2026 FinTech Predictions: Insights from Wayne Scott of Escode

We spoke with Wayne Scott, GRC Solutions Lead at Escode, the global leader in software escrow and resilience solutions operating across more than 60 countries.

Over to you Wayne - my questions are in bold:

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

The biggest shift will be a move from theoretical resilience to tested, evidence-based resilience. Over the past year, we've seen multiple instances of operational failure, ransomware attacks and supplier disruption that left large organisations unable to operate. In many cases, the only reason we avoided sustained global impact was luck. Suppliers remained financially solvent, but that absolutely won't always be the case.

As we move into 2026, firms will be forced to confront the reality that disruption is not a hypothetical risk. The financial failure of a critical supplier is becoming increasingly probable, and boards will need far greater confidence that services can continue when things go wrong.

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

I don't suspect that the most practical impact will come from a single new technology, but rather it will be from how deeply banks and fintechs now rely on complex SaaS and cloud ecosystems to deliver critical services. These layered technology stacks have enabled scale and speed, but they've also introduced significant dependency and concentration risk.

In 2026, the technology that matters most will be the tooling and processes that allow firms to properly understand and evidence how these services can be recovered if a supplier fails or suffers disruption.

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

Customers now expect digital services to be continuously available regardless of what's happening behind the scenes. There is very little tolerance or understanding for outages or disruption – particularly in payments, digital banking and customer support channels.

This huge expectation puts enormous pressure on financial institutions to ensure resilience extends beyond their own systems to the third-party technology providers they rely on. A failure anywhere in the supply chain is increasingly visible to customers and can quickly erode trust.

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

This is an easy one from our perspective! Downstream supplier failure is such an underrated risk – the 'vendors behind the vendors'. Many firms believe they understand their immediate suppliers but have limited visibility into whether those suppliers could continue operating if their own critical dependencies fail. Recent research we conducted alongside CeFPro shows that almost 80% of firms have not verified whether their suppliers have credible stressed exit plans in place.

Another blind spot is the assumption that contractual exit clauses equal resilience. In reality, recovery plans are rarely tested to prove they actually work. Without stressed exit plans that are verified and exercised, firms risk being blindsided by failures they can't control.

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

Leadership teams should look to prioritise evidence-based assurance across their technology supply chains. That means moving beyond paper policies and demanding proof that critical services can be rebuilt and operated in practice under stress.

We're already seeing a rise in pooled audits, where multiple institutions work together to assess supplier compliance and resilience. This approach gives firms leverage they don't have individually and allows them to test continuity controls at scale. In 2026 and beyond, the institutions that stay competitive will be those that can demonstrate real, tangible resilience.

Thanks to Wayne for sharing his insights with FinTech Profile. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or learn more about Escode.