What the FinTech? | S.6 Episode 25 | 2025 in review and predictions for 2026

Hello and welcome to another brand new episode of What The Fintech, the podcast from the team behind Fintech features and the Banking Technology magazine. My name is Paul Hindle, editor of Fintech features and as we approach the end of what has been another eventful year in Fintech, it's once again time for our annual end of year review where we take a look back at some of the big trends to come out of 2025 and what areas to keep an eye on as we head into 2026. Just to quickly mention for our regular listeners, this will be the final episode of this year and we'll be back early next year with Season 7 of the show and I'd just like to say once again a big thank you to all of our guests this year and of course you listening at home and we look forward to bringing you plenty more insights from the wonderful word of financial services in the years ahead. So as we record this now it's now mid-December and the final embers of 2025 are beginning to fade as the new year rolls into view and to cast an eye on the year that was I'm joined by our now annual end of season guests and they are of course regular Fintech huge columnists and hosts of the popular Dave and Dom de Misfi podcast, Dave Wallace and Domesh Mystery gentlemen how are you both? Very well, I like the fact that you talk about the embers of the year, I'm sort of feeling like it's time for a holiday to be honest. Yeah, absolutely, I'm doing really well and looking forward to winding down for Christmas and it's been a fun year so far. Excellent, yeah I mean I guess on that front I know I've spoken to you both plenty of times over the year but how was your 2025 being Domesh? Maybe we can start with you then. Yeah it's been really interesting so I tried to kind of semi-retire continue the writing obviously but a couple of things have come up which have been like really interesting. So I have joined as the UK chair of OpenCoroS and I wish I was 20 years younger to do stuff like that and I think it's a really interesting time for startups. So I genuinely wish I was 20 years younger and I would be definitely doing another startup but given that I don't quite have the energy or the years to do that anymore, joining one that's doing something exciting is just as good. Nice, sounds good, how about you Dave? So yeah, very interesting year, like Domesh, occasionally think about retiring and then sort of retreat from that idea. So this year I've sort of ventured beyond financial services, I've been working with a B&E startup doing some interesting work with them and great news for us is I've just managed to secure a kind of big partnership with a big property platform in the US for them and very interesting business but my heart is still very much in the financial services sector, I'm love spending time with Domesh, we've done some really interesting podcasts over the year and obviously we continue to both write for Fintech futures which is an absolute honour and privilege. So thank you very much for having us both on that as well. Excellent, well thank you very much and thank you both again from myself and the wider Fintech futures team as well for all of your contributions over the years, I know both we and the readers of the website take a lot away from your articles and their podcasts but there's always plenty of great insights there so a big thank you from us as well and thank you both for joining me for the podcast again today. Now for the last two years when we've done these end of year review episodes we've kicked off by focusing on a little thing called AI and while this year I think stablecoins has arguably been the topic of the year of 2025, why break the habit of a lifetime, AI is still everywhere, a lot of the talk these days focusing on agentic AI in particular so we'll get to stablecoin shortly but to kick things off AI then another 12 months down the line in financial services, what are the big trends you're seeing there, Domesh maybe we can start with you for that one. I recently just came back from the FT banking summit and for those that haven't been I highly recommend it because you get the CEOs of all of the top UK banks so Bargley's net West, HSBC, Lloyd's and the big change this year was the sentiment that banking was not in a defensive mode anymore and certainly now trading above order but value which essentially means they're profitable and growing, they are looking forward to innovation and really driving some change so like I said it's not a defensive change this is about reimagining business and it's the first time I'm hearing that from CEOs or banks and I think fundamentally most of that next year is going to obviously come from AI. I think what we've all experienced so far is personal gain we managed to book our holidays that little bit quicker we've done reviews of things that we wanted to buy that little bit quicker we've had the comparisons done for us the recommendations etc so we've all personally gained from this but this year was a game changer in terms of people seeing that actually in like I think the year before last people questioned whether we get AI to write code this year if you haven't done it you're already behind. Next year you're into now the bank's talking about undertaking the projects reviewing all the stuff that they've done in the past and saying well those things were really scary and massive like doing a core rewrite or core replacement but they were really massive and scary but with AI we probably will have a go at this now right it's going to be cheaper faster quicker and quite arguably easier to do with something a bit more intelligent so it's interesting I think the biggest impact to companies will start to emerge next year I think we've seen the personal gain this year but for next year companies will be I think doing some interesting stuff I don't think we'll see a jobs impact necessarily because I think people be redeployed but I think that is inevitable in the mid-term future what do you think Dave? I think it's really interesting I think Darmish and I have talked about the fact we live through the dot com