Key Trends Shaping Wealth Management in MEA – 2026
Discover how shifting client expectations, emerging technologies and global dynamics are redefining wealth management across the Middle East and Africa.
The wealth management landscape across the Middle East and Africa is undergoing rapid transformation. From rising millionaire migration to the growing influence of AI and evolving investor preferences, firms must adapt quickly to stay competitive.
This exclusive white paper explores the most critical trends shaping the future of wealth management in the region – and what they mean for your business.
What you will learn:
- How global wealth migration is reshaping regional opportunities
- The growing role of AI and automation in scaling advisory services
- Shifts toward alternative, digital and ESG investments
- Why fee transparency and value demonstration are now essential
- Unlocking growth in the mass affluent segment
- The rise of partnership-driven and specialized service models
Download the full report to explore actionable insights and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving market.
As client expectations evolve and competition intensifies, wealth managers must rethink their operating models, technology strategies and service delivery to capture new growth opportunities.
The Progressive Core Banking Modernization Starter Guide
Download the full articleYour Starting Point for Progressive Modernization
At Temenos, we speak with banking leaders every day, and they consistently highlight the need to streamline engagement, increase product agility, and reduce dependence on outdated and costly core technology. Many also recognize the urgency of modernizing decades‑old systems but hesitate due to the cost, complexity, and resilience concerns associated with deep technical debt.
This hesitation also limits their ability to leverage modern technologies—such as advanced data tooling and AI agents—which require scalable, high‑performance, real‑time infrastructure to deliver meaningful impact.
What may feel like a competitive advantage today will soon become a basic license to operate. There is not a one-size-fits-all answer for this: there is no single core modernization path for universal success.
A bank’s departure point, risk appetite, future operating model, regulatory posture, and strategic ambitions all shape its modernization journey.
This guide outlines proven progressive modernization paths through composable capabilities, SaaS adoption and point solutions, that enable banks to address legacy constraints safely, deliver measurable business outcomes, and align technology investment with strategic priorities.
These paths are not mutually exclusive: they can be applied independently or combined over time within a single organization, depending on a bank’s starting point, target architecture, and broader business ambitions.
We also address the discovery phase of a core transformation program, helping banks assess their starting point and understand the range of modernization options available. While core transformation is inherently complex, the focus is not on technology choices alone, but on building a future‑ready core that delivers business value—combining flexibility, resilience, data, and evolving architecture to support user experiences, transformation programs, and regulatory and governance requirements.
Across the industry, we see how even well‑intentioned transformation efforts can drift back into legacy patterns if not designed for long‑term agility.
What is Progressive Banking Modernization?
Banks must evolve their monolithic core platforms while preserving the operational stability these systems have long provided; otherwise, they risk failing to meet rising customer expectations and evolving market demands. Rather than pursuing a costly, high-risk, large-scale replacement, banks can incrementally decouple functions, leverage modern and resilient services, and enhance agility where it delivers the greatest impact.
Progressive modernization of core technology can be delivered in various ways, but its goal remains the same: to reduce disruption, spread investment over time, enable faster innovation, and preserve the robustness of proven legacy components—all while evolving the architecture into a more flexible, client-experience-led and robust banking platform.
The real question for banks is: how do you accelerate your key priorities, stay genuinely future-proof, and address the technical debt that slows you down?
Modernize your Core Banking System
Banks of every size can modernize at their own pace, accelerate innovation, and stay future-ready with a flexible, resilient core that evolves with market, regulatory, and technology demands.
Temenos has been recognized in FinTech Global’s WealthTech100 list of the world’s most innovative wealth technology companies for 2026.
WealthTech100 is an annual list of 100 of the world’s most innovative wealth technology companies, selected by a panel of industry experts and analysts.
Every leader in wealth and asset management, private banking and financial advisory needs to know about the companies as they consider and develop their digital transformation strategies and new customer propositions.
Discover why Temenos has again earned its place on the list, plus an interview with Kaue Tozzi, Head of Product Strategy & Partnerships at Temenos.
Technology alone isn’t the answer. But when it is combined with strong human judgement and a relentless focus on client outcomes, it becomes a powerful competitive advantage.”
Kaue Tozzi, Head of Product Strategy & Partnerships at Temenos
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Temenos named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms, Q2 2026
Temenos is positioned as a leader in the Forrester Wave™: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms, Q2 2026. The report scored vendors against 30 criteria relating to both their current offering and strategy.
According to the report
Temenos offers a digital banking engagement platform that is strong on out-of-the-box (OOTB) solutions and multi- and cross-channel support. The vendor supports banks in every region and provides localized ‘microapps’ that are specific to dozens of markets…Temenos is a good fit for banks seeking a wide range of capabilities and a strong architecture foundation.”
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Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. This report is part of a broader collection of Forrester resources, including interactive models, frameworks, tools, data, and access to analyst guidance. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here.
Technology Trends Redefining Banking
An overview across banking segments
Banks today face mounting pressures: rising customer expectations, regulatory scrutiny, increasing cyber threats, and the relentless pace of innovation. The institutions pulling ahead are those that treat technology as a strategic asset, not an operational burden.
This report helps banking leaders understand:
- The technology trends delivering the greatest impact across segments
- How generative and agentic AI are transforming productivity, workflows, and customer outcomes
- Why modern, cloud‑native, composable platforms are now essential foundations for growth
- How leaders are increasing share of wallet, improving cross-sell, and using real-time, AI-driven capabilities to grow in areas such as DeFi and Payments
In collaboration with Bain & Company, this report brings together industry research, market insights and Temenos Value Benchmark data to give banking leaders an evidence-based view of the trends shaping their banking segments, across technology, retail and business banking, corporate and commercial banking, wealth management and payments. It is designed to support practical, informed decision‑making, grounded in what has been shown to drive value.
