Author: Gayathri

The global Property & Casualty (P&C) Core Insurance Platform market has crossed a decisive inflection point. Between the 2024 and 2025 SPARK Matrix™ evaluations, the conversation has shifted from core modernization to core intelligence. Platforms are no longer judged solely on policy administration breadth, but on how effectively they embed AI, orchestrate workflows, and scale decision-making across underwriting, claims, and servicing. The SPARK Matrix™ serves as a strategic lens for vendors and insurers alike, benchmarking Technology Excellence against Customer Impact, and revealing not just where vendors stand, but why they move year over year. Understanding the SPARK Matrix™ Advantage Before…

In enterprise finance, “intercompany” is rarely the headline. Yet it is often the hidden lever behind faster closes, cleaner audits, fewer disputes, and better control over multi-entity complexity. In other words: it is the kind of problem buyers will pay to make disappear, quietly, quickly, and with minimal risk. That is exactly why QKS Group’s SPARK Matrix™: Intercompany Accounting Software, Q4 2025 matters to vendors. Not as another analyst graphic to paste into a slide deck, but as a structured market signal, one that helps vendors sharpen positioning, de-risk product bets, and create a more credible narrative for CFO, controllership,…

The Merchant Payment Platform (MPP) market has crossed a decisive inflection point. Between the 2024 and 2025 SPARK Matrix™ evaluations, the category has moved from a competitive race around acceptance breadth to a strategic contest around orchestration, real-time liquidity, and ecosystem leverage. Vendors are no longer benchmarked on how many payment methods they support, but on how effectively they unify commerce, settlements, risk, and value-added services into a merchant-centric operating layer. This year-on-year comparison unpacks how vendor positions have evolved, why some players strengthened leadership, why others recalibrated, and what the SPARK Matrix™ signals for vendors aiming to stay ahead…

2025 was the year fintech stopped talking about future rails and actually started building on them. AI moved into regulated production, CBDCs and stablecoins gained real legal frameworks, instant payments became a default expectation in many markets, and tokenization shifted from slideware to early stage financial plumbing. 2025: The Year Fintech Got Serious About Infrastructure If the last decade of fintech was about pretty interfaces and rapid onboarding, 2025 was about rewiring the back end. AI shifted from demos to regulated workflows. Central banks doubled down on CBDC pilots. Stablecoins gained regulatory guardrails in major markets. Instant payments went from…

By 2026, many compliance teams won’t just use AI models they’ll supervise digital colleagues that monitor transactions, triage alerts, draft case notes, and explain every decision in regulator-ready language. The shift to explainable, agentic AI is turning FCC and risk functions from slow control centers into proactive, real-time defense systems. Trend: Explainable & Agentic AI Becomes the FCC “Nerve Center” Financial crime has gone fully real-time. Instant payments, always-on digital channels, and crypto rails mean suspicious activity can start, move, and disappear in seconds. Traditional controls, overnight batches, manual triage, and siloed monitoring simply can’t keep up. At the same…

Banking is shifting from “Where do you bank?” to “How does your money work for you, wherever you are?” The next phase of banking services is being shaped by three forces working in concert: deep personalization, AI threaded through every interaction, and open APIs that stitch together seamless financial journeys across an ecosystem of providers. The new CX battleground in banking For most of the last century, banks competed on physical reach, balance sheet strength, and product range. If you had branches on every corner, a competitive rate table, and a recognizable brand, you were in good shape. Those rules…

Digital banking is no longer an experiment operating alongside traditional finance. For millions of customers, a mobile-first bank is now the primary financial relationship, not a secondary convenience. Regulators have adjusted their posture accordingly. Neobanks are no longer viewed as temporary challengers learning in public, but as systemically relevant financial infrastructure. In this environment, regulatory risk is not a compliance function issue or a legal footnote. It is a core business risk that directly affects growth velocity, capital efficiency, valuation, and customer trust. BaFin’s long and evolving intervention into N26 shows how quickly supervisory engagement can escalate into binding constraints,…

Fintechs have outgrown the patchwork era of separate tools for KYC, AML, fraud, and onboarding. A new generation of all-in-one RegTech platforms is emerging, promising a single compliance stack where financial crime controls, onboarding, and enterprise risk run as one continuous workflow instead of disconnected silos. The Compliance Silo Problem in Modern Fintechs Most fintechs did not design their compliance stacks; they accumulated them under pressure. A KYC provider to get live quickly, an AML system added after the first regulatory review, a fraud tool bolted on once chargebacks spike, and a spreadsheet-driven process for periodic reviews and enhanced due…

By the time India enters 2026, the investing world will feel very different from what most retail savers grew up with. The RBI is easing rates into a low-inflation environment, the rupee has tested record lows, and domestic investors, through mutual funds and direct equity, are increasingly driving the market narrative. In this landscape, “just start a SIP in a couple of equity funds” is no longer a complete plan. The real question is how to blend mutual funds, FDs, gold, REITs, ETFs, and even a tiny sliver of crypto into a portfolio that can live with volatility and currency…

Over the past five years, India’s consumer credit story has quietly changed its entry point. For a 24-year-old gig worker in Bengaluru or a first-job engineer in Jaipur, the first brush with formal credit is less likely to be a bank branch or a plastic card, and more likely a notification: “You’ve been approved for ₹15,000. Tap to activate.” The macro context explains why: Once payments live on the phone, credit naturally follows. BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) and micro-credit apps have embedded credit into everyday digital behaviour, food delivery, quick-commerce, utilities, and education, rather than asking users to separately…