DAY TWOWednesday, 26 February 2025

Light breakfast in the expo hall, plus sponsor and demo booths open for networking!

Always one of the most popular sessions at Finovate. 4 leading fintech analysts take the stage for 7 minutes to present the key opportunities for FIs and fintechs in a new landscape. Expect expert analysis of what’s changed; which new tech has its their worth and what’s coming next.

• Global fintech trends - where are we seeing the most exciting innovations and what can European banks learn from Asia, Africa & Latin America?
• Has open banking failed in Europe? Why has it worked elsewhere in the world & what lessons can Europe learn from this?
• Financial wellness, financial inclusion & financial literacy: which areas are ripe for innovation in credit, investing and savings?
• Customer Experience – How Can Fintech Innovation Be Used To Create End To End Customer Trust?

This session will introduce Alibaba Cloud’s extensive cloud and AI capabilities, highlight the compliance challenges in the AI era, and address the risks associated with AI adoption.

• A brave new world – with digital technology a fraudster can be anywhere in the world
• How can the industry collaborate to educate consumers about the scale of the risk?
• What new tools and technologies can we harness to fight financial crime?
• Is digital identity the great missed opportunity for banks? How can this be addressed?
• Will biometric authentication be a game changer?

In today’s dynamic financial landscape, delivering hyper-personalized experiences is crucial to meeting modern customers’ high expectations. This keynote will explore how banks can leverage data, advanced API integrations, and AI-driven insights to offer the right products to the right customers at the right time. It will highlight how a solid data foundation and a collaborative ecosystem of technology partnerships can empower banks to navigate complex regulations, like FIDA, and create seamless, compliant, customer-centric services. Join us as we uncover actionable strategies to modernize infrastructure, harness customer data responsibly, and build a financial ecosystem ready to thrive in a future defined by innovation and personalization.

This hands-on session demonstrates how to leverage Plotly's advanced visualization capabilities to create an interactive data application that transforms complex financial data into actionable insights. Participants will learn to construct a comprehensive visualization system.

• What are the key lessons to learn from other industry verticals & from big tech companies about building customer trust?
• How are your customers operating in the new economies being created and how can you meet their new expectations? Why you need a laser focus on CX and UX
• Harnessing AI to build models that anticipate customer behaviour enabling you to offer them relevant products before they know they need them; how to turn data into insights
• Personalisation for different market segments: how can you find new profitable narrow & deep customer slices?
• Purpose driven banking: your customers want to be part of a tribe

• The huge opportunity for banks to transform payments from a cost line item into a valuable new revenue stream
• The biggest changes in payments today: open banking, real-time payments, cross-border payments, BNPL, digital wallets and super apps, embedded payments, CBDCs and digital currencies
• What is the role for telcos and big tech? How they are making payments more instant, frictionless and embedded within customer journeys and hence invisible
• How PSD3 and PSR will shape trends in EU financial services
• How will new technologies and new competitors continue to shape the competitive landscape?

• Every function is being reimagined by automation, AI data mining & AI generated data: what are the challenges in implementing and scaling AI across large FIs? Is your data/data models ready?
• Can all human endeavours be upskilled with AI? Will foundation models instructed by NLP change the game?
• What does the EU AI Act tell us about the direction of travel of AI regulation?
• What are the risks: governance, data privacy, security, compliance and ethics?
• Should FIs unleash AI across all their data looking at vertical use cases or embed AI into specific pieces of software? Is adoption through independent vendors a safer option for banks?
• The thorny issue of AI computing power and sustainability pillars

Use the Finovate app's enhanced filtering to find exactly who you want to meet, add them to a list of prospects, send messages and arrange meetings ahead of time.

Our Keynote Geopolitical Risk speaker, Dr Linda Yueh, will be signing free copies of her book The Great Crashes: Lessons from Global Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them. First come, first served!

It is widely acknowledged that FinTech has a gender diversity problem. At Finovate we are determined to keep pushing the dial and support women in fintech to achieve their potential. Join our panel of rockstar women who have been at the forefront of driving change in the industry.

