Why FinTechs are winning the execution race

Ross Osborne, CEO of UK Payments at Rippling

The competitive dynamics in financial services are changing. Many of the advantages that once belonged to established banks are becoming less decisive, while the ability to execute quickly is becoming a more important differentiator. Where FinTechs outperforming traditional banks is not in their vision, but in their execution.

Traditional banks with in-person branches are no longer the default model for businesses or consumers. This shift is underscored by immense capital, with global FinTech investment hitting $116 billion in 2025. Meanwhile, firms like Revolut – which recently secured its banking licence and is eyeing a valuation above $100 billion for its upcoming IPO – demonstrate the compounding scale of these disruptors.

However, beneath the headline growth, much of this innovation remains concentrated within a handful of large platforms. These entities are solving the same foundational problems that traditional banks spent decades building infrastructure for: payments, account provisioning, and onboarding. The result is less about inventing entirely new financial services, and more about reallocating who delivers them.

Where FinTechs are outperforming traditional banks is not in their vision, but in their execution. The differentiator is structural: legacy institutions are constrained by dense layers of governance, compliance, and internal bureaucracy, making even minor iterations slow to deploy. FinTechs, by contrast, are engineered for rapid iteration and direct deployment, allowing them to adapt to market demands in real time.

In an AI-driven economy, modern businesses expect financial services to operate at the same cadence as the rest of their technology stack. Over time, this agility becomes a core competitive advantage that attracts both talent and capital. However, compressing decision cycles also concentrates operational and compliance risk – challenges that must be managed rather than ignored.

Overcoming the bureaucracy

Traditional banks are often anchored by decades-old systems and corporate hierarchies. Securing approval for a single initiative requires navigating endless committees and middle-management layers, frequently doubling the time to market.

Banks and FinTechs often recognise the same customer problems. The difference is how quickly they can respond. Large institutions have governance structures that exist for good reasons, but they inevitably make change harder. FinTechs were built with shorter decision cycles, allowing them to test, learn and iterate more quickly.

By stripping away red tape, digital-first players can rapidly iterate on pricing and features, compounding their advantage in customer experience.

Banking without borders

Businesses increasingly expect to hire, pay and operate internationally from day one. That puts pressure on payments infrastructure to work seamlessly across borders, currencies and regulatory environments. This aligns with macroeconomic trends: JP Morgan projects that international transfers will grow by 5% annually until 2027, highlighting the critical demand for frictionless cross-border banking.

This trend poses a challenge for legacy payment rails: can they absorb that growth without friction eroding already thin transaction margins? As global volumes scale, operational complexity compounds rapidly within systems that were never engineered for real-time international settlement.

As FinTechs operate with significantly lower operating costs, they can offer competitive pricing and innovative, tailored financial products. This digital accessibility democratises global finance, ensuring banking infrastructure can keep pace with an interconnected world economy.

Tech-driven solutions for digital-first customers

User expectations have evolved: modern consumers now demand banking apps that match the intuitive, instant functionality of their favourite consumer software. Research indicates that convenience, time efficiency, and constant accessibility are the primary reasons for shifting to digital channels.

Digital-first and mobile-only FinTechs are designed around these expectations from day one, whereas incumbents are still retrofitting branch-centric models to a digital world. While major banks have reduced their physical branch footprints by about 15% over the past decade, customer relationships have migrated online. Trust is no longer tied to the physical building; it is earned through brand experiences, transparency, and app reliability – areas where neobanks and FinTechs often rate highly in app-store reviews and NPS.=

Furthermore, while legacy institutions struggle to process mountains of siloed data, FinTechs are utilising AI to provide real-time financial intelligence and automated wealth management. Moving through 2026, predictive analytics will become the baseline expectation, allowing agile platforms to anticipate user needs before a click occurs.

As AI begins to move from supporting decisions to initiating actions, the challenge becomes less about capability and more about maintaining appropriate oversight, accountability and control.

This shift moves banking away from product-centric models to platform-based ecosystems, including embedded finance, digital marketplaces, and banking-as-a-service. Yet many traditional banks are structurally and culturally underprepared for platform thinking, compared to tech-native players.

Cultivating talent-driven innovation

The FinTech evolution isn’t just about technology; it’s also about talent. In financial hubs like London, FinTech job vacancies are predicted to rise by approximately 37% year‑on‑year in 2026. Fast-moving organisations are attractive because people can see the impact of their work more quickly. That creates a culture where learning, iteration and accountability reinforce each other.

The paradigm shift

The financial sector has reached a definitive tipping point where agility is a baseline requirement for survival. As we move through 2026, the divide between legacy institutions and FinTech disruptors will continue to widen.

Ultimately, FinTechs are not succeeding because they have newer technology. They’re succeeding where they can combine speed of execution with strong governance and operational discipline. As financial services become increasingly software-driven, that balance will matter more.