Technology Trends Reshaping Financial Services

Baringa, the UK-based management consultancy, recently published its Top 10 Technology Trends reshaping financial services report, and its central argument deserves the attention of every mortgage broker, wealth manager, and credit union operating in the UK and Ireland today.

The message is direct: legacy technology is no longer just a cost problem. It has become a customer loyalty problem. And the gap between what financial institutions believe they are delivering digitally and what their customers actually experience is widening at pace.

The Loyalty Gap Is Bigger Than Most Institutions Realise

Baringa’s research, drawn from surveys of 4,000 UK and US consumers and 400 senior banking executives, found that more than one-third of customers have switched their main bank in the last five years, and digital experience was the primary driver, not interest rates or fees. A further 62% had switched or actively considered switching because their institution’s digital products did not meet their needs.

What makes this finding uncomfortable is the accompanying executive response. A full 90% of bank leaders believe their institution performs well on digital experience. The gulf between boardroom confidence and customer reality could not be more stark.

For credit unions and smaller operators, this is not a problem exclusive to the large clearing banks. Three in five UK adults now use mobile banking apps as their primary channel, and the experience benchmark is set not by rival financial institutions but by Amazon, Netflix, and Uber. Customers who find it seamless to hail a car, stream a film, or return a parcel expect the same frictionless experience when managing their mortgage or checking their savings balance.

Legacy Systems Are Consuming the Budget, and the Strategy

The structural cause of the loyalty gap is well-documented in the report. Legacy systems now consume more than 75% of IT budgets at many financial institutions, leaving less than a quarter available for innovation, improvement, and the new capabilities that customers are demanding.

Years of product launches, mergers, regulatory shifts, and hybrid technology decisions have created environments that are complex, siloed, and deeply resistant to change.

The report notes that this is not simply an inconvenience. Fragmented data architecture, the direct consequence of bolt-on systems accumulated over decades, means that AI remains experimental rather than operational for most firms. Without clean, enterprise-wide data foundations, personalisation at scale is impossible, real-time analytics are unreliable, and the decision-making speed that digital challengers take for granted is simply out of reach.

Ten Trends, One Overriding Priority

Baringa identifies ten interconnected technology trends for 2026, spanning AI deployment, data architecture, digital assets, operational resilience, and channel strategy. For a UK and Irish professional audience, three stand out as particularly pressing.

1. Rebuilding Data Foundations: The shift from fragmented data stores to enterprise-wide data product foundations is the single most important investment a financial institution can make in 2026. Without it, AI adoption remains pilot-stage, regulatory reporting remains manually intensive, and the seamless cross-channel experience that drives loyalty cannot be delivered.

2. Channel Strategy & the Human Plus AI Balance: Customers want choice, and digital channels are not a replacement for human relationships in complex financial decisions. The institutions that will win are those that deploy AI agents to handle routine queries and transactions, freeing human advisers for conversations that require judgment, empathy, and expertise.

3. Operational Resilience: As financial services become genuinely 24/7, the tolerance for outages, processing delays, and system failures is approaching zero. Operational resilience has become a commercial imperative, institutions that cannot guarantee always-on service will lose customers to those that can.

What This Means in Practice

Baringa’s prescription for financial institutions is built around three steps:

1. Define what genuinely differentiates your business from competitors.

2. Build a modern digital spine using a pragmatic mix of build, buy, and integrate decisions.

3. Embed continuous change as an organisational habit rather than a periodic project.

For mortgage brokers, wealth managers, and credit unions, the Baringa report is a timely prompt. The institutions in your professional networks that are investing in data infrastructure and digital experience today are building the customer loyalty that will define market share in five years’ time.

Those still running on systems written before the euro was introduced may find that catching up becomes progressively harder.

Read the Full Report

→  Baringa — Architecting Loyalty: 10 Technology Trends Reshaping Financial Services in 2026 (November 2025) 

→  Baringa — Legacy Tech, Lost Loyalty: Retail Banking Survey (September 2025) 

→  Baringa — Why Customer Engagement Is the Next Frontier in Financial Services 

→  Baringa — From Vision to Reality: How to Build a Transformative Financial Services Architecture 

Talk To Us Today

At Target Integration, we understand the challenges financial services businesses face in today’s ever-changing landscape. Whether you’re grappling with legacy systems, data fragmentation, or AI adoption, we’re here to help guide you through a digital transformation journey that will improve operational efficiency, customer engagement, and future resilience.

📩 Contact us today to learn how we can help your business unlock its full potential and build a sustainable future through technology.