Complex event processing (CEP) is an emerging technology for extracting information from distributed message-based systems. CEP is software used to create and deploy applications that process large volumes of incoming messages or events, analyze those messages or events in various ways, and respond to conditions of interest in real-time. This technology allows users of a system to specify the information that is of interest to them. This paper presents an over-view of complex event processing applied to the domain of financial services demonstrated using a CEP product called AMiT (active middleware technology). Two case studies (in the banking and the insurance industries) are introduced in order to demonstrate the special use of the CEP concept in the financial services domain and the advantages both on built-time and run-time. The various usages of CEP for BAM, messaging, decision-making in financial services applications express the increasing role of CEP in intelligent event-driven financial services solutions