Fintech and finance

From transformation theater to measurable value

Bodewise

2022

Creating a lasting legacy
WestBridge Capital

2023

Harmonizing transformation and consistency

Finance and fintech are facing a value paradox, but also great opportunities. AI-enabled banking, open finance, new payment rails, and digital assets are opening grounds that organizations can capture and build their leadership on.

AREA 17 helps you shape this leadership by crafting brand, experience, and technology as a single, coherent system.

Read our full FinTech and finance report

Financial services organizations can no longer compete on transformation narratives. Trust and valuation both go to those that connect every AI and digital claim to measurable outcomes, make compliance, explainability, and governance visible reasons to be chosen, and define their role clearly in the open-finance ecosystem. Positioning around programmable money, tokenization, and digital assets as part of a financial operating system narrative is what separates credible long-term players from those still leading with feature launches.
Most institutions still deliver siloed channels, weak chatbots, and friction that adds risk theater rather than real security, while customers already live in mobile apps, wallets, and generative AI. The gap between AI adoption in daily life and AI effectiveness in financial services is widening, and it is where switching decisions are made. Closing it means true orchestration across branch, mobile, and AI with shared context, personalization at the individual level, and new rails integrated end-to-end with the verification and consent controls that agentic commerce requires.
The majority of the industry is running AI experiments on legacy stacks that cannot support agentic automation, real-time payments, or digital currencies at scale, while underestimating their own total cost of ownership. The leaders are consolidating around cloud-native, API-first foundations, standing up multi-rail payment and digital currency readiness, and using AI itself to translate legacy code and reduce technical debt. This creates the flywheel that makes scaling possible without rebuilding from scratch.

Fintech and finance index

Pershing Square

Since 2024
Clayton Dubilier & Rice

Since 2023
Davidson Kempner

Since 2023
AlTi

Since 2022
FirstMark

2023–2024
LeapFrog Invesments

2023
WestBridge Capital

Harmonizing transformation and consistency

2023
Bodewise

Creating a lasting legacy

2022
American Express

2012

Explore full index

Fintech and finance

From transformation theater to measurable value

Bodewise

WestBridge Capital

Show proven outcomes and define your role in the financial ecosystem

Connect branch, mobile, and AI into seamless journeys

Modernize your core to scale AI, new payment rails, and digital currencies

Fintech and finance index

Pershing Square

Clayton Dubilier & Rice

Davidson Kempner

AlTi

FirstMark

LeapFrog Invesments

WestBridge Capital

Bodewise

American Express