bubble and bust and the similarity in terms of feelings around that and I think the difference for me here is that when we live through the dot com bubble there just wasn't an audience out there so you know anybody could kind of run a slide rule over the figures from a kind of audience perspective and just goes it's not there it's not there yet whereas for AI you can kind of tangibly see the difference it's starting to make so it feels slightly different and yet what is interesting is the kind of normalization so one of the things I think is really interesting is we head into the end of 25 into 26 is actually the conversation his sort of shifted gear we've gone from being all struck to how do we kind of normalize this and it's interesting because there was a post on LinkedIn which is really worth sharing and Darmish actually he sent it to me today but I was going to talk about it anyway so it shows you that we're really on a kind of level about these things but Lloyds through a friend of mine Sir Eshbalaji who's the CMO at Lloyds and Ogle V1 have just run a test where they had three ring fence teams one was human only one was AI only and one was human and AI and they had independent judges judging a campaign from everything from strategic alignment to creative output to human insight and empathy to efficiency and what's deeply fascinating is that the human plus AI team one hands down but what's deeply fascinating is just how well AI did and I think if they'd run that test kind of 12 months ago the result would have been very different and what you can see is that actually it's sort of seeping in now it's seeping in to jobs and it's interesting what Darmish says about I think we'll start seeing jobs starting to sort of hemorrhage a bit as people get their heads around the fact that actually AI is really capable and increasingly capable but I think it's what's interesting is that normalization so it used to be as I say we were all like oh my god AI now it's just part of the kind of vernacular for us I think the other thing that came out that study that was fascinating for me Dave is and this is entirely your bag is that this thing about trust we've all understand that there are bad guys out there and there are all these like the scams are getting cleverer the deep fakes are getting cleverer and so what becomes more important is trust and one of the amazing things I think that was coming out of Lloyd's was that actually they're building a brand around the feeling of trust and in the end if you can't trust what you're interacting with what do you lean on it's going to be the brand and so I can see a massive growth in companies investing on their brand and really working out what those values are so that people can say well look there's so much stuff out there I just pick this brand because you know it resonates with the stuff that I believe in and I think that's always been the case but I think what is interesting to me is that AI is making it even more important not less important you kind of think that you've got this super intelligence that'll give you the best advice but we still have a bit of doubt and I think we will still lean back on brands what do you think well I mean 100% agree one of the things I've been pondering is who do you trust and I think there's a few things that play I totally agree I mean I think there's an opportunity for banks to re-engage with customers around that trust because I think at the end of the day what is a bank it's a place which ultimately we believe is secure with our money and then it's very good at moving integers from one spreadsheet to another trust is a fundamental part of a bank so it's great to hear that people like Lloyds are recognising that because I think increasingly when we look at content I mean I'm not even sure half the content I read whether it's real or not it's getting to the point where as you say AI is so good that we can't with that spidey sense of you know has this been created by a machine or a person is kind of disappearing and actually I'm not sure that really matters what we need is that sort of sense of trust in the truth and I think it's not just companies but need to really think about this and trade off their brands it's countries as well so I was actually talking to someone last week about a nation state where they actually they believe that AI can help citizens but one of the barriers that they see to that is how do they get citizens to trust the AI and I think it's a really interesting dilemma so yeah I agree I mean one of the things it forces companies to do is to go back to understanding themselves as a business what they truly stand for because I think and we've talked about this before darmish is AI strips everything back to bear essential so machines can see through the BS basically and we as people through the machines can see through that BS so I think the re-emergence of branding's importance will be one of the big trends actually of 2026 which I know is something that you kind of agree with yeah before we go onto the topic as stable coins kind of like the bridge between that I think there is an increasing talk about everyone needs to have a wallet and the importance of wallets and we kind of think that's a money thing I think that the UK banks have underestimated their role in a wallet and I think the likes of JP Morgan probably are going to run away with kind of innovators advantage with data in the wallet because I think this is the next big thing is that we would want to at the moment our data is everywhere and the best way to centralize this or the best way to get control of it again is for you to own the data itself and the easiest way that can happen is if you can put that data into your own wallet as such and then you already have the mechanisms to say who can have access to it or not and change those permissions wherever you want to you don't have to go to 25 different sites and change the permissions there you can do in one central place in the wallet for every app that stores data with you so I think this is potentially the biggest missed opportunity in the UK retail banks and I kind of think only