From Aadhaar to iSPIRT – your guide to Indian biometrics.

Technology is finally bringing banking services to the unbanked in both developing and developed markets. While technology companies are driving this transformational shift, it looks increasingly likely that traditional banks will ultimately be service providers. They have everything to gain if they can form partnerships and create a long-term strategy.

US bank working with Singapore ride-hailer; aim to boost digital payment ambitions.

Dispute heads to the courts; Caixa and Sumitomo Mitsui roles key.

Sluggish economy, declining profits, slower loan growth; political rift with Beijing dulls Asia expansion hopes.

The bad-debt crisis killing some of Italy's biggest banks looks likely to get worse before it gets any better. That has frightening implications, not just for the country, but for the rest of Europe as well. In the following features, Louise Bowman and Dominic O'Neill investigate the options left to political and financial leaders from Rome to Frankfurt, and reveal the depth of the problems they face in Italy's bad-debt heartlands.

Every proposed scheme for sorting out Italy’s bad debt problems has its own shortcomings. And that’s before taking into account the fact that those problems could get worse. Pressure from the ECB is fanning the flames of the crisis. Fixing legacy problems could now require dramatic action.

The ECB’s demand for a €1 billion capital increase in the banking union’s first big merger between Banco Popolare and BPM has dowsed hopes for a slew of similar deals that might add value to banks that desperately need it.

Italian banks have allowed non-performing loans to swell to such numbers that they are now a central concern for the European and global financial system. Delving into Italy’s bad-debt suggests the problem might be even worse than public figures show. Can the country turn it all round – even if it has the time to do so?

The advantages of helicopter money are dubious and they come with large risks attached.

Goldman Sachs almost certainly made a good investment when it paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 for three speeches.

Unlike the contrarian investors who would welcome some creative disruption to market certainties, most bankers seem to fear the turmoil that could well follow an election victory for Donald Trump.

When Banorte’s former CEO left Mexico’s top-tier domestic bank, few expected to see him return on a motorbike chasing gym owners for overdue loan payments. But in taking over challenger Banco Azteca, Alejandro Valenzuela has accepted a completely new professional and personal task – running a bank for the previously unbanked.

Since demutualization, Brazil’s stock exchange, the BM&F Bovespa, has become hugely profitable and powerful but the majority of its brokers are struggling for survival. Doubts remain as to whether their mutual interests can be realigned but there is little sympathy for the brokers.

Shaken by war on its border, a political crisis that has left it without an elected president for two years, and a collapse in the price of oil, Lebanon’s economy is facing challenges unseen since the country’s own civil war.

Its banking sector has earned an unenviable reputation thanks to the growth of financial institutions serving non-residents – principally from Russia. Regulators are now, finally, cleaning house. But the challenge for local banks remains: how to make money in a small, over-banked domestic market.

Winners of Euromoney’s latest survey of the best managed companies in Asia needed to demonstrate environmental and social credentials.

The annual get-together in Washington is like the World Cup, Olympics and a royal wedding all rolled into one for the finance industry, writes John Anderson.

From Moldova to Mongolia, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has earned a reputation for going where other institutions fear to tread. Now it is putting its balance sheet to work plugging holes in banks’ capital bases.

When Mozambique struck gas in 2010, it was supposed to herald a bright, lucrative future for the poor African state. It hasn’t turned out that way. Rising debt, sluggish growth and a corrosive financial crisis have culminated in the IMF freezing payments to the struggling state. Its banking industry is one of the few brighter spots.

NBAD’s merger with FGB gives Abu Dhabi a bank with a similar market cap to firms such as DBS and Standard Chartered. At the same time, the emirate is merging two of the Gulf’s most powerful state investment companies, Ipic and Mubadala. Amid low oil prices, Gulf states are finding new strategies for national champions.

Asian developers dominate the 2016 Euromoney real estate survey, but the biggest changes are revealed among the global banks providing real estate finance.

Find out which companies are rated the best developers, advisors and banks in global real estate in the latest instalment of Euromoney’s Real Estate Awards.

UK commercial real estate’s post-Brexit shock has proved short-lived, and high-profile gating of investors in a number of UK real estate funds did not precipitate a flood of copy-cat behaviour. But the long-term outlook for investors and lenders in UK real estate remains extremely uncertain.

New data show multinationals taking a lower chunk of regional revenue – and it’s going to get worse.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are too expensive to go mainstream for now, but a future in which human currency traders have been marginalized by machines seems closer than ever.

The UK’s challenger banks are stuck in a capital bind, forced to compete with each other on far worse terms than the big banks, but Brexit could offer a glimmer of hope.

Singapore’s GIC has promised to expand in emerging markets (EMs) for years. The Vietcombank stake is a good way of doing it.

Singapore’s stock exchange isn’t going to get much more growth from domestic listings, so – like its equivalent in Hong Kong – it is seeking different asset classes and markets. Will Baltic Exchange make any difference?

Francisco González, executive chairman of BBVA