Home Awards Award Winners Best Financial Innovation Labs 2026
The 2026 Best Innovation Labs have become engines of experimentation, bringing together technology, talent, and strategic vision to test new concepts, accelerate development, and reimagine the future of financial services.
The organizations recognized this year have built ecosystems that encourage collaboration and calculated risk taking, creating spaces where emerging technologies can be translated into practical solutions with real world impact. Whether through partnerships with fintechs, internal incubators, or cross disciplinary research teams, they demonstrate that sustained innovation depends as much on culture and capability as it does on any single breakthrough.
The Best Innovation Labs 2026 winners exemplify the power of investing in ideas before they become products and in people before they become pioneers. Their work is helping shape the next generation of financial services and laying the foundation for innovations that will influence the industry for years to come.
The 2026 winners can be found below. Click on the winner to find out more about the lab and why it has been chosen.
Wenov by Attijariwafa is the Moroccan bank’s innovation arm and accelerator. It develops and manages bank innovation programs. As noted above, the lab focuses on incremental innovation — or step-by-step improvements to existing products and services.
Since its inception in 2020, Wenov has worked with more than 160 fintech startups across Africa, helping them integrate their products into banking use cases. It has developed proofs of concept (PoCs) that improved the bank’s artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and fraud-detection efforts.
Programs offered include the fintech catalyst Open Start by Wenov. Through this program, startups and business units work together to build products that measurably improve bank performance. Wenov Think & Make is a collective intelligence program designed to strengthen the innovation culture within Attijariwafa bank. It encourages rank-and-file employees to propose innovative ideas. Wenovx offers a series of lectures focusing on finance, digital transformation, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
Hosted by DBS Bank, the DBS Innovation Lab is one of Singapore’s largest innovation centers. A 16,000-square-foot coworking space, dubbed DBS Asia X (DAX), both houses and fosters collaboration among DBS employees, startups, and the broader fintech community.
The lab works with business units across the bank to nurture fintech innovation in the digital banking, sustainable finance, emerging technologies, and customer care fields. Innovations are deployed in DBS’s key Asian markets: Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India, Indonesia and Taiwan. Areas of study include agentic AI, quantum computing, and the spending and saving habits of children. Startups receive bank mentorship and support. They may also obtain funding opportunities from the bank’s partner network. Lab innovations include enhanced cross-border payment systems for easing digital payment and tokenization processes. An AI-powered talent acquisition platform has also been developed by the lab.
The FinTech Division of Fubon Financial Holding Co. acts as the financial innovation hub for the Taipei-based organization. Established in 2021, the Fubon Enterprise Innovation Hub works with outside startups to develop financial innovations for the holding company and its subsidiaries. Relationships with startups also help Fubon research new technology trends, evaluate technology resources, and promote the deployment of large-scale projects. Projects are developed for use in the fintech, insurtech, and compliance-technology fields. Under those umbrella categories, lab efforts focus on innovations in AI services; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) technologies; data analysis; and intelligent operations. A broad partner ecosystem includes accelerators such as 500 Startups, SparkLabs, PwC, and more.
Thus far, more than 150 startups and technology companies worldwide have submitted proposals for various innovation initiatives. These proposals have resulted in more than 20 PoCs. Participating startups receive subsidies of roughly $3,000 to $9,000. They also receive mentorship from Fubon executives, coaching in fintech financial compliance, networking opportunities, and help finding entry points into financial markets. Recent lab developments include an AI-powered legal compliance platform, a knowledge retrieval engine, and a transcriptiongeneration platform. In addition, the lab has facilitated more than 30,000 technical exchange interactions: workshops, matchmaking sessions, and technical discussions.
Garanti BBVA Partners is the technology-acceleration arm of Türkiye’s Garanti BBVA bank. Launched in 2016, it acts as a corporate-embedded innovation lab, directly connecting startups with banking infrastructure and senior leadership. The lab, based in Istanbul and open to…