JPMorganChase's national security initiative has deployed $5bn in direct equity and financed or facilitated more than $230bn of transactions in its first year, placing the largest US bank at the centre of a widening shift in how Wall Street treats industrial policy. The bank disclosed the figures on 19 October 2026, twelve months after launching its $1.5tn, ten-year Security and Resiliency Initiative (SRI), a programme that fuses the firm's balance sheet with Washington's res

Rawbank, the Democratic Republic of Congo's largest bank by assets, is widening its digital banking offer by adopting the SBS Digital Banking Suite, extending a software relationship that already runs the lender's core system. The bank says the platform will speed up online account opening, card and payment management, and remote self-service for customers spread across a country where most adults still sit outside the formal banking system. The agreement, announced on 20 Oct

Europe's securities watchdog wants to know if tokens are safe enough to margin a swap. In Washington and Frankfurt, infrastructure giants have already started answering the question in production. For a decade, "tokenised assets" sat in the industry's slide decks beside "quantum" and "metaverse", polite nods at a future that always seemed to be two years out. As of this week, that future is being argued over in a 30-question consultation paper, run through limited production

The global insurance market will grow from USD 9.54 trillion in 2025 to USD 19.77 trillion by 2035, a compound annual rate of 7.56%, according to a forecast published on 20 October 2026 by Indian research firm Maximize Market Research. The projection implies the industry adds USD 10.23 trillion of value in a decade. It also sits noticeably above the trajectory the sector's own reinsurers are modelling, which is the first reason finance professionals should read a vendor marke

Two eye-catching deals, one blunt warning from ITC Vegas, and a payout model that beats the claim form to the finish line. Here is what the past seven days actually told us about where insurance is heading. The week InsurTech stopped being a side show As of this week, InsurTech is firmly back on the front page, and not in the usual "funding is cold" register. According to InsurTech NY's weekly roundup for 5 to 11 October, Ledgebrook's $200m primary equity raise led the week,

Binance AI Pro, a conversational trading agent that turns plain-language ideas into tested, automated strategies, is now open to every user of the largest crypto exchange by trading volume, with no coding and no separate sign-up. Announced on 19 October 2026 from Abu Dhabi, the agent lets a user describe the assets, conditions, parameters and risk limits they want, then builds, tests and renders the strategy as a visual workflow for review before any money moves. For finance