The financial service industry is riding a new wave of change, reshaping how institutions operate, serve customers, and manage risk. Customers expect more speed and personalisation than ever before, regulators are tightening their grip, and new technologies are transforming what it means to compete.

For leaders, the defining challenge that separates the winners from the watchers will be manifesting awareness of change into rapid, effective action. To begin with, they’ll first need to gather insights and data to understand where the industry is heading. Mambu surveyed more than 1,500 corporate leaders across five countries: the UK, Australia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico.

The findings, published as part of the Mambu Insight Series, highlight three trends leaders believe will have the greatest near-term impact over the coming three years.

What emerges is a picture of the global forces now shaping finance, deep shifts that are changing how institutions think about growth, resilience, and customer experience.

Across every market surveyed, three priorities came through with striking consistency. Leaders may face nuanced local challenges, but the same themes are shaping strategy everywhere: how to use technology more intelligently, how to safeguard trust in a digital-first world, and how to engage customers in new, more personalised ways.

These are the areas drawing the most investment and attention, and they set the stage for how financial services will evolve in the years ahead.

AI and machine learning: from experiment to core strategy (53%)

Artificial intelligence is no longer an experiment or a side project. It now sits at the centre of financial strategy, with more than half of global leaders identifying it as the most significant trend shaping the industry.

AI brings speed and precision to personalisation and risk management at a scale that manual processes cannot sustain. Institutions are already putting this into practice, from fraud detection that identifies anomalies in real-time, to service desks that resolve queries around the clock, to hyper-personalised products and advice tailored to individual needs.

For customers, this means faster onboarding, more relevant recommendations, and seamless support. For financial institutions, it opens the door to lower costs, stronger risk management, and new avenues for growth. The question is no longer whether to use AI, but how to embed it across the organisation, moving from pilots to strategies that influence every part of the value chain.

Digital identity and cybersecurity: building trust in a borderless world (50%)

As financial services become increasingly digital and borderless, security has emerged as a critical boardroom priority, with half of the leaders surveyed identifying digital identity verification and cybersecurity as essential to their future strategy.

With rising fraud and identity theft, the demand for stronger safeguards, combined with regulatory pressure to tighten requirements around data protection and breach prevention, places trust as strategic currency.

Tools such as biometric authentication and multi-factor verification are becoming standard features of the digital experience, woven directly into customer journeys rather than being bolted on clumsily as an afterthought.

Institutions that can combine strong protection with seamless user experiences will not only meet regulatory expectations but also strengthen their position and brand integrity within an increasingly competitive market.

Generative AI: delivering new levels of engagement (49%)

Generative AI has moved from an emerging technology into a set of tools with clear applications across financial services. Nearly half of the leaders surveyed see its potential to reshape how institutions interact with customers and manage their own operations.

On the customer side, banks and fintechs are beginning to roll out tools that help people budget, plan investments, and receive personalised advice powered by generative models. Such services make financial decisions more accessible while strengthening engagement and loyalty.

Internally, generative AI is being applied to tasks such as financial analysis, reporting, and customer communication, giving employees faster insights and more effective tools at their disposal.

With opportunity, however, certainly comes its share of risk. Without careful oversight, hallucinations, bias, and misinformation have the potential to erode customer trust, distort decision-making, and expose institutions to regulatory or reputational damage. Institutions that establish strong governance and focus on responsible deployment will be best positioned to capture the benefits at scale.

These global forces set the direction of travel for the industry as a whole. Yet when we look more closely at smaller providers, a different picture emerges. SMEs face the same trends, but they filter them through the realities of limited resources, leaner teams, and the need to deliver immediate value to customers.

The same global forces that preoccupy the world’s largest banks are also shaping the outlook for smaller providers. The lens, however, is different. For SMEs — institutions with fewer than 100 employees — the challenge is not modernising sprawling legacy systems or managing billion-dollar risk portfolios. Instead, it is finding ways to deliver value to customers today while working within tighter resources.

Mambu Insight Series data illuminates this shift; much like their larger peers, SMEs see the transformative potential of AI. Yet their top priorities diverge from the global average. Instead of placing equal emphasis on cybersecurity and generative AI, smaller institutions tend to give greater weight to real-time payments and cloud transformation, capabilities that create an immediate impact for their customers and operations.

This data should not be mistaken for assuming that cybersecurity and generative AI are not priorities for SMEs, ranking 4th and 5th, respectively, through a general lens; rather, it points towards more immediate business priorities.

AI for practical automation (49%)

AI is as relevant to SMEs as it is to the world’s largest banks, but the emphasis is slightly nuanced. Smaller providers are less concerned with enterprise-wide deployments and more focused on practical applications that free up limited staff. Automating onboarding processes, streamlining customer support through AI-powered service desks, and utilising simple predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs all deliver tangible results without requiring significant investment.

