The first six months of 2026 were unpredictable, with major developments that have heavily impacted global markets. With the dynamic landscape, what were the trends that shaped the first half of the year?
FinTech Global recently sat down with experts from the WealthTech sector to get their thoughts on the first half of the year. They were all asked to think back over the past six months to anything that surprised them and what developments in the sector people are not talking about enough.
For Jurgen Vandenbroucke, Managing Director at everyoneINVESTED, the area the industry is not putting enough focus on is micro-investing linked to the rounding up of payments. While he notes there are services like these available in several markets around the world, their impact is underestimated.
He said, “It is an underestimated, powerful engine of recruiting new investors and young investors. What we have seen in our situation, we have deployed this in all but one of KBC’s home markets and everyoneINVESTED has also launched it in the Greek market. In all of those cases it was confirmed as something which was quickly picked up.”
He added, “The reason why I emphasise this is because it is exactly reaching the objective of many regulatory initiatives across Europe, the UK and US try to achieve, which is to increase the financial participation amongst the general public. This simple feature of linking investing to the roundup of payments is a giant step to reaching that goal.”
The idea of getting more people involved with wealth management was also shared by Friedhelm Schmitt, Co-Founder & CEO fincite. Instead of micro investing Schmitt emphasised the importance of Germany’s new pension plan, Altersvorsorgedepot. This new initiative aims to empower the German public to invest into capital markets for their retirement plans. Altersvorsorgedepot is launching next year, giving banks around six months to prepare.
Schmitt said, “What really makes this one different, is that unlike other regulatory changes, it has this huge distribution angle. For the first time it is a government-subsidised investment product that is really designed to reach everybody in Germany to participate in the capital market.
“It’s not a regulatory project, a compliance project or something like that, but it is a huge market expansion and it’s bringing the asset management space and the wealth management space together in one product and offering it to a huge market. Those that see that, really see a huge potential.”
Finally, Fredrik Davéus, CEO and co-founder of Kidbrooke, moved away from the sense of greater financial inclusion. For him, the biggest trend the industry is not paying enough attention to is the shift from standalone tools to an integrated platform.
He said, “For years, there have been point solutions: retirement calculators, risk profilers, cashflow tools. The result has been fragmented customer experiences and, frankly, disconnected analytics.
“What we see now is more about consistency, not multiple solutions. I think institutions need a consistent analytics layer that can support multiple products channels and customer journeys. I believe the winners in the next phase of WealthTech will be the firms that can deliver consistent guidance across the entire customer lifecycle and doing this while reducing complexity behind the scenes.
Watch the video to get insights from:
- Jurgen Vandenbroucke, Managing Director at everyoneINVESTED
- Friedhelm Schmitt, Co-Founder & CEO fincite
- Fredrik Davéus, CEO and co-founder of Kidbrooke
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