WELCOME TO FINANCE CONNECT LEADERS’ SUMMIT EUROPE 2026

Following the Compass: mapping a changing route for auto and equipment finance

How to increase margins and retain resilience despite increasing geopolitical risk, rising fraud exposure, and rebalanced public policy priorities.

An invitation-only, free-to-attend summit for senior auto and equipment finance leaders to chart opportunities and mitigate risks in a changing marketplace.

Geopolitics now drives economics. Trade is weaponised, supply chains redrawn, and EU policy is steering, via the Competitiveness Compass, toward greater unification, more internal investment, and the retention of a sustainability agenda that increasingly diverges from global trends. At the same time, Europe faces additional challenges in financial services including a marked rise in fraud—particularly cyber-enabled fraud—that is affecting lenders, intermediaries, and customers across its borders. Alongside this, private credit has become a critical and fast-expanding source of funding for non-bank lenders, yet its penetration, structures, and constraints differ significantly across EU markets. This summit will explore how senior auto and equipment finance leaders can navigate uncertain economic conditions, build profits, fight cyber-crime, deliver resilience to its customers, and access the wholesale funding needed to fill a EUR400-600bn funding gap for SMEs; an over reliance on bank-funding; and a still-to-be-completed Capital Markets Union.

• Get briefed on the progress of change in the EU as it responds to external threats, fraud risks, and the need for deeper, more flexible sources of private and institutional capital.
• Debate with industry colleagues on how geopolitical, technological, and financial developments are reshaping business models—and how lenders are responding.
• Network with Europe’s leading auto and equipment lenders. 

Senior attendees are expected from EU’s largest banks, manufacturer captives, and independent lenders and from the world’s most innovative specialist technology providers for equipment finance and other industry suppliers.