By applying AI in these targeted ways, SMEs can redirect their scarce human resources toward higher-value activities, such as customer relationship building and advisory services. This pragmatic approach enables them to compete on experience while maintaining lean and responsive operations.

Real-time payments as a differentiator (46%)

For smaller providers, real-time payments are far more than an upgrade to infrastructure and are viewed as a crucial way to win and retain customers. The businesses and individuals they serve expect money to move instantly, and any delay can quickly undermine trust or simply push customers towards competitors who execute the convenience more promptly.

Such non-negotiable convenience places real-time payments as a very powerful differentiator. By offering speed and certainty, SMEs can meet the expectations of Gen Z consumers and small business owners who value immediacy and convenience. In a competitive market, the ability to deliver funds without delay is practically a direct lever for customer acquisition and retention, no ifs or buts about it.

Cloud as the shortcut to agility (44%)

With no heavy infrastructure to untangle, smaller providers can quickly and cost-effectively adopt cloud services, giving them the flexibility to scale in line with customer demand.

The cloud allows SMEs to introduce new products, expand to new markets, and modernise without the burden of maintaining costly in-house systems, and opens the door to partnerships and integrations that would be far harder to achieve with closed monolithic platforms.

In short, prioritising the cloud is not just an efficiency play, but instead provides the very foundation of their ability to grow and compete on equal terms with much larger institutions, leveraging advantages gained through agility as their golden ticket to secure market share.

These priorities raise a practical challenge: how can smaller providers translate ambition into action without the resources of a global bank? The answer lies in technology choices that enable speed and flexibility.

As mentioned at the beginning, recognising the trends is only the first step towards leading within the industry. The real challenge for financial institutions is turning them into action at speed, without draining resources or becoming locked into rigid systems.

This is where choices in technology become decisive, and where Mambu’s composable, cloud-native platform gives providers the flexibility to move quickly and confidently.

AI that fits the strategy

AI’s potential is widely recognised, but the challenge for many institutions is how to adopt it without overhauling core systems. Mambu solves this by making AI integration straightforward. Its open, API-enabled design allows providers to connect specialist tools directly to live data flows, ensuring insights can be acted on immediately.

For SMEs, this means they can automate processes and deliver more effective customer support without requiring large IT teams. For larger banks, it creates a pathway to scale AI across the organisation, from risk modelling to personalised advice, while maintaining a consistent customer experience. In every case, Mambu makes it possible to turn AI from isolated pilots into an embedded capability.

Real-time payments, real-time growth

Mambu Payments enables institutions to move money instantly, reliably, and at scale. For smaller providers, it levels the playing field by making real-time transfers a standard service, eliminating the need for heavy infrastructure. For larger institutions, it offers the flexibility to connect to multiple schemes and markets simultaneously, supporting both compliance and expansion.

Because the product is built on an open, API-first framework, payments can be embedded directly into digital experiences or extended with services such as fraud monitoring and customer alerts. The result is faster transactions and a foundation for stronger customer trust, as well as a seamless, modern experience.

Cloud as a foundation for agility

Cloud adoption is no longer a question of if but how. For SMEs, the advantage lies in being able to scale without building costly infrastructure. For larger institutions, the cloud provides a path to modernise portfolios step by step, reducing the risk of full-scale migrations.

Mambu enables both approaches. Delivered as a true SaaS platform, it removes the burden of maintenance and upgrades while keeping institutions current with the latest capabilities. Our open APIs make it easy to extend services, connect new partners, and adjust operations as customer needs shift. In practice, this gives providers the freedom to evolve continuously, rather than being tied to rigid cycles of system replacement.

Future-proofing with composability

Every institution, regardless of size, faces the same reality: customer expectations will rise, new regulations will emerge, and technologies that seem experimental today will become standard tomorrow. The question is whether providers can adapt without being forced into costly rebuilds each time the market shifts.

As the founders of composable core banking, Mambu designed composable architecture for this kind of flexibility. Built on robust APIs, it allows institutions to introduce new products quickly, connect to emerging technologies, and scale capabilities as their strategy evolves. Rather than reacting to change, providers can shape it, staying ahead of industry shifts while continuing to deliver for their customers.

Agility as the great equaliser

This chapter of the Mambu Insight Series illustrates how the same global forces, including AI, cybersecurity, and the rise of real-time payments, are reshaping the financial services industry.

Yet the way these trends are prioritised depends on the size and strategy of each institution. Large banks face the task of scaling innovation across complex portfolios, while SMEs concentrate on practical steps that deliver immediate value to their customers.

What unites both is the growing importance of agility. The ability to adapt quickly, integrate new technologies, and respond to customer expectations is becoming the clearest marker of long-term success.

Institutions that build for flexibility today will be best placed to navigate whatever comes next, turning rapid change from a source of pressure into a proactive future-proof position of advantage.

Curious to learn more about our composable architecture and how it can benefit your institution? Contact us for any questions you may have. We’re happy to assist.

Alternatively, if you would like to see our platform in action, register for our next live demo.