HSBC’s Neil Falconer, Head of Innovation Banking, Singapore, discusses how the bank combines regional transaction services with selective financing for institutionally backed companies that have yet to achieve consistent profits. The model aims to retain successful start-ups as they develop into larger corporate and institutional banking clients.

Absa Mauritius is strengthening its transactional banking services to help corporates and SMEs navigate volatile cash flows and cross-border trade challenges. The bank is leveraging digital platforms, client-focused solutions and pan-African connectivity to support growth and resilience.

UOB Thailand’s retail transformation is entering its next phase defined not by expansion, but by disciplined rationalisation, digital scaling and segmentation-led profitability. Following the Citi portfolio migration, the bank is rebuilding its consumer franchise through tighter risk discipline, stronger digital adoption and a data-driven operating model anchored in customer lifetime value.

A decade ago, Nubank was a credit card start-up operating out of São Paulo. Today, at $16.3 billion in retail banking revenue (2025), it has surpassed HSBC and Standard Chartered’s global retail banking businesses and is on track to overtake Itaú Unibanco in Brazil in 2026 and Citigroup by 2027. What is emerging is not just rapid growth, but the early stages of a long-term strategy to build a global retail banking franchise.

As digital assets move into commercial deployment, Standard Chartered is preparing for their adoption across capital markets and payments by building capabilities in custody, tokenisation, settlement infrastructure and emerging payments.

Europe's on-chain euro challenge is no longer whether a regulated token can be issued, but whether enough banks and counterparties can make it liquid enough to matter. Qivalis, backed by 37 European banks, is testing whether commercial-bank network density can become Europe's answer to dollar stablecoin dominance.

Banks overcame the robo-adviser challenge by retaining control of the client relationship. The next battleground is the financial conversation itself, as AI platforms become the primary interface through which customers seek advice, interpret information and make decisions.

The 2026 ranking highlights how Gulf and African banks are pursuing different strategies to strengthen their corporate and wholesale franchises, with digital capability, regional connectivity, capital markets expertise and disciplined financial performance emerging as key competitive differentiators.

As the cost of replacing card and payments systems collides with the cost of carrying them forward, the modernisation question is shifting from whether to rebuild towards how much further existing infrastructure can be extended.

Avo Insurance became Hong Kong's first virtual general insurer in 2019 under the Insurance Authority's Fast Track scheme. Seven years on, as four virtual insurers compete against more than 150 traditional carriers, the question is whether product speed, B2B2C distribution and its parent Asia Insurance's regional network can become structural advantages.

The Bank of England's latest proposals to make elements of the capital framework more usable appear to be technical refinements to banking regulation. Read alongside its latest assessment of financial stability risks, however, they raise a broader question: whether the post-2008 regulatory settlement is still preparing the financial system for the right crisis.

Vietcombank is expanding its wholesale and cross-border banking operations through a platform-led approach that seamlessly embeds payments, trade and treasury services into corporate workflows. The bank serves both domestic corporates and foreign enterprises expanding across Vietnam’s economy.

CBDCs, stablecoins and tokenised deposits are moving past the pilot stage, forcing banks to pick a lane before standards settle. Executives from ZA Bank, Circle, J.P. Morgan and Wavpay unpack the trust, interoperability and regulatory gaps still standing between experimentation and scale.

Chong Wee Yeat, Head of Global Banking at Maybank Singapore is positioning the bank’s Malaysia-Singapore corridor depth as a route to wider ASEAN client coverage, as supply chain shifts, Chinese corporate expansion and the JS-SEZ create new cross-border banking demand.

With the July 2026 deadline for US agencies to finalise the implementation of the GENIUS Act approaching, we examine five of the world’s most consequential stablecoin regimes, the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. While these jurisdictions have largely aligned on what constitutes stablecoin, none has yet delivered a commercially scalable market. The real contest has shifted to access, distribution, commercial viability and control—factors that will determine who builds the next generation of payment infrastructure.