In February 2025, Celent attended the latest FinovateEurope show in London. The event is always a great opportunity to take the pulse of the world of fintech—where the investment is going, which themes dominate the discussions—and Celent wanted to share key takeaways with clients.
It would have been easy to say, “It’s all about AI,” and it would have been true, as there were perhaps just a handful of demos that didn’t explicitly mention AI. However, when discussing AI, it’s important to distinguish at least between two types of initiatives:
- Foundational: infrastructure, data, models, and platforms that enable financial institutions to rapidly develop and deploy AI capabilities. Celent has seen many companies with offerings in this space, from cloud and open-source database providers to agentic-AI platforms.
- Use cases: practical applications of AI to solve specific business challenges, and the demos tackled a broad range of topics discussed in this report.
At the end of the demo day, the audience votes for the three best demos, Finovate’s “Best of Show” winners. This year, Keyless, R34DY, and Tweezr won the awards. Two of those—Keyless and Tweezr—were also among Celent’s favourite demos, with a third “award” going to CyberUpgrade.
Financial institutions and solution providers should draw inspiration from fintechs discussed in this report and consider who might be good partners to help solve their specific challenges. And of course, in a rapidly changing world of financial services technology, attending events such as Finovate is key to staying connected and up-to-date with the latest developments.
