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Insights from the 2026 UBS Private FinTech Conference suggest that the next wave of competitive advantage in financial services will be won not at the customer interface, but within the infrastructure that powers it.
Key takeaways
The Infrastructure Race
Featuring commentary from Pranav Sood, Chief Financial Officer, Airwallex.
Over the past decade, financial innovation has largely been viewed through the lens of customer experience. Digital onboarding, mobile-first banking and embedded financial products have transformed how customers interact with financial institutions.
But at the 2026 UBS Private FinTech Conference in London, a different message emerged.
Across discussions with banking technology providers, infrastructure operators and fintech founders, the focus was not on front-end innovation. It was on the systems beneath it. A consistent theme across the conference was that infrastructure is becoming increasingly important as financial institutions seek greater speed, flexibility and operational resilience.
The institutions that modernize their underlying technology stacks will gain speed, flexibility and operational leverage. Those that do not may find themselves constrained by complexity, cost and an inability to compete in an increasingly AI-enabled environment.
For years, infrastructure transformation often meant large-scale replacement programs that ran for years and carried significant implementation risk.
That approach is changing.
Increasingly, financial institutions are moving toward targeted modernization programs designed to improve agility and reduce operational friction while preserving business continuity.
The demand is becoming more ‘modernization demand’ than ‘rip and replacement demand’.
This shift reflects a broader industry recognition that infrastructure is no longer simply a technology decision. It is a strategic business decision.
Banks are modernizing to launch products faster, respond to regulatory changes more effectively and build the foundations required for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.
One of the strongest themes from the discussion was the growing recognition that complexity itself has become one of the industry's most expensive liabilities.
Large financial institutions often operate multiple core platforms, legacy systems, data repositories and operational layers that have accumulated over decades.
The challenge is not necessarily the direct cost of those systems. It is the cost of changing them.
According to Will Montgomery, Chief Product Officer at Thought Machine:
The systems are not expensive. It's when you stack many systems together that don't work well with each other, it's slow and expensive to change them. And the lost opportunity cost will dwarf the cost savings if they don't move.
That observation reframes the modernization debate.
The real question is not how much legacy infrastructure costs to operate. It is how much opportunity is lost because institutions cannot innovate quickly enough.
The emergence of artificial intelligence is only increasing the urgency of the infrastructure conversation.
Conference participants were largely aligned on one point: AI will not eliminate the need for modernization. If anything, it increases it.
While AI can extend the useful life of legacy systems through automation, documentation and workflow optimization, it also increases the value of organizations that can move quickly.
As Martin de la Chiesa noted:
The opportunity cost not to do it the right way at scale... is only increasing.
Financial institutions that operate modern, modular environments will be better positioned to deploy AI capabilities, integrate new services and respond to changing customer demands.
Those that remain constrained by outdated architectures may find the gap widening.
The ownership of financial services infrastructure is evolving.
Banks will continue to own customer relationships, regulatory accountability and risk management. But increasingly, the capabilities that power those institutions will be provided by specialized infrastructure providers.
The future may therefore belong less to the organizations that build every component themselves and more to those that orchestrate the best available capabilities.
The infrastructure race is no longer about who has the largest technology estate.
It is about who has the most adaptable one.