JP Morgan has got a very solid view on this it's really interesting and before we move on to stable coins and other topics Dama no in your column you've been covering not about the single brain in banking driven by AI how do you see the future of banking shaping up as the AI train continues to roll on then and as the wallet trend that you mentioned there picks up more steam as well well I mean it's going to be interesting because I think look another announcement and the after banking awards that is that Lloyd is going to launch their consumer AI next year it's already in trials with staff people I've spoken to give it ray review so I'm intrigued as to what is actually going to do but clearly one of the things it can do is scale the solutions to some of the problems that we've had in the past like financial literacy like financial inclusion like just helping people with their money better when we had to rely on people to do that we just couldn't scale it because it wasn't consistent advice that we were providing we spoke to Helena Wardle that's a money means she's already got an AI that's providing financial advice and passed the UK examinations for financial advisors with scores in the 90s whereas the average is like in the 70s for a human so we're going to see I guess for next year first incarnations of these personal banking assistance that will help us to manage our money and essentially that's really what the single brain was all about was how do we leverage the intelligence in the data to kind of start making decisions and providing advice whereas we couldn't do it in the silos it's going to be really interesting those people that see the bigger picture around the single brain will I think be first out with advice with the personal banking assistance and by all accounts I think Lloyd will be the first example of it just to add I mean I think we've talked a lot about agentic this year as well and I think that whole those sort of finance agent that's a big thing which I think will kind of continue to evolve over 2627 and I think the other thing is this sort of road to ADI or artificial general intelligence that's still there in the background is how smart are these things and I think what we are seeing is as time goes on it's not a kind of trick basically these things are getting smarter they're more and more able to kind of help and support us so I think in 2627 the technology's there to be able to deliver some really rich and brilliant customer experiences so be interesting to see the lawyers chap or it's just whether the banks have a brave enough to kind of grab the opportunity to do it and also whether the economic stack up because one of the things that we talked about armishes friction is the way that banks make money and what we're talking about is a potential a frictionalist future so they may have to rethink their business model slightly yeah I mean just on the agi point Dave I think one of the premises of the single brain was that it's the notion of a single thing whereas actually underneath the skin it's actually zillions of agents all interacting with each other it's an agentic platform in that we'll have an agent that specializes in credit risk we'll have an agent that specializes in AML in fraud detection in cyber security etc and I think it'll be a long time yet before we'll get a single agi that will be the best at all of those things I think what we saw this year was the emergence of these specialized smaller models with very narrow focus but much higher precision at what they do and I think that will be the case for some time yet because it's easier to kind of build these smaller models with specializations and then we'll talk about this a little bit later but have some orchestration that's string these agents together and some overarching kind of view to say well this is more important to sort out now than this like it might be better to really progress with a fraud investigation before seizing a sales opportunity whatever it is but I think increasingly we're going to see specialized agents as part of a make up of the single brain and my way I kind of talked about the brain in the first place is it is exactly how our own brain works we have areas of the brain that are specialized for specific capabilities and we're just literally replicating that in technology amazing excellent I think we could probably do a full episode on this but I will try and move us on to the the next one we'll have to see I mean it's such exciting times again I mean you've mentioned there Dave they're kind of steps that have been that would the jump that's been made over the last 12 months will be interesting like safely do this again next year what the jump will have been by the end of twenty twenty six probably all be in a muddy field because the AI has taken over and you've washed us off so yeah hopefully not yeah I think it's crossed yeah from that one thing that did kind of really get me thinking was Sam Altman on an interview so we're not quite sure how this plays out so I think if one of the architects of AI has uncertainty he makes me think that we should all I don't know there's no sure to you about where it all ends which is kind of fascinating I just want to jump in with a little bit is that I know this is a fintech show and that's our focus and David and I spent a lot of time with banks on the flip side for AI is the amazing progress that has been made not only by Demis Habissus but other people as well in the medical field we are going to see cures and resolutions to problems that we've never dreamt of being able to do with just human power and if we have to trade people living better for giving away some data well then you know have all my data now the only question is like I guess in the banking side of things if we can scale inclusion and literacy and those the things that really matter to most of us then great but if it's about making a few people richer then you know I don't know how that plays out nice interesting and as well I mean sometimes like you say I mean obviously this is a fintech show sometimes we can have the fintech blinkers on in terms of what it is that AI