FintechOS Elevate 2026: The AI Promise - Hype or Game-Changer?

The FintechOS Elevate 2026 conference, held at Kings Place in London on October 14, served as a crucial platform for banking and insurance leaders to critically examine the chasm between artificial intelligence ambitions and actual business results. Attracting approximately 300 registrations and featuring over 25 speakers, the second annual event delved into topics ranging from product innovation and customer experience to governance and the complexities of modernizing financial services.

Building on warnings from the previous year's Elevate against 'AI theatre' and pursuing projects without defined business objectives, the 2026 conference focused intently on whether significant AI investments were truly yielding results. Leda Glyptis, author and board advisor, delivered a keynote titled 'The AI Reckoning', urging financial institutions to look beyond individual productivity gains and the proliferation of AI pilots. She underscored the importance of 'focus as a feature, not a bug', cautioning that uncoordinated initiatives could lead to increased costs and operational risks. Glyptis emphasized that businesses must measure improvements in processes and outcomes, concurrently addressing inherent issues with data, skills, and decision-making. Her core message was clear: "If you want to be successful at your AI implementations, governance is your only friend."

FintechOS CEO and co-founder Teo Blidarus opened the conference by identifying fragmented products, workflows, and data as major impediments preventing financial institutions from fully leveraging AI. He explained that "Data fragmentation is typically a consequence of product fragmentation," highlighting the imperative to connect these elements to integrate AI effectively across everyday banking and insurance operations. Blidarus also announced a revised implementation strategy for FintechOS, acknowledging that some customers had faced "very complicated upgrades." Following the unveiling of FintechOS 8 at Elevate 2025, the company introduced its latest iteration, FintechOS 8 Blue Sky, which incorporates new AI capabilities designed to streamline product development and day-to-day operations.

During demonstrations, Blidarus and Byron Levin, head of presales and forward deployed consulting at FintechOS, showcased two new AI copilots, Dex and Abi, both built on an agentic framework. Dex assists teams in configuring financial products, pricing structures, rules, and workflows, while Abi provides support to employees and customers for daily operational tasks. One such demo illustrated Abi guiding a customer through a conversational loan application. Another scenario, involving a fictional building society, demonstrated how AI could aid in developing and pricing mortgage products, evaluating broker applications, and preparing commercial lending cases for review.

A significant part of the discussion revolved around the extent to which decision-making should be entrusted to AI. Joshua Weinstein, co-CEO of Gable Group, unequivocally stated during a panel on retail mortgage origination, "The lender, the bank, the financial institution has to own the decision." He stressed that lenders must retain the ability to understand and articulate how decisions are reached, even when AI performs much of the preliminary work. Similarly, in the insurance sessions, FintechOS illustrated AI's potential in motor insurance pricing, claims processing, policy changes, and payment reconciliation, with staff maintaining ultimate responsibility for approving critical decisions.

In the afternoon, Dharmesh Mistry, CEO of Vision 20/20 Consulting, challenged delegates to envision how AI could fundamentally transform their businesses, rather than merely refining existing products and processes. Citing historical examples like Nokia and Kodak, he warned, "It’s your own good numbers you have to be worried about... Right until the quarter when they didn’t have good numbers." Mistry noted that financial institutions had adapted to the internet and mobile technology, but posited that the concurrent advancement of multiple technologies presents a unique challenge. He argued, "When technologies come alone, we adapt. When convergence comes, nobody’s got a framework for it because we didn’t imagine these several things coming together."

Paroma Chatterjee, CEO of Revolut India, discussed how AI is becoming an intrinsic component of product development, rather than a separate consideration. She stated, "We don’t look at AI as a different arm of the business," explaining Revolut's integrated approach that considers technology alongside licensing, local market demands, and customer needs when developing products. However, Rania Svoronou, global head of AI design at Citi, provided a cautionary note, warning about the risk of accumulating 'AI debt' through numerous projects that improve individual customer interactions without significantly enhancing the overall experience.