At Finovate Europe 2026, we asked a deceptively simple question: “Write down the biggest buzzword you’ve heard today… but you can’t say AI.” The answers came fast, and they said a lot about where fintech’s attention is really landing right now.
One attendee pointed to a late-night “Impact event” conversation and captured the mood perfectly. The word that kept surfacing was automation—not as a shiny extra, but as the engine behind faster onboarding, smarter operations, and fewer manual handoffs. Close behind was a phrase that’s been around for years but still dominates every product pitch: customer experience. Two words, endless meaning. In practice, it’s about reducing friction, personalising services, and making financial journeys feel less like paperwork and more like progress.
Not all buzzwords were serious as “Free beer” got a laugh, but it also hinted at something real: events run on energy, and culture still matters in a sector obsessed with efficiency. Meanwhile, the more technical voices leaned into journey analysis—mapping how customers behave, where they drop off, and what actually drives trust.
Perhaps the most telling moment was someone insisting, “AI is just ML,” quickly followed by agentic agents—a way of saying the intelligence isn’t the headline anymore; it’s being embedded into business processes. And if you want a final, grounding buzzword? Infrastructure—because none of the above works without solid rails.