Regulators here made strides to encourage innovation in 2016, while Brexit cast doubt on the London fintech boom. Yet the cross-Atlantic payments battle is just beginning.

2016 was very good to these financial services executives, who succeeded where others failed, sold their businesses for large sums, felt the love of regulators or could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Banks are grappling with new challenges in trying to work with voice assistants like Alexa in Amazon's Echo to allow customers to check balances and perform other tasks. But with voice banking on the horizon, banks cannot afford to stall their efforts.

Wells Fargo's innovation group has appointed Peggy Mangot for the newly created position of senior vice president of its design and delivery leadership team.

Royal Bank of Canada has introduced a video chat service for its small-business banking customers whose hectic lives may not allow for frequent branch visits.

Clarity Money, an artificial intelligence-driven payment concierge, launched on Wednesday, a move its founders hope will provide consumers with an advanced financial health tool.

The bank's new CEO, Onur Genc, fresh from Turkey, will have to find a way to leverage the considerable tech and innovation investments the bank has made and strengthen the brand's U.S. presence.

Banks have used biometrics for about a decade, but there are a number of hurdles that banks, device makers and customers need to overcome before passwords are history.

The new year will bring risk in marketplace lending, but progress will be made in micropayments platforms and regulators embracing innovators.

Since technology is so ingrained in every aspect of banking, some say the idea of looking at tech spending as a stand-alone budget item is antiquated.