Your embedded INVESTMENT and INSURANCE summer reading: What happened in 2025 (so far)

Hi embedded finance friend

If I am being honest, I was most afraid of this edition during summer mode. As a regular newsletter reader, you hopefully know that Embedded Finance consist of five financial products (banking, payment, lending, investment, and insurance). But you will have also realised that my focus is more on the first three than the last two.

Thus, summarising my news coverage for the Embedded Investment and Insurance ecosystem will be less material than the other editions, even though I have already combined two financial products. Why is there so little news for each of them? I explain in the newsletter below.

As a reminder, this is the final week of summer mode for my newsletter. Due to the low number of new announcements, I'm summarising the biggest stories from January to July 2025, and this edition focuses entirely on Embedded Investment and Insurance:

• August 5th → Banking (Link)

• August 12th → Lending (Link)

• August 19th → Payment (Link)

• August 26th → Investment & Insurance (today!)

And now let’s dive in 👇

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Embedded Finance in Central and Eastern Europe with Danuta Czapeczko from PragmaGO (Podcast)

Think embedded finance only happens in the US and Western Europe? Think again.

In this episode, we dive deep into the thriving embedded finance ecosystem of Central & Eastern Europe with Danuta Czapeczko, an industry veteran from PragmaGO, the region's largest embedded lending provider.

In the episode, we discuss:

• Why Poland has 380+ Fintech companies you've never heard of

• How Allegro (Europe's first marketplace) is crushing embedded finance

• The surprising transportation and retail innovations happening in CEE

• The unbanked populations in CEE represent massive untapped markets

• B2B embedded lending is exploding across e-commerce platforms

You can find the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Top Stories in Embedded Investment (Jan - Jul 2025)

My comment: The news about Embedded Investment in the first half of 2025 was exclusively about infrastructure providers. I have covered exactly zero non-financial brands in launching or growing their investment product. Did I miss them? If that’s the case, please send the links to me. But I have my doubts, since the core product from most non-financial brands is significantly different from investing. As a comparison, when a B2B SaaS company launches a new embedded banking product, it is likely an ERP, digital accounting, vertical SaaS or similar, but rather unlikely a CRM or outreach tool because it is much harder for them to combine their core products with financial services.

While the same applies to non-financial companies and investment products, I am still extremely excited about the opportunities. It might be a bigger stretch for non-financial companies, but if a company can crack the nut, the benefits might be substantial (perhaps not just for the company, but also for the users and maybe society).