to the brim with the hubbub of 1,500 people on a shared mission to revolutionise the future of finance. 

Founders exchanging insights with peers, firms showcasing the latest innovations, investors meeting the next potential addition to portfolios, and over 200 speakers - 60% of which were CEOs and FinTech founders - delving into the key issues of the day, be it inspiration from new technologies to the ever-evolving regulatory environment.

Our host City of London Corporation kicked off the day with opening remarks from Policy Chair Chris Hayward, then Innovate Finance CEO Janine Hirt celebrated another year of UK FinTech moving from strength to strength as she launched the latest exciting Innovate Finance activity:

• A new report titled Accelerating the Unicorn Landscape in partnership with Boston Consulting Group featuring a roadmap for future FinTech scaling success.
• A new cross-sector campaign Let’s Go For British Stablecoin Leadership
• The launch for the first video for the latest collaboration with BBC Storyworks on Value Generation featuring Innovate Finance, Revolut and Zopa.

This was followed by a strong message of support from Chancellor Rachel Reeves on video and a fireside chat between our CEO Janine Hirt and City Minister Lucy Rigby MP who called out the incredible positivity of FinTech which she deemed “the rocket fuel of relentless competition”. 

The Minister took this opportunity to announce policy developments to push forward payments, open banking, stablecoins, and AI in financial services, and the appointment of Chris Woolard as the new Wholesale Digital Assets Market Champion to drive forward tokenisation.

Industry panels featured founders and CEOs from many of the UK’s fastest growing FinTechs. There was overwhelming consensus from ClearBank, Funding Circle and OpenPayd that regulation needs to keep pace with the speed of change in the sector, with this message later reiterated loud and clear by ClearScore and iwoca. 

The discussions portrayed an ambitious sector keen to move even faster in pursuit of change and advancement. Sharing their own paths to growth, CEO Oliver Prill reflected on inflection points in Tide’s journey “where processes, domain experts, and structured resilience have to replace individual heroics” and Starling’s Executive Director, Declan Ferguson, advocated a strategy of diversification “to lead the next ten years, you have to dig the widest moat you can."

Agentic AI was the talk of the day for its potential to drive significant change swiftly, in a way that is advantageous for consumers, but also brings new risks to mitigate across the financial system. Digital assets were also at the forefront of discussions, as firms including Ripple and Coinbase dissected the features of proposed stablecoin regimes seen as critical to preserving UK global financial leadership in the years to come.

The FCA’s Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer, Jessica Rusu, emphasised how the regulator is working together with FinTech firms to support their innovation journeys, announcing latest updates on the AI Live Testing Lab, Supercharged Sandbox, and new Scale Up unit. Her speech closed with a strong declaration on AI policy of “no new rules” - instead examples of good and poor practice will be published to help firms with the safe adoption of AI in the UK.

Looking ahead to a “multi-moneyverse” vision of a world-leading trusted and interoperable payments system, Bank of England Executive Director for Payments, Victoria Cleveland, explained how the Bank of England is engaging across industry, academics and consumers as they build core infrastructure for the future “trying to give people choice in addition to safety and resilience”.

As the day drew to a close, Innovate Finance Chair Louise Smith rallied a crowded drinks reception with her missive for the next 12 months “now is the time for action, to go faster, we all want to do more”, urging policymakers to match the sector’s pace when it comes to authorisations and regulation.

Thank you to all of our sponsors and partners whose support helped us deliver this unique event:

• Gold: Starling, Tide and Department for Business and Trade
• Silver: Block, Fin, Goldcrest Partners, Mastercard, Ripple, Skadden, Truelayer, Zilch 
• Bronze: Aave, Accenture, Clearbank, Coinbase, Fight or Flight, FinanceMalta, Funding Circle, Latvia Embassy, OpenPayd, Seccl, Sierra, Sumsub, S&W, The Data City
• Official Chauffeur Partner: Blacklane

and to the entire Innovate Finance team for their hard work and dedication to making the day such a success.

The doors may have closed on IFGS 2026 and UK FinTech - we hope to see you again soon, and save the date for 2027 on April 20th!