Backbase launches AI software factory for banking. Backbase's new AI factory allows lenders to build and deploy digital financing tools faster, potentially reducing friction at the merchant point of sale. Curated by Financing Your Way from original reporting by Finextra - Lending. Summary is AI-assisted and editorially reviewed - see its editorial standards. Backbase has launched a new AI-driven software factory designed to speed up how banks and lenders build digital tools. For retailers and service providers, this signals a major shift in how quickly your financing partners can update their apps, approval portals, and lending workflows. The platform uses specialized AI agents to handle the heavy lifting of coding and testing. This means the lag time between a merchant requesting a new feature - like a smoother checkout integration or a custom promotional financing tier - and that feature actually going live could decrease significantly. While this is a 'behind-the-scenes' technical update, the impact on your business is about agility. Lenders using this technology will be able to modernize their legacy systems faster. They can create more seamless user interfaces for your customers and fix bugs in the financing application process in real-time. As consumer financing becomes more competitive, the lenders who can deploy these AI-assisted updates will likely offer the most reliable and frictionless digital experiences for your storefront. It also suggests that the next generation of loan origination systems will be more deeply integrated with AI, potentially leading to faster credit decisions and more personalized offers for your buyers. Who else is covering this

Backbase wins 2026 Impact Award in Wealth Management for Best Innovation for the Advisor Desktop. Provided by Business Wire Oct 22, 2026, 7:00:00 AM Datos Insights recognizes the Wealth & Banking Operating System, which unifies clients, advisors, and AI agents on a single workspace. Backbase announced today that Datos Insights named it the winner of the 2026 Wealth Management Impact Award in Wealth Management for Best Innovation for the Advisor Desktop category. The award recognizes Backbase's Wealth & Banking Operating System, a composable platform that brings the institution's capabilities and client context together front to back, so advisors have what they need at their fingertips. It is built around a single Control Plane where clients, employees, and AI agents work from the same data and workflows. The Augmented Advisor & Employee Workspace sits at the center of the platform's advisor offering. It gives employees a unified workspace, AI-driven priorities, next-best actions, and complete client context, alongside a library of agentic assistants that support tasks such as meeting preparation and prospect profiling. Case management orchestrates sales and operational processes from the same workspace. Datos Insights describes the fragmentation Backbase addresses as structural. Over two decades, institutions assembled portfolio management, customer relationship management, onboarding, reporting, planning, and compliance systems through separate purchasing decisions, each rational on its own and none designed to operate as a whole. The integration burden surfaces later, on the advisor's desk and in the IT budget. Backbase's Banking and Wealth OS sits above existing systems of record, portfolio management systems, customer relationship management platforms, and data platforms, which stay in place. The operating system draws information from these existing systems, connects and contextualizes it, and makes it actionable for advisors. Institutions can start with a single use case such as onboarding or the advisor workspace and expand from there without a rip-and-replace migration. Backbase reports that advisors spend 25% to 35% more time in client-facing activities, in place of the 40% to 60% typically lost to administration and system navigation. The platform also includes the Prospect Lounge, a prospect-facing mobile and web app for onboarding, and a highly customizable Client App with journeys for portfolio reporting, advisor collaboration and conversational assistants. More than 120 financial institutions run on Backbase's platform. Over the next 12 to 24 months, Backbase focuses on having agents preparing the advisor's day, expanding its library of agentic assistants and signals framework and further automating front-to-back operational processes with agentic. The award follows the 2025 Datos Insights Wealth Management Impact Award that Backbase won for AI-Driven Client Recommendations & Personalization. Lennart Asshoff, VP of Product, VP Product Wealth & Private Banking. Backbase "It is an honor to receive the 2026 Wealth Management Impact Award for Best Innovation for the Advisor Desktop, and to have our advisor workspace and Banking & Wealth OS recognized by Datos Insights. I am proud of our team, whose work made this recognition possible." Wally Okby, Strategic Advisor, Wealth Management, Datos Insights "Most wealth firms inherited fragmentation, one rational purchase at a time. Backbase stood out for treating the advisor desktop as an operating layer rather than another application, and for letting firms get there without tearing out the systems they already depend on." About Backbase Backbase built the AI-native Banking OS - the operating system that turns fragmented banking operations into a Unified Frontline. Customers, employees, and AI agents work as one across digital channels, front-office, and operations. 