is doing but it's good to kind of you know have the context of what is going on elsewhere as well but but let's move on anyway as I mentioned we probably could do a whole episode on this but let's move on to as mentioned the start of the show one the breakout stars of 2025 and that's sustainable coins been around for a while now but this year the Senate of really huge surge in popularity so if you're interested to get your takes on this then what's really driving that stable coin boom what's the main use cases that you're seeing there I mean damn what's your take on that this time last year literally we were talking and writing about almost a hundred countries plowing the fields towards central bank digital currencies and that looks at to be the way forward then Trump happened and suddenly all bits were off the gain change event was the three acts that they put through in June July one of banning the digital dollar so effectively saying the US is not going to do a CBDC with banning that for me was just mind blowing the second thing was the genius act to approve stable coins as a means for value exchange and supporting that and off the back of that there's been a ton of ETFs supporting various other crypto coins etc so I think the real game changer was the acts that were passed in the US because clearly countries were going down the CBDC route they all had to do a U-turn in effect the UK has finally tried to catch up with the US I guess with some legislation through the FCA and the Bank of England now supporting stable coins so there was one event that triggered it all off but it's going to be interesting because if we look at what the benefits of stable coins are near zero cost instantaneous transfer of money non proprietary literally it's internet money it's using the internet to transfer not a proprietary telecoms network and proprietary a set of agreed standards through swift and blah blah blah even swift is now questioning its role and saying well actually maybe our role is about trust in payments so much as AI has had all the headlines the understated star of 2025 is stable coins can I ask Tom because I mean you're much better able to talk about stable coins than me so Trump made one move could someone else come along and make another move and then reverse stable coins back to CBDCs do you think? No I think the biggest concern about CBDCs is that it's programmable money in the end when we move to a digital currency it's programmable and if that programmable money is issued by a central bank then everyone should be worried because literally at the push of a button your money could be taken from your account and before all the people say oh yeah yeah but why would the government do that? Well in World War II that's exactly what they did they instructed the banks to say anyone with over a certain amount we need to have that money so we can fund this war campaign and we could be in another World War and the last thing we need is somebody being able to push the buttons and take out our money so I think there's bins yes it could be reversed but the thing that drives stable coins adoptants apart from the benefits is the fact that isn't controlled by the government? It's interesting because as you say what that does is it kind of opens the door for basically peer-to-peer payments at kind of industrial scale so the likes of these are a master card and swift as you say become potentially less relevant in the future of payments and it's interesting because one of the things I've been pondering is like the importance of payments and payments infrastructure and what's going on in payments and I did start thinking payments is going to become it in many ways and is payments going to eat banking so do payments companies or stablecoin companies do they become the sort of next big brands of the future because they enable the sort of payments infrastructure so I don't know what the answer is but do you have any thoughts around that? I think the stablecoins themselves will be much more like what banking should have been something that happens in the background you don't really care whether it's USDC or USDT or whatever flavor of stablecoin you want so you shouldn't have to worry about that what you care is that when you send money it costs you very little it's guaranteed and it happens is spontaneously that's what you care about so how it happens should be irrelevant you know we don't worry about how the electricity is sent through copper wires or whatever it is before it gets to our house we worry about whether we got light and heat and the same thing needs to happen with money I think what we'll see next year is big cool fruits adopting stablecoins internally first I would imagine because why would I want to use a bank to send money to my different offices around the world if I can do it at a fraction of the cost with guaranteed delivery within seconds I mean if you're a corporate treasurer and you're not looking at stablecoins more the full you right you're just losing money to banks once companies work out how to make themselves more cost effective with stablecoins they'll start to extend that out potentially to start like if I was Amazon I would incentivize my staff to take the Amazon coins as payment then I reduce my bills with let's say the cost of doing payroll globally and then you say well look once they're doing it well why wouldn't my merchants why won't I incentivize the merchants to take payment via stablecoins because it costs me less I'm going to do less and less through the bank now right and more and more myself and then eventually if the merchants are on board then it's the consumer so I think the benefits will flow through and it will be a very very different kind of environment I mean this is fundamentally why ripping the guts out of payments I think maybe I overstate it right but I am looking not just about what happens next year but in the next two to five years I think digital money is gonna revolution arise a lot of stuff and this is why it's really important for banks to really set back and understand what their role is going to be not just think about the experience of the