aLWAYS PRACTICAL, ALWAYS PRAGMATIC
GROWTH WITH AI
2026 theme: growth with aI
From Scale-Up to Market Leader: How the UK’s most ambitious fintechs will define the decade.
Fintech Week London 2026 is where founders, operators, and investors unpack what it actually takes to grow a UK fintech from challenger to category leader.
Come hear from the people not just thinking about growth – but making it happen. If you’re backing, banking, or building alongside these companies, this is where you’ll see it first.
CONTENT TRACKS
AI in action
When AI can copy your product, what’s your real moat?
Audience
For CEOs, COOs, and people leaders at fintechs, banks, and enterprises navigating the
AI moat question
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: AI isn’t arriving in fintech, it already moved in and rearranged the furniture. So instead of asking whether to use it, we’re asking the sharper questions.
Where is it genuinely creating competitive advantage? Where is it quietly eroding it? And what does an actually AI-native fintech look like, not in theory, but right now? We’re putting founders on stage who’ve built the thing, not just talked about building it.
- The Human and AI Balance: Where Automation Ends and Judgement Begins
- When AI Becomes Your Competitor: Rebuilding Your Moat
- Who Signs Off on the Agent? Building AI Governance That Doesn’t Slow You
Down
- From Copilots to Agents: What’s Actually Ready to Run Your Workflows
- The AI Product Decision: What to Build, What to Buy, and What to Leave Alone
- Measuring AI ROI: The Metrics That Tell You Whether It’s Actually Working
BUILT TO SCALE
From fast-growing to market-leading. What actually separates the two?
Audience
For founders and operators past early traction and the bank and enterprise partners
deciding who to back, buy, or build with next
Spoiler: it’s not the product. The fintechs that cross from promising to category-defining make different decisions about people, operations, fundraising, and expansion.
This pillar gets into all of it, honestly and specifically, with founders who’ve navigated the messy middle and operators who’ve seen what works and what quietly kills companies.
- The Scaling Ceiling: Why Growth Stalls at £10M ARR and How to Break Through
Build or Buy? - The Operating Decisions That Define Category Leaders
- The People Problem: Hiring, Culture and Leadership at Scale
- From UK to Europe to Global: The Expansion Playbook
- Operating Model Design: Building the Structure That Scales With You
- When to Hire a COO – and What to Expect When You Do
THE GROWTH PLAYBOOK
Revenue doesn’t build itself. Neither does brand
Audience
For commercial leaders, marketers, and revenue teams at fintechs and the enterprises partnering with them. Pipeline, GTM, brand, distribution
Fintech has a product problem? Rarely. A go-to-market problem? More often than anyone admits.
This pillar is for the sales leaders, marketing directors, and commercial operators who are tired of being the afterthought in the product-first conversation.
Pipeline, brand, distribution, demand generation. The stuff that actually pays the bills.
- Marketing to Machines: When AI Does the Research and Makes the Decision
- Why Safe Marketing Is Killing Your Growth
- The First 90 Days: Turning Sign-Ups Into Revenue
- The GTM That Got You Here Won’t Get You There
- The Embedded Distribution Play: Reaching Customers Through Other
People’s Platforms - Thought Leadership That Generates Pipeline
ARCHITECTING
The rails, data, and architecture that determine who wins.
Audience
For CTOs and technical leaders. Infrastructure, architecture, and the stack decisions that compound
Unglamorous? Maybe. Critical? Absolutely. The fintechs that lead the next decade aren’t just building great products, they’re building on the right foundations.
Core banking infrastructure, API strategy, data architecture, and the growing question of what AI actually means for your tech stack. When anyone can copy your product, what you’ve built it on becomes the thing that matters.
- Rethinking Core Infrastructure: The Stack Decisions You Can’t Undo
- API First: Building for the Embedded Finance Era
- The Legacy Trap: How to Modernise Without Grinding to a Halt
- Data as a Moat: Why Your Architecture Is Your Competitive Advantage
- Cloud, Multi-Cloud, Hybrid: Making the Infrastructure Decision Before It Makes Itself
- Building the AI-Ready Data Stack: Real-Time Context Without the Legacy Drag
THE CONVERGENCE
Fintech and crypto have been building the same thing from opposite ends. Probably time to talk.