120+ leading banks run on Backbase across Retail, SMB & Commercial, Private Banking, and Wealth Management. Recognized by Forrester, Gartner, and Datos Insights as a category leader, Backbase was founded in 2003 by Jouk Pleiter and is headquartered in Amsterdam, with teams across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. About Datos Insights Datos Insights is the leading research and advisory partner to the banking, insurance, and securities industries - both the financial services firms and the technology providers that serve them. In an era of rapid change, Datos Insights empowers firms across the financial services ecosystem to make high-stakes decisions with confidence and speed. 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Datos Insights unveils 2026 Impact award winners for Commercial Banking and payments. The 2026 Impact Awards in Commercial Banking & Payments have identified the leading institutions and technology providers redefining business finance. For fintech professionals, these awards highlight specific innovations - from embedded banking to proactive AI - that are currently moving from experimental phases into live production environments across global markets. What was announced. Announced at the Commercial and Small Business Banking Forum in New York, the awards recognize 20 honorees across two primary tracks: Financial Institutions and Solution Providers. The selection process involved a rigorous evaluation of nominations submitted between April and July 2026, which were then narrowed down by advisors and a panel of external judges including industry thought leaders and consultants. Judges evaluated each entry on eight specific attributes, including competitive advantage, impact on customer experience, scalability, and the ability to generate new revenue opportunities for the bank. In the Financial Institution categories, Scotiabank secured the gold medal for Artificial Intelligence and Automation, while SouthState Bank took the top spot for Customer Experience. JPMorgan was recognized with gold for Digital Channel Capabilities, and First Fidelity Bank led in Operational Efficiency. Intesa Sanpaolo earned the gold award for Product Development. Silver medalists in these categories included Banca AideXa, TD Embedded Banking, Raiffeisen Bank, Truist, and Citizens. The Solution Provider awards highlighted the technology firms powering these shifts. Backbase won gold for AI and Automation, while Zafin was recognized for Customer Experience. Onsetto took the gold for Operational Efficiency, and SAP Fioneer led in Product Development. Ninth Wave Inc. received the gold medal for Technology and Integration. Other recognized providers included Intellect Design Arena, Superior, Prolific Banking, Alacriti, and FIS. The awards specifically focused on innovations that are live and in production today, such as banking services that exist within a client's own software and payment platforms designed for every available rail. "The pace of development and innovation in commercial banking and payments is accelerating, and the caliber of nominations we received this year surprised us. These winners are the best of the best of what's happening now." The companies involved. Datos Insights, the organization behind the awards, is a prominent research and advisory firm focused on the financial services industry. The company is a portfolio entity of Pamlico Capital, a private equity firm. Datos Insights has established itself as a key voice in the sector, providing analysis on the intersection of technology and banking operations through its various forums and research reports. The list of winners represents a cross-section of the modern banking ecosystem. It includes established global giants like FIS, a major player in financial technology that has recently expanded its digital capabilities through strategic acquisitions to streamline account origination. Other recognized entities like JPMorgan and Scotiabank represent the "incumbent" tier of the market that is increasingly competing with, and collaborating with, agile solution providers like Backbase and SAP Fioneer. The inclusion of firms like Ninth Wave and Alacriti underscores the growing importance of integration and multi-rail payment platforms in the modern commercial banking stack, where the ability to connect disparate systems is becoming a primary competitive advantage. What FF News has reported before. FF News has tracked the evolution of the payments landscape extensively, recently noting that card payments have reached unprecedented scale despite mounting competitive pressure from alternative rails. The focus on AI in this year's awards aligns with its coverage of firms like SEON, which expanded its AI capabilities to transform raw data into actionable insights for fraud prevention. Additionally, Bitso reported on FIS acquiring Amount to bolster its digital account origination, a move that mirrors the "Technology and Integration" excellence recognized by Datos Insights. Bitso also covered leadership changes at the firm, such as when Madeline Bailey was named Head of InsTech as part of a broader leadership reshuffle. What this means. These awards signal that the "innovation" phase of commercial banking has moved past pilot programs into core operational reality. The success of embedded banking and multi-rail payment platforms suggests that traditional banks are under immense pressure to integrate their services directly into client software rather than forcing clients to use proprietary portals. For the industry, the message is clear: the competitive moat is no longer just about the balance sheet, but about the fluidity of the technology stack. The heavy focus on operational efficiency and AI-driven automation indicates that banks are prioritizing cost-reduction and speed to counter the encroachment of non-bank financial providers who are often more agile in their product delivery. Featured speakers.