future but what is our role as banks no and I think that then bleeds back into the whole conversation about trust and AI and all the other bits and pieces so but it's the thing I then worry about with what you've just said is it's handing more power potentially to the tech company so I don't know if you've watched Alien Earth which is that series that's been on I can't remember what channel it was on but the thing that really stood out for me on that was that the world was ruled by seven large corporations and what you've just described in terms of Amazon hands Amazon enormous power in terms of sort of finances so I can see it it makes perfect sense from a kind of friction shareholder everybody but is it good for humanity to then have power actually coalescing around the companies that would do and it is gonna be the big tech companies this is why I say the world is quite important because if that's if the world is the container for your data not just your money I mean I think too many people associate well it's weird with money but if it is your money and your data and you're free to take that wherever you want to then suddenly the tech providers have to compete on what they're going to give back for your data like how good a service can they provide given that you own the data and I think increasingly we're going to see this kind of like giving back the data because I would dearly love the only reason I don't move from my Garmin watch is because they got my data I've now found a trick as to how to move this data but it's therefore on my behalf I can imagine very soon they'll be in I just have to tell an agent like I want to switch from Garmin to Sinto so take my data to Sinto but I don't want it to be just Sinto watches I want like my health ring I want all of my data to do my health in one place and actually my health also links in with financial services because when I'm well I'm probably spending more when I'm not so well let's say I don't go out anywhere so I'm spending less etc there are linkages between the data and not just money and health but this comes back to a notion that we wrote about some time ago about the quantified self it's about all of your data in one place to do everything for you not just banking or traveling or whatever the silos. All right so keeping an eye on the time we'll move on from stable coins now then I will open the floor for some other topics of discussion so what are some of the other big innovations or trends in banking and financial services that you're looking forward to as we head into 2026 and Dave is there anything in particular you'd like to cover. One of the areas I've been writing about is on neurodiversity and actually how I don't think the industry has really tackled neurodiversity enough and so what I think will happen is that Dom's already talked about AI from a kind of advice point of view but I think increasingly there will be an understanding but actually you can deliver brilliant experiences to people in very different ways with the same data because they understand information and data in very different ways and I think actually the door opens to huge huge opportunities I think for banks and other finance companies and I think I mean I've just written an article where it's kind of interesting because like amongst the entrepreneurial community there's a higher degree of neurodiversity than outside of it so a lot of new money is actually generated by people with neurodiversity and that is often not taken into account when kind of wealth managers or banks are sort of looking at kind of delivering products and services to those people so by actually starting to deliver products and services which these people understand more fully I think it opens up huge opportunities and I think going back to what you talked about in terms of brands I think you for bank can see through its brand a way to kind of reach people through using AI and all the other bits and pieces I think it will really stand out so it's exciting because none of this stuff was possible before so when Dimash talks about the digital brain I love it because it means that the opportunities to deliver things in different ways is there as long as it's all based on the same kind of data so I think that for me is a big yearning opportunity and it kind of marries with the zeitgeist moment actually of people understanding that the were we're all kind of somewhere on a spectrum to be honest so you know we all exist there isn't such a thing as normal so I think it's really interesting and good do you think that is like a formal personalization and I guess I'm like moving away from the word personalization to specialization so that there is an agent that kind of understands neurodiversity and how to apply to financial services similar there is an agent that understands I guess any other challenge that people might have let's say with literacy etc. It's a very good question and I mean I see it slightly differently in that you know actually the opportunity is for hyper personalization where like chat GPT already knows it turns out a lot about me so when it responds to me it always says because you do what you know well because you ask for x ones it so it's learning more and more about me I don't think you will have a kind of neurodiversity agent I think you'll just have an agent which begins to understand you and how you interpret and understand information I think it's I'd really encourage the industry when it thinks about AI to really focus on that as a it's something they should do but it's a huge opportunity for them and I think it then bleeds into everything you talked about around trust like banks really could become the guardians of trust going forward because at the moment I'm not sure who else would fill that gap. How about you Darmus then is there any big trends that you're looking forward to in 2026? I think we're going to see our first bank personal banking assistant I'm looking forward to that also we're going to start to see I guess what I would call AI first interfaces so what we've done in the past has been augment AI into the organization and to the user experiences