Key emerging trends from this year's awards show the industry's centre of gravity shifting to the foundations — data, architecture, resilience and rails — that will decide which banks can move fastest.

Financial Markets Weekly: US Senate blocks Clarity Act, Circle launches Arc blockchain, Shanghai Clearing House adds three currencies, India widens tokenised-bond pilot.

TAB China Weekly Brief: PBOC flags slower loan growth, Hong Kong releases five-year plan, HKMA raises base rate, ABC completes renminbi transaction.

TAB Africa Weekly Brief: BCEAO kept monetary conditions unchanged, Ghana tightened credit and FX oversight, Morocco opened a new regional funding channel and PAPSS expanded its cross-border payments network.

Retail Finance Weekly: Grab expands into digital lending with Atome Financial deal, Revolut gains Colombia banking licence, Bank of Baroda pushes AI into banking operations.

Most large banks have adopted AI, but few have rebuilt around it. Governance, architecture and strategic priorities will determine who scales AI successfully.

TAB Middle East Weekly Brief: GCC bank assets top $4 trillion, Türkiye holds rates at 37%, US sanctions VTB Bank and ADGM assets under management rise 54%.

Transaction Finance Weekly: DBS, OCBC and UOB complete Swift's first live SGD tokenised-deposit settlement, Lloyds-SocGen digitise a letter of credit and US Bank pilots USBDC stablecoin.

AI is changing banking faster than any technology since the internet. As systems become more autonomous, institutions must keep them secure, explainable and trustworthy. Digital trust is emerging as the operating discipline that enables banks to scale AI safely.

Banks are gaining access to increasingly powerful technologies, but the competitive gap is shifting towards how effectively they can adapt their governance, infrastructure, operating models and talent to use them.

The Asian Banker Weekly Brief: The ECB raised rates to 2.50% as inflation rose and Saudi pipeline attacks disrupted oil supply, while UniCredit advanced its Commerzbank bid.

Risk and Capital Weekly Brief: EU delays FRTB capital impacts through 2029, Canada cuts SME risk weights, Singapore proposes loss-absorbing capacity rules, and UniCredit gains 52bp CET1 boost.

Bank of America’s Siddarth Gupta and Chandana Thanthrige argue that transaction banks will increasingly compete on their ability to convert data into decisions, coordinate multiple payment networks and deploy AI within clear limits as access to technology becomes less distinctive.

Sustainable Finance Weekly: NextEra's $1.9 billion nuclear restart, Sonnedix's $1.3 billion Chile refinancing, Suniva's $835 million solar expansion and Yara's carbon-capture launch.

Leading Chinese banks delivered stronger earnings growth in the first half of 2026 (1H2026), but weaker loan demand, rising credit costs and continued pressure on asset yields kept returns under pressure.