Audience
For founders, technical leaders, and payments leads at fintechs and banks who need to understand where crypto, AI, and traditional finance are colliding
The fintech/crypto divide is one of the industry’s most expensive fictions. Two communities, overlapping technology, overlapping customers, overlapping problems, still somehow not in the same room. Until now.
How do you build crypto into your fintech without your banking partners losing their minds? What has DeFi figured out about distribution that fintech hasn’t? Where does the stablecoin opportunity actually sit for scale-up companies?
- What Stablecoins Mean for Your Payments Costs Right Now
- The End of the TradFi/Crypto Divide
- Stablecoins Go Mainstream: What Consumer Adoption Actually Looks Like
in the UK
- When AI Agents Need Wallets
- Real World Assets: The Tokenisation Opportunity Fintechs Are Sleeping On
- DeFi Is Not Dead: What Decentralised Finance Actually Offers Fintech Builders Now
REGULATION REIMAGINED
What if the rules weren’t the obstacle, but the opportunity?
Audience
For compliance, product leaders, MLROs, and AML leads who treat regulation as a growth lever, not a checkbox.
We know, we know. Regulation doesn’t exactly scream exciting. But hear us out. The fintechs that treat compliance as a strategic lever rather than a checkbox are quietly building moats their competitors can’t touch.
From Consumer Duty to AI regulation to digital identity, this pillar is for the leaders who’ve figured out that getting ahead of the regulator is actually a growth move.
- Consumer Duty: Who’s Winning and Why
- Inside the Regulatory Sandbox: How Live AI Testing Is Already Changing the Rules
- Open Finance Is Here: What the New Data Rules Mean for Your Product Strategy
- Turning Compliance into a Growth Strategy
- RegTech That Actually Works: Moving Beyond Checkbox Compliance
- Cross-Border Compliance: How to Scale Across Jurisdictions Without Doubling Your Legal Bill
TRUST AS CURRENCY
In fintech, trust isn’t a soft value. It’s your hardest asset.
Audience
For the people building and protecting trust at scale. Fraud, security, identity, resilience.
You can have the slickest product in the market. If people don’t trust you, you’re done. Here we get into the full picture: fraud, cybersecurity, digital identity, and the customer confidence that takes years to build and seconds to lose.
The fintechs that scale sustainably aren’t just the fastest. They’re the most trusted. There’s a difference.
- The Trust Stack: Building Security Customers Can Actually Feel
- The Deepfake Economy: Defending Against AI-Driven Fraud and Identity Cloning
- The Breach Playbook: What to Do When – Not If – Something Goes Wrong
- Proving Who You Are Without Killing the Experience: The New Identity Verification Standard
- Third-Party Risk: Managing the Security Gaps You Didn’t Build Yourself
- Operational Resilience: Meeting the Regulator’s Bar Without Slowing Down
FOLLOW THE MONEY
The founders who scale fastest aren’t just well funded. They’re financed strategically.
Audience
For founders and CFOs navigating capital and the corporate development and
strategic investment teams on the other side of the table.
There’s no shortage of advice on how to raise. What founders actually need is a map. This pillar tells the capital story through the companies that have lived it, with founders sharing exactly what they raised, from whom, and why it was the right fit for where they were.
Wherever you are in your journey, someone on stage has been exactly there.
- Seed to Series A in the AI Diligence Window: The New Bar for Metrics and Moat
- When VC Isn’t the Answer: The Capital-Efficiency Case for Raising Less
- How to Build an Investor Engagement Strategy That Attracts the Right Capital
- Strategic Investment: What Happens When a Corporate Wants In
- Runway Management: How to Make Capital Last Without Killing Growth
- The Term Sheet Decoded: What Founders Get Wrong When Negotiating Investment