so quite typically like a chat ball that lived within your mobile banking application I think we're going to go to a world where actually the AI is the UI it's the natural interface that we move to so we won't lose all of our screens but they'll be embedded into the chat as opposed to having a mobile banking application I actually think we're going to move away from internet and mobile banking so where mobile banking is our primary interface of the bank I think we're going to start to see next year the emergence of people moving towards an AI first conversation with their bank. Thank you so much again for joining me for this end of season podcasting Dave and Darm and as hinted at earlier in the show it's time for our Fintech jail segment so in the spirit of the season what we usually do at this time of year is allow you both to not only lock away but also free some of the terms that are in the jail as well so Darmus let's start with you then maybe we can start with the word that you are locking up this year. I'm going to look up chatbot because I think chatbots were in place I guess they've been around for over a decade and quite frankly they've not delivered the goods so they deserve to go in jail. What comes back and what overtakes them is a personal banking assistant it's not a chatbot and so even though we are typing in maybe to talk to our personal banking assistant initially I think increasingly we'll just get used to just using our voice rather than having to type anyway and so I think chatbots deserve to go in a jail because they literally have not really delivered. On this topic I was going to mention during the conversation we had earlier on AI but it would be nice to get to a point with AI where chatbots in general can actually solve the question that you're asking rather than just regurgitating the FAQs because from my experience whenever I'm getting in touch with customer services it's usually because the problem I have is quite niche or needs a fair bit of explaining and I've already checked the FAQs and I'm still just waiting to be put through to a humane who can actually understand what it is that I'm asking and sort me out so I'm more than happy to throw chatbot into the jail this year and what would be the word or term that you want to free from the jail this year than Darmus. I want to free orchestration I know it's a term that's been around for some time the reason why I want to free it is I think it probably you know it was a term that was overused in the API generation but it deserves to come back out because it's very core to create a central a single brain so basically the orchestration allows you to get agents to feed off each other and that's going to be like I say it's absolutely key it's like our spinal cord for joining up all of the intelligence that we have in the organization so I think orchestration is central to an agentic platform and deserves to be reborn or freed. Sounds good I was wondering whether orchestration would be in there for for effort now since it went in so it's nice that like I say with as the technology evolves and the words come back out of the jail against that so they have a new lease of life warmer so that's good. Excellent okay sounds great so Dave we will move on to you then which word do you want to be freeing them from the jail this year? So I want to free quantum supremacy because I think it's very much on the table this whole notion of Q Day and quantum supremacy I think our friends and colleagues in the world of quantum are quietly beavering away and you know you got fridges humming and lasers sort of tweezering or whatever they do and I think 2026 is going to see some big moves in the world of quantum so I had the pleasure actually recently I've listened to Andrew Briggs is one of the professors at Oxford talking about quantum and you know his view is that we're probably looking at quantum supremacy within the next 10 years so yeah I think it's time it's it's probably been in the short time but it really needs to be out I think and freed yeah I think it was putting the jail last year maybe so it's yeah it's had a good year in there I think at the moment but yeah I know we were talking about the potentially AI bringing it into society but maybe with the mix of AI and quantum with the next few years might be well I mean I guess one of the things Darmish and I have been banging on around is this whole idea of limitless and I think quantum AI some of the moves that are happening from a kind of energy point of view the world is pointing to this limitless sort of place and I think you're right there's a sort of marriage of quantum and AI probably is the key that I'm locks AGI eventually yeah it's a really interesting space and for anyone listening obviously we don't have time at the you know this podcast now as we've been talking for quite a while but so if anyone is interested in the topic I know Dave and Darmish have done a few podcasts on this topic now as well Dave you've been writing a few articles as well so feel free to check out the FinTech futures website we've got plenty of the content on there on quantum and what might be coming around the corner with Q day for sure so just to finish off then Dave what is the where then you want to be throwing into the jail this week? Right I think it's already in there but I think we need to extend its time inside in old chokey it's FinTech I mean I think come on it's time to just retire it honestly it's not cool to be a FinTech bro these days or the store or whatever we should just be in financial services yeah I mean the issue with retiring in fully is that we're going to need a rebrand at some point so come in with some AI and do some rebranding for you so I see the game guys I see yeah I guess my point is less around the label more that I think the industry has to be careful it doesn't become tired I mean one of the brilliant things about stepping out of the industry and being able to look back in is you kind of go there's a lot that is is institutionalise into FinTech in many ways and I guess that's what needs to kind of changes maybe a bit more of a renaissance around you know