Explore segment trends
Unlocking Growth and Resilience
The Strategic Imperative for Banking Modernisation in Italy
Temenos and Azienda Banca – Italy, conducted a research in collaboration with 11 leading Italian banks. The research reveals a sector facing multifaceted and mounting challenges. From external market forces redefining the financial services ecosystem to legacy systems’ limitations, banks must adapt to new realities with greater agility and flexibility than ever before. That’s not easy. In 2026, the Italian banking sector will continue to serve as a pillar of the national economy, supported by Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit and other large banks. A vast network of small and medium-sized financial institutions along with regional, cooperative and savings banks will also contribute to productivity. This sound structural mix has historically supported financial inclusion across the country, but operational and technological challenges will continue to arrive in growing numbers for those who do not modernise. Factor in the rise of agentic AI and other emerging technologies, hesitation to innovate can lead to lost customers to traditional competitors and native challengers.
Key topics to discover:
- The Italian Banking Landscape – A Strong Market Under Pressure
- Italian Banks at a Crossroads: Navigating Complexity in a Changing Financial Landscape
- Italian banking market – shift in priority
- Realizing the Business Value of Core Banking Modernisation
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The Path to Intelligent Banking in ASEAN
Discover how ASEAN banks can modernize their core, unify fragmented data, and embed AI across their operations to drive growth, resilience, and financial inclusion.
Southeast Asia’s banking sector is at an inflection point. With mobile penetration soaring, super apps normalizing embedded finance, and 70% of the population still underbanked, the opportunity for intelligent banking has never been greater. But so are the barriers.
Legacy infrastructure constrains 90-95% of ASEAN banks. Fragmented data limits AI potential. Regulatory complexity varies country by country. The banks that will lead the next decade are those that modernize now, intelligently, incrementally, and without disrupting what works.
This whitepaper from Temenos, Red Hat, and Systems Limited maps the path forward.
What you’ll learn:
- Why core banking modernization is the foundation, not the destination, of intelligent banking
- How to unify fragmented data and accelerate your time-to-AI
- The architecture enabling ASEAN banks to run securely across hybrid and multi-cloud environments
- How AI is being embedded into loan origination, fraud detection, and customer engagement today
- How VP Bank modernized its core, cut overnight processing time by 40%, and became Vietnam’s #1 ranked mobile banking app
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A strategic guide for ASEAN banking leaders ready to move from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide transformation.
IDC MarketScape 2025 North American Retail Digital Banking Solutions Report
Temenos has been positioned as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: North America Retail Digital Banking Solutions 2025–2026 Vendor Assessment.
According to the report, “Temenos Digital is well suited for midsize to large banks, credit unions, direct banks, and neobanks seeking a core-agnostic, modern digital banking platform deployable across multiple environments.”
The report noted the following strengths for Temenos:
- Scale and reliability: Long-standing public company with strong financial stability and market presence
- Flexible architecture: API-driven, microservices-based design enables omni-channel delivery, advanced security features, and deployment on cloud or on premises
- Ecosystem and integrations: Pre-integrated with Temenos Core while remaining core agnostic and extended through the Temenos Exchange marketplace for fintech add-ons
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IDC MarketScape 2025 Wealth Management Report
Temenos has been positioned as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Wealth Management Technology Services for Investment Advisors 2025 Vendor Assessment.
The IDC MarketScape notes the following strengths for Temenos:
- Integrated front office to back office specific to wealth
- Functionally rich for portfolio management
- Global and local compliance expertise
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Performance Benchmark Report 2025
Banks need systems that are fast, secure, scalable and AI driven, as well as sustainable. Check out our latest report with Microsoft, where we put the Temenos Banking Platform to the test again.
Elastic scalability for core banking goes beyond maximizing performance. To help banks meet the growing importance of carbon-conscious computing in banking, the Temenos Performance Benchmark 2025 provides insight into how high transaction performance can be delivered with a reduced carbon footprint.
As banks increasingly adopt AI for financial crime mitigation, application development, and operational efficiency, we’ve also integrated AI workloads into the 2025 benchmark. This allows us to test scalability and performance, helping banks understand the infrastructure and capabilities needed to run these advanced applications reliably and efficiently in real-world environments.
Each year, Temenos conducts a production-grade simulation in collaboration with key partners to validate the latest release of the Temenos Banking Platform in a real-world, production-like environment (see 2024 benchmark). This rigorous test pushes the boundaries of elasticity, transaction throughput, response times, efficiency, and sustainability.
What you’ll discover
Delivering significant efficiency and decarbonization, we achieved a notable 17,000+ transactions per second (TPS).
As banks increasingly adopt AI for financial crime mitigation, we integrated AI workloads into the 2025 benchmark.
How we have enhanced performance through more efficient code and the use of Azure ARM Cobalt chipsets.
Essential insights into how banks can meet evolving sustainability standards and advance their ESG commitments.
Benchmark partner
Microsoft Azure
In 2011, Temenos and Microsoft were the first in the industry to bring core banking to the cloud. Today, the partnership supports financial institutions that leverage the cloud around the world. The combination of Temenos SaaS and the Azure Cloud Platform enables banks to leverage modern and trusted cloud technology that can live up to specific requirements across regions, including data regulation, security, and compliance.
Explore the results and take the next step toward the future of banking.
Discover how a faster, more secure, scalable, AI-driven, and sustainable banking platform can transform your financial institution.
Learn more about Temenos Technology
Learn how we empower our clients to benefit from continuous innovation, driven by our market-leading R&D investment in our single code base.
Temenos Sustainability Benchmark Report 2024
The 2024 benchmark is centered on delivering significant efficiency and decarbonization, achieving a notable 15,000 transactions per second (TPS).