{Podcast} The Quiet Rewiring of Capitalism
While everyone watches AI, the foundations of business are being rebuilt
If you want to see where the next 12 to 24 months are heading, don’t start with AI.
Start with where the serious money is being placed inside the machinery of business.
Not the headlines.
The parts most people never see.
The systems that decide who gets paid, who gets funded, who carries risk, who absorbs loss, who gets verified and who gets rejected.
That’s where I look.
And one of the places I quietly scan each year is the Forbes Fintech 50.
Not because it predicts anything.
Not because it tells us who will win.
I read it because it shows where business is tired of putting up with something.
Read the distribution, not the logos
Most people skim a list like this and look at brand names or funding rounds.
I step back and look at weight.
Where are the clusters?
Where is capital concentrating?
Where is it thinning out?
According to CB Insights, as reported in this year’s Forbes Fintech 50, private fintech funding rose to $53 billion last year. That’s the first increase in four years.
But it’s still well below the $152 billion invested in 2021.
That gap matters.
This is not peak euphoria money.
This is filtered money.
And filtered money tends to go toward problems that are costing real dollars.
Now look at the mix.
Business to Business Banking and Wall Street & Enterprise account for 20 of the 50 companies.
Payments dropped from 11 companies last year to 7.
Personal finance is present but not dominant.
Insurance and crypto are steady.
Real estate barely appears.
That is not random.
That is a pressure map.
If we were in a room together
If this were a strategy session, I wouldn’t start talking about fintech.
I’d ask:
What are we still tolerating that costs us money?
Where does friction quietly drain margin?
Where are we relying on systems that feel clunky but “good enough”?
Because when capital flows into enterprise financial software, identity verification platforms, fraud prevention systems and treasury management tools, it usually means someone somewhere is sick of absorbing that cost.
That’s the signal.
Look at what’s actually being built
Take Rogo
https://www.rogo.ai/
Secure generative AI inside finance teams.
That tells me decision speed and analysis inside deal environments is still expensive.
Slow thinking costs money.
Fragmented data costs money.
Manual workflow costs money.
Now look at Socure
https://www.socure.com/
Identity verification and fraud prevention.
Digital identity is no longer a compliance afterthought.
If identity checks are sloppy, fraud rises.
If identity checks are too strict, revenue stalls.
Verification has become core infrastructure in financial services.
Then there’s Ramp
https://ramp.com/
Corporate spend management.
And Mercury
https://mercury.com/
Banking infrastructure for startups and growing companies.
And Relay
https://relayfi.com/
Financial visibility for small businesses.
These are not flashy consumer fintech apps.
They are financial control systems.
They give leaders visibility.
And when visibility improves, behaviour changes.
Payments is another interesting shift.
You still see Stripe
https://stripe.com/
And Plaid
https://plaid.com/
But you also see companies like Justt
https://justt.ai/
Chargeback automation.
That tells you something.
Payments is not just about speed anymore.
It’s about dispute reduction.
Fraud control.
Margin protection.
The hypergrowth phase cools.
The discipline phase begins.
Insurance is steady too.
Kin Insurance
https://www.kin.com/
Data-driven underwriting.
AI-powered financial decision support.
Insurance sits where uncertainty gets priced.
If underwriting tools are attracting capital, it suggests risk is being recalibrated, not ignored.
Notice what’s missing
Real estate only appears twice on the list.
That absence speaks.
Higher interest rates.
Capital cost sensitivity.
Structural shifts in property markets.
When fintech innovation slows in a sector, it often means the pressure there is deeper than a software fix.
Absence is a signal.
This is not a fintech story
It’s easy to read the Forbes Fintech 50 as a start-up ranking.
I don’t.
I read it as a list of things business is no longer willing to put up with.
Manual reconciliation.
Fraud leakage.
Opaque treasury systems.
Slow underwriting.
Fragmented compliance processes.
Clunky embedded finance.
That’s not hype.
That’s operational friction.
And when institutions decide that friction is too expensive, capital moves.
Not to make noise.
To make fixes.
Meanwhile, everyone is watching AI
AI is reshaping knowledge work.
It’s changing how we write, analyse and create.
It deserves the attention it’s getting.
But while headlines fixate on AI strategy, the foundations of business are being reinforced underneath.
Embedded finance is becoming normal.
Identity verification is becoming smarter.
Fraud prevention systems are tightening.
Enterprise financial infrastructure is getting rebuilt quietly.
And when the plumbing changes, behaviour changes.
That’s the part many leaders miss.
The next 12 to 24 months
I don’t predict the future.
But I do watch where money concentrates.
If filtered capital is flowing into enterprise financial software, AI in financial services, fraud prevention, treasury visibility and embedded banking platforms, then expect acceleration there.
Expect:
More automation inside finance teams.
More embedded financial services inside enterprise software.
Stronger identity and verification layers.
Tighter cash flow management tools.
Smarter risk modelling.
Not because they are fashionable.
Because they solve measurable problems.
The ripple effects most organisations don’t see
When financial systems tighten, leadership changes.
CFOs become system designers.
Boards ask different questions about operational resilience.
Fraud becomes strategic, not technical.
Treasury becomes forward-looking, not reactive.
And work itself shifts.
Tasks that were once manual get decomposed.
Humans, machines and AI collaborate inside financial workflows.
Quietly.
Every day.
That’s where transformation actually lives.
Not in announcements.
In processes.
The real preparation question
If you’re leading an organisation, fintech or otherwise, this is the question:
Where are we still tolerating friction because we think that’s just how business works?
And is that friction about to be engineered out by someone else?
Because if it is, and you’re not preparing, you won’t feel it as innovation.
You’ll feel it as competitive pressure.
The Forbes Fintech 50 does not guarantee winners.
It doesn’t hand out trust.
It simply shows where business believes reinforcement is needed.
And right now, reinforcement is happening beneath the surface.
The foundations of business are being rebuilt.
Quietly.
While everyone watches AI.
You can’t predict tomorrow.
But you can watch where institutions are strengthening their foundations.
That’s where preparation begins.
Choose Forward.
To listen to more on this topic join Hong Kong Radio 3’s Phil Whelan and me, as we chat all things Forbes FinTech Top 50 in our weekly on air segment (18 minutes 12 seconds)