what's going on so like the topics we've talked about actually if you distill it down we've talked about a massive revolution in the space in the course of an hour so that's the stuff to I think really kind of embrace and focus on I see the same old sort of discussions happening and I think it's time to move on strangely I agree I spent 40 years of my career trying to make sure highlight how important technology is to banks etc now it's all very important to banks I actually think the opposite and that's why it started at the beginning of this conversation with like this enlightened statement from Suresh about the importance of brand but it's all the non-technical things now that are super important and the primary one is defining your brand and defining your business and that sounds bizarre that well we're a bank we know what we do right but you know what you're going to do in the future is going to be based on fundamentally different technology and so you may not be the one that's facilitating the transaction you may not be the one that's potentially even facilitating some of the credit etc so so what is the banks' role and I think that is an important question it's a non-technology one and that for me is like amazing that we can even suggest that a bank needs to consider a different future yeah I think these are similar reasons why FinTech was put in the jail in the first place actually it's been there for a while now as we've mentioned I want to say it was one of the first words added to the jail and nobody's wanted to break it out since then maybe that says something in and of itself there but we will deny it's bail then this year and extend FinTech sentence in the jail for now and that'll be it for this episode and for season six of the podcast again a big thanks to all of you listening for your continued support and we're already looking forward to getting started with season seven the new year so keep an eye out for brand new episodes coming around the end of January and early February and David Darm thank you so much again for joining me for the podcast today to take a look back at the year that was and what's coming in the new year as well is there anything you can tell us about with the David Dundin misfire podcast and what we can look forward to in the new year that oh well I think we continue to I think plow the same farer that we have done and we've got some really interesting guests coming up it's interesting you're on season seven because we're on season one still but I think somewhere along the line we forgot that we should be doing seasons I'll blame Darmish for that but we're still on season one one of the things which is really wonderful actually about a podcast series is being able to go back and listen to some of the original ones that we did to actually see the success of some of the people that we've interviewed so like I'll shout out Nala who we interviewed Benjamin Fernandez quite early on and they've just gone from strength to strength so it's sort of really lovely to feel like we were there kind of as people were thinking about things so we continue to try and provide a mix of talking to startups interesting software companies establish businesses and I hope people feel we've kind of got a good mix so we certainly seem to have a lot of kind of good feedback in terms of the content that we deliver so but I'm very proud and one of the things I love all the the thing I love most is it means that I get to chat to Darmish at least once or eight that's a nice note to end things on yeah I love talking to you as well Dave oh so I just want to say a big thank you to the FinTech futures team on behalf both of us for hosting the podcast is gone from strength to strength and Dave and I both we learn so much from these things and we get to speak to some really smart people so thank you for hosting the podcast and also for all your support on the articles because I think they've got a bit spicier for me this month but if you don't rent my prayer please do I love the video as well I mean if you haven't seen the video then please go please I pray go and have a look maybe there'll be a bit more of the video and stuff next year but one of the key things is by speaking this is all this stuff works again the podcast leads some articles some of the articles leads some of the podcast it's a virtuous circle and all the way we're learning loads so I hope you know the audience is getting the same back but thank you to FinTech futures for that absolutely I echo that 100 percent well thank you very much guys and again obviously thank you from our side for contributing like I say with the articles every was it a couple of weeks now for both of you and it's been going for I mean since I started working here which is now what four and a half years ago right so it's no small effort to be writing like I say articles every every couple of weeks for four and a half years so thank you so much for the contributions thank you so much again for the obviously the partnering with us for the podcast as well I say at this grain we're always a big fan of listening to the people that you chat to as well and getting kind of amplifying the stories as well and getting that out there so it's all great but thank you so much again for joining me for the podcast day as well it's been a pleasure talking to you both thank you well that's all we have time for this episode of big clangs again to our guests Dave and Darmesh and of course you are listeners as well for your support across the year as mentioned season seven of the podcast will return in the new year so keep it eye out for brand new episodes on Apple podcasts Spotify SoundCloud or your favorite podcasting service from January onwards so FinTech futures you can find online at FinTechFeatures.com I'm sure to follow something to keep up with the latest FinTech news thanks for all to arama for editing this podcast you can check them out at arama.tv and we wish all of our listeners a very happy holidays and new year and I hope you all enjoy a well earned break we'll see you soon for another episode of what the FinTech in the new year but until then goodbye.