Published: April 13, 2026
Temenos 20-year veteran sees plenty of opportunity to catch a European fintech unicorn or more in the next five years. Chuard joins Aperture Capital’s investment committee where he is already a strategic investor via his own family office.
Max Chuard takes on a new role as a member of Swiss VC firm Aperture Capital’s investment committee. Chuard is more than just a part of the investing team, however, he is also a strategic investor via his own family office Astir Capital, and he plans to co-invest alongside Aperture as they look to discover and develop the next generation of European fintechs.
Chuard’s background is already routed in technology supporting the financial industry. For more than 20 years until 2023 he was group CEO of Temenos, one of the world’s leading banking technology companies, where he oversaw major strategic initiatives including expansion into more than 150 countries, more than $1bn in acquisitions, and the company’s business model transition to SaaS and AI-driven banking.
How does his experience at Temenos support investments made by Aperture Capital and from his own pocket, Chuard tells EMEA Finance that, “there are 3 critical parts to success in venture capital. The first is sourcing great opportunities, which is where Aperture’s reputation for providing high value GTM services helps and where I believe my experience should have an additional pull effect. The second is doing detailed due diligence, where having completed more than $1bn in acquisitions at Temenos I am confident I can add a lot of value.
Chuard sees himself also contributing by, “accelerating and de-risking portfolio company growth where I can support, coach and advise founding teams across a wide range of domains - from strategy to international expansion.”
Key takeaways from our conversation with Chuard about the for fintech in Europe involve his strongly held belief that plenty of fintech opportunities still abound. “Not at all [opportunities have not been tracked through] - the best opportunities are still ahead!” He adds, “there is a massive need for new fintech infrastructure across a range of areas such as embedded finance, where financial services are increasingly being distributed through non-financial channels, and agentic commerce, where consumers will increasingly delegate purchase decisions to agents.
“We’ll also see how new technologies such as AI and smart contracts start to democratize areas of banking that have resisted major change and continue to have stubbornly high costs to serve, such as private banking and SME banking.”
When asked if there is a particular European region that might be driving more fintech innovation than another, Chuard says that innovation is coming from all over Europe, and that he has been especially impressed with the level of innovation coming from some smaller European countries in particular he calls out “Switzerland, which continues to excel in WealthTech and digital assets, Ireland, Estonia and Sweden - although, notwithstanding Brexit, the UK still remains the European capital for fintech.”
So, England is still in with a chance.
Asked about traditional financial institutions innovation efforts and investments in their own labs for fintech development, Chuard comments: “Generally, I think large European banks are doing a good job on innovation. They have the capital to invest and the vision and they have been progressive in adopting new technologies.
“I also think smaller European banks are moving quite fast, because there is less organizational resistance to change and because they have less legacy technology to replace.”
He is less certain about mid-sized banks which he views as perhaps more “complicated organizations” and “without the vast pools of capital to invest in transformation”.
Rounding out the overview on the state of European fintechs, Chuard sees strength in the fintech sector via its “deep know-how and a deep talent pool when it comes to fintech, which is why we are so confident about its ability to play a leading role globally”, but lays out a number of areas where funding issues and Europe could make fundamental progress.
“The challenges I would say are mostly two-fold. First, Europe sits at a disadvantage to China and especially the US when it comes to access to funding. I would really like to see a harmonized capital market in Europe to start to address this.
“The second is that Europe is not really a single market when it comes to financial services - there is still a lot of fragmentation when it comes to regulations, taxes, languages, and similar. The best fintechs learn to deal with this well and it becomes an advantage in that they can cope with complexity and scale internationally, but it makes scaling as a young fintech much harder than their counterparts in the US or China.”
Chuard will be helping many of Aperture’s investee companies move from seed to Series B funding. Several investments that have already been made where he can immediately make a direct impact include Stableton, Trustap and Fundcraft.
Heading into more new ventures, Chuard is both enthusiastic and confident that there is a bright future ahead for European fintech with investors like himself able to impact and who believe there are dividends to reap.
“A lot of unicorns will be created in these areas over the next 5 years.”