Embedded Finance Moves from Add-On to Strategy: CFOs Target Growth and Control

ClearBank is a cloud-native, regulated clearing bank that provides secure infrastructure, enabling businesses to hold and move money securely and quickly. Through its embedded banking solution, companies can offer banking services to their customers without requiring them to become banks themselves – whether that’s secure, real-time payments or current and savings accounts. Its proposition emphasises high operational standards, while giving finance teams the visibility and payment speed they need. This is useful as embedded models ramp in volume.

In this interview, Chris Newman, Head of Corporate at ClearBank, shares what the bank’s latest research signals for CFOs and controllers.

What’s changed and why it matters now

Across UK corporates, embedded finance has moved from a niche experiment to a board-level priority.

ClearBank’s research points to 38% of C-suite leaders now viewing embedded finance as critical to company growth.

Nearly half see it as a way to launch new revenue-generating services such as branded accounts, savings and budgeting tools, and lending.

More than a quarter believe it could deliver double-digit growth, a scale that aligns with external estimates of an around €100bn euro-area opportunity by decade’s end.

The flip side: technical complexity tops the barrier list (cited by 61% of leaders), followed by regulatory hurdles(nearly half).

On the demand side, consumer-facing firms report 23% prioritising loyalty and brand engagement via features like cashback accounts and instalment lending, evidence that the value case extends beyond cost to stickier customer relationships.

Where value is emerging first

Early wins are clustering in:

• Retail and eCommerce: embedding branded accounts, savings tools and flexible payment options directly into platforms.
• Healthcare: embedded insurance and streamlined payment flows to improve patient experience and collections.
• ERP, payroll and HR platforms: business accounts, earned-wage access and savings features that create financial-wellbeing value while opening new B2B revenue lines.

From transactions to loyalty

Leaders describe a clear shift from transactional thinking to value-driven engagement. When finance products live inside the brand experience, journeys become personalised, satisfaction rises and repeat usage follows. The data produced by those interactions helps teams anticipate needs and even spot at-risk customers earlier, moving loyalty beyond points-based schemes.

Operating model: from reactive oversight to proactive management

Most finance teams still monitor embedded finance with end-of-day checks and manual reconciliations. That is reactive. A proactive model treats embedded finance as a live, regulated product line that is managed in real time.

What proactive looks like

• Real-time telemetry: cash positions, settlement flows and scheme statuses visible as they change.
• Exception-first workflows: auto-generated cases for breaks, delays and chargebacks, with owners, SLAs and aged-item dashboards.
• Automated reconciliations: multi-ledger matching across processors, schemes and safeguarding accounts, with clear audit trails.
• Operational runbooks: incident playbooks, handover notes and on-call rotas so issues are contained within minutes, not days.
• Decision support: alerts that are actionable, for example “payout failure rate above threshold, pause batch and retry using rail B.”

The right tools
Prioritise a unified, real-time ledger, configurable reconciliation rules, role-based dashboards, end-to-end transaction tracing, and exportable regulatory reports. Look for granular permissions, immutable logs, sandbox environments that mirror production, and clear metrics: straight-through processing rate, approval rate, break rate, exception age, fraud loss per transaction, and cost-to-serve.

The right partners
Choose regulated banking and payments partners with proven scheme access and resilient, API-first platforms. Due diligence should confirm licences and permissions, financial strength, data residency options, security certifications (for example ISO 27001 and PCI DSS if cards are in scope), uptime history, RTO and RPO commitments, safeguarding and settlement controls, and transparency on incidents. Agree a shared operating model: joint steerco, named service owners, SLOs and SLAs, quarterly risk reviews, and a roadmap that aligns to your product backlog.

How to implement
Start with a high-frequency journey and a narrow slice of functionality, then run a controlled pilot. Instrument everything, define pass or fail thresholds in advance, and scale only when the unit economics, risk controls and customer outcomes meet target.

ROI: realistic, but only with the right foundations

Finance leaders chasing efficiency, cost reduction and incremental revenue can see meaningful returns if they choose customer-centric use cases and fit-for-purpose infrastructure. Integrating payments, accounts and lending into core journeys trims third-party friction and unlocks new income streams. The main frictions include integration, regulationand internal capability gaps. These are best mitigated by partnering with a regulated provider that assumes compliance overheads and brings embedded-ready tech.

“Move from reactive oversight to proactive management.” As volumes climb, real-time visibility and resilient, cloud-native scaling become table stakes for finance teams.

Control and visibility at scale

Batch-based processes create delays and blind spots. ClearBank advocates real-time monitoring of transactions and cash positions, automated reconciliations, and cloud-native, auto-scaling infrastructure so spikes do not compromise control. Cross-functional delivery, with finance, tech, legal and CX aligned to one roadmap, accelerates first deployments and hardens governance.

What this means for firms

• Mid-market and platform businesses: Pick one high-frequency journey (onboarding, checkout, payouts) and embed a single, high-utility feature first to prove the unit economics.
• CFOs and controllers: Treat embedded finance as a regulated product line: set controls, reconciliation standards and SLAs up front, and insist on real-time operational visibility.
• People platforms (ERP, payroll, HR): Fast path to value via earned-wage access, savings pots and business accounts with clear employer and employee benefit cases.

Checklist: landing your first embedded finance use case

1. Map the flow: Where does money move today? Identify latency, failure points and compliance obligations.
2. Select the use case: Prioritise one with obvious customer pull (retention uplift, conversion gain) and measurable P&L impact.
3. Choose the partner: Look for regulated accounts, real-time payments, and a provider that assumes the compliance burden; validate API maturity and reporting depth.
4. Stand up controls: Real-time dashboards, reconciliations and exception handling; document roles across finance, risk, tech and CX.
5. Scale safely: Prove the unit economics, then expand features and geographies while keeping governance tight as volumes grow.