It is 13 years since the deposit haircut put the Cypriot banking system at the centre of an unprecedented economic crisis. The risks to the financial sector have not gone away. They have changed shape. So has the world around them, and that brings Cyprus and its companies not only new challenges but a chance to claim a stronger role on the new financial map.
Technology has created a very different landscape. Banks, fintech firms and financial services companies now face challenges that would have sounded like science fiction a few years ago. The issue is security in the financial sector, and the infrastructure needed to face down digital threats.
There is good news. Unlike in past crises in traditional banking, the sector appears to have prepared itself better and faster. The digital transition, which the pandemic accelerated, was accompanied, fortunately, by heavy investment in cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, data protection, operational resilience and systems that flag suspicious transactions. Yet the danger is still there. Every new security measure and every new technology is followed by fraudsters looking for the next way to exploit a weakness in the system or, quite often, in the citizen who now handles most of his transactions digitally.
The way has changed, not the risk
Financial fraud did not arrive with internet banking, and it will not disappear, whatever shape banking takes in future. It has always existed and always will. What has changed is how someone can lose their money.
Once, if someone needed 5,000 pounds, they went to the bank, took the cash and carried it home themselves. The risk lay on the way home and in where the money was kept. Today the same transfer takes a few seconds from any mobile phone. The journey from bank to home, and from home to safe or drawer, has gone digital. So has the risk.
It is worth stating the simple point. Moving cash used to be the depositor’s responsibility. Today the bank’s security systems are part of the transfer. They can spot unusual transactions and movements, and even block them if they look suspicious. Technology may have created different risks, but it has also added layers of protection that traditional banking never had.
So the stakes are no longer only the protection of citizens’ money inside banks. They also cover personal and financial data, which can be used to “haircut” people’s finances, in a different way this time.
Let us tell the whole truth. Financial institutions have strong safeguards today and, most of the time, are ahead of the fraudsters in defence. But that cannot be taken for granted. The scams go on, and security has to evolve constantly because the threats do. The big challenge for banks is not to build a system that is safe only for today and only for themselves. It is to build one that can adapt to tomorrow’s threat, including the user of the system, the citizen, through whom most frauds succeed.
How citizens now judge a bank
Years ago, a bank’s reputation rested largely on its size, its deposits and its financial results. Depositors wanted to know their money sat in an institution that was not about to collapse.
Today another factor carries real weight: how safe the services a bank offers are. A simple example shows how far things have moved. Once, hardly any depositors cared whether a branch had double doors and glass, alarms, impenetrable safes or a guard. Today the digital equivalents of those doors and alarms matter a great deal to them. That shows citizens have understood that a financial organisation is no longer judged only by the size of its portfolio, but also by its level of technological development and the digital security it offers.
Forbes Cyprus opens the conversation
With this new environment in mind, the Phileleftheros Media Group, together with Capital S.A., is holding the Forbes Cyprus Next Generation Banking & Fintech Summit on October 13, 2026 at the Four Seasons in Limassol.
It is the first Forbes Cyprus conference on banking and fintech. It aims to open a broader discussion on the possibilities and the challenges of the new financial era, bringing together policymakers, supervisory authorities, banks, fintech firms, investors, technology companies and academics. The summit matters more than its title suggests on a first reading, for the reasons above.
The whole security cycle will sit at the same table, from the companies themselves to specialists. They will examine not only where banking is heading but what Cyprus needs to win a substantive role in this new market.
The question the summit will answer is not only whether banks need new technologies. It is whether a small country like Cyprus can do more than follow these developments, and build a competitive ecosystem that attracts companies, investment and human talent. That matters, because these changes give Cyprus the chance to link the new banking with the direction of its economy.
The presence of President Nikos Christodoulides, Central Bank Governor Christodoulos Patsalides, Deputy Minister of Research and Social Innovation Nicodemos Damianou, CySEC chairman George Karatzias and distinguished professor Costas Markides, together with senior executives of banks and fintech firms, underlines the summit’s importance for the sector and for the state, which wants Cyprus on the international financial map.
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