Benchmark your Technology Agenda for the Next-Gen Banking Era
Today, competitive advantage is determined by how clearly banking leaders interpret emerging technology shifts, how rigorously they benchmark their institution’s readiness, and how effectively they convert strategic intent into operating reality.
From our ongoing work with banks globally, five technology shifts have emerged as non-negotiable on the 2026 agenda. These are already influencing how leading institutions redesign core architectures, rewire operating models, and position themselves for intensifying regulatory and competitive pressure. The defining question is no longer whether these shifts matter but how far along your institution truly is.
The Journey towards the AI-first Bank
Banking continues its journey of becoming AI-native. Generative AI, embedded across workflows, will power co-pilots, automate knowledge-intensive tasks and hyper-personalize engagement; a strong data foundation, governance and integration with core systems are imperative. 2026 will also see agentic AI running multi-step workflows, taking autonomous decisions, and orchestrating systems using multi-agent frameworks. And AI will be deeply embedded within banking systems. However, to realize its benefits, banks should modernize the data foundation, re-architect workflows and integrate AI directly within core platforms.
Building the Next Gen Banking Architecture
Full composability, with self-contained business capabilities is the future of bank architecture. Three sub-trends will drive this: composability will follow an orchestration-led model, with banks running product factories, exposing domain capabilities to ecosystems, and reconfiguring architecture on demand. Cloud-native architecture will become event-driven, autonomous and self-optimizing, to power real-time banking, agentic AI adoption, and continuous digital innovation. As banks use event-sourced coexistence, automated strangler patterns and domain gateways to replace legacy capabilities slice by slice, modernization will become ongoing, business-led and low-risk.
Cloud that Delivers
Hybrid cloud is the default operating model, but multi-cloud lags; banks should focus on workload placement, portability and cross-cloud resilience. Cloud is now the execution layer for AI initiatives, rather than a separate component, and those fusing both technologies for transformation will see disproportionate gains. To close the value gap in past migrations, in 2026, banks will invest in FinOps, cloud governance, cross-functional cloud centers of excellence and cloud-native re-architecture.
The Tokenization Shift
Tokenization will reshape financial market infrastructure as banks offer tokenized deposits as the fully compliant, regulated and bank core-integrated stablecoin option, and build institutional-grade infrastructure to tokenize all asset classes. In 2026, tokenization infrastructure will become the foundation of modern capital markets. Interoperable, governed networks will be critical for scaling adoption.
The Data Advantage
In 2026, banks will need to ensure their data foundations are truly AI-ready – low-latency, curated, well-labelled and well-governed. Combining data fabric with data mesh will be critical for scaling AI, analytics and reporting, while maintaining control. Digital provenance, which combines origin, lineage and integrity metadata to ensure data traceability, will be fundamental to governance, risk management and regulatory trust in the AI-native bank.
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