2026 FinTech Predictions: Insights from Jake Atkinson of MQube

I spoke with Jake, Director of Growth at MQube, a mortgage technology firm whose AI gives lenders a smarter, faster way to originate mortgages at scale.

Jake shares his perspective on the accelerating trends that will reshape financial services, from agentic AI and democratisation to the risks lurking in legacy systems.

Over to you Jake - my questions are in bold:

What's the biggest shift you expect across financial services in 2026?

Two existing trends will accelerate dramatically this year - democratisation and fragmentation.

Democratisation has been building steadily as consumers gain ever greater freedom and choice in financial services. But the increasing ubiquity of consumer AI apps like ChatGPT and Claude means 2026 will be the year when many feel empowered to make big decisions about their finances - and everything for that matter - more confidently.

Fragmentation will accelerate among both consumer and business-facing platforms. Super-apps like Revolut will enable consumers to connect and manage all their financial products in one place. Meanwhile businesses will have more options than ever for their tech stack, as plug-and-play options erode the dominance of formerly monolithic B2B brands.

Which emerging technology will have the most practical impact on banks and the FinTechs that support them?

Without doubt, it's agentic AI. Deployment of this technology has been slow so far and we're not even close to seeing its full impact yet.

Risk teams have sometimes struggled to keep up, often because they lack the information needed to make effective decisions on future governance. As this situation improves, we will see agentic AI doing far more back office and repetitive tasks - but also many customer-facing roles in which the agent is authorised to make final decisions on refunds or compensation.

AI's language and context skills have improved dramatically, and at MQube we've found that agents are more than capable of carrying out front office roles effectively. The idea of splitting customers into crude cohorts will fade, to be replaced by 'segment of one' marketing in which the customer's experience is shaped by the AI's granular understanding of individuals' needs and behaviour.

What customer behaviours or expectations will most challenge banks and financial service providers?

From a business perspective, the case for using a bot to answer customer questions is irresistible. Done well, it slashes both customer wait times and operations spend - all while delivering better customer outcomes.

However there is an inherently human aspect to customer experience, especially in financial services. Ours is a sector in which people place a lot of value on trust and empathy, so customer-facing AI systems need to have empathy hardwired into their responses and the cues they listen out for. They also need to have an effective failsafe that will route customers to a human agent when appropriate.

This is a difficult balancing act for brands to achieve, and the banking sector doesn't have a great track record. But companies who fail to make progress here risk losing customers to rivals who get it right.

What risks or blind spots do you think the industry is underestimating as we move into 2026?

The combination of legacy tech and poorly maintained data could prove a real liability. Many banks are building new tech onto old platforms which have developed flaws and foibles over the years, and which are only fully understood by staff now approaching retirement age.

If they're also full of poorly maintained data, these old systems can be an accident waiting to happen. Clearly start-ups have a huge advantage here, as it's much easier to plan your future infrastructure from scratch than retrofitting everything onto a creaking legacy system.

Established brands probably know all this already, but need to do more to address it. There are a few options, and blockchain solutions are likely to excel. It may feel alien, but industry leaders need to get comfortable with this.

If you were advising a bank's leadership team today, what strategic priority should they focus on to stay competitive in 2026 and beyond?

Focus on the long-term, and what infrastructure and people you need to get you there.

Most customers stick with their bank longer than their spouse. This means incumbents are blessed with a treasure trove of data about their customers - and banks should get better at using this data to make themselves 'stickier'. Uber provides a great example, hitting customers with an offer at exactly the right time: customer opens the app -> customer moves away from the app -> customer receives a notification with an Uber discount.

Banks have the scale and ability to know when a customer might be in distress, be receptive to a car loan, mortgage or investment. They should focus on converting this need into support, or a sale, at the right time.

The challenger banks are working hard on this, and are close to nailing it. But the incumbents have the data to do it better right now; they just need the will.

Thank you Jake! You can connect with Jake on his LinkedIn Profile and find out more about the company at mqube.com.