• The need for intentional change at the executive level: what CEOs and Founders need to do in practice to create a diverse executive team. It's not good enough to just blame it on pipeline.
• Why we must move away from having conversations about DE&I for the sake of it and focus on how it drives commercial strategy and value
• What initiatives have we seen/done that are making a difference to growing/retaining female talent?
• How to make a mentoring relationship successful. How do coaching, mentoring and sponsorship differ?
• What tools have been useful in our careers? How have we prioritised personal/professional development?
• What is important to focus on in terms of development for women at different stages in their lives
• How to continue to drive change - quotas; men as allies, networks? If we can do just one thing, what would it be?
• How will the massive transfer of wealth to women globally change financial services?

As financial services undergo a significant transformation towards AI-driven operations, institutions face the dual challenge of rapid innovation and maintaining strong security. This session introduces a practical framework for deploying AI agents that transform traditional banking processes while adhering to strict compliance standards. Drawing from real-world implementations, we'll examine how AI agents are revolutionizing risk assessment and customer service. Whether you're starting your AI journey or expanding existing capabilities, you'll gain actionable insights for turning AI's potential into tangible business results in the highly regulated financial sector.

• The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) will apply from 2025 – what are the challenges and the opportunities?
• How can banks make their digital operational processes more resilient?
• Can FIs finalise realise the opportunity of digital identity?
• What are the risks associated with technologies like cloud and AI
• Manage risks and regulatory expectations related to third parties
• Understanding the underlying risks in the mechanisms of the financial system; how can FIs measure, price in & manage those risks?
• How cyber risks such as malware, deepfakes and misinformation can threaten financial stability
• How banks can be part of the solution to resilience in the financial system?

• How are cutting edge financial institutions innovating with AI?
• Cutting edge AI use cases in risk management, regulation, fraud detection and compliance
• Harnessing AI to improve internal efficiencies - process automation, operational & employee efficiency and business agility
• Harnessing AI for customer support can dramatically reduce response times and costs but what are the reputational risks of customer facing AI?
• How to marry AI with human advice; can we make AI more human and more empathetic? How can we make customers trust AI?
• What are the possible bumps in the AI road?
• Where next? Why the future isn’t what it used to be

• The inexorable rise of the integration of lending solutions directly into a brand’s customer journey
• How AI is supporting lenders with risk assessment, credit scoring and CX and can make lending processes more trustworthy
• The market is moving beyond flexible payments (BNPL) to offering loans and other lending products found at the point of need without customers having to exit their customer journey
• Is BNPL a great product for customers or a debt trap?
• How will the BNPL market change the status quo & what does it mean for the future of credit cards?
• How are regulators approaching embedded lending?
• What does the future hold for embedded lending?

Lunch in the expo hall with sponsors and demoers at their booths for networking. Plus networking speaker-led discussions tables!

These interactive discussion tables, led by an industry expert, will allow you to explore some of the hottest topics in the industry; a chance to pool and share the huge and untapped knowledge of our delegates. Run under the Chatham House Rule to promote open debate.

Choose from:

1. Global fintech trends - where are the most exciting innovations happening & why do they matter?
2. Fintech’s gender diversity problem – how can we move the needle?
3. GenAI – what are the challenges & how can banks navigate them?
4. Customer experience – Be Less Busy - Have More Impact

Change is a constant in banking. The question is how to keep up with it.Discover how process intelligence gives you a living digital twin of your entire organization —from credit lifecycle, to payments & trades, to regulatory compliance— then shows you how to optimize them in real time. So you can:

• Provide faster digital banking experiences
• Enable smarter operations and transcations
• Respond faster to risks and regulations
• Maximize ROI on your AI deployments

• When will banks finally be free of 1970s technology and aging tech stacks and be equipped for the next stage?
• Core banking technology, there are many options out there what are the differences and where can they get you to?
• Capturing the value potential in the cloud; three critical shifts to accelerate your cloud migration: strategy and management, business-domain adoption, and foundational capabilities.
• Harnessing AI for core modernisation and operational efficiency.
• What are the risks for banks of layering AI onto their high legacy data systems?
• Agile in banking - have banks now caught up? What are the successful operating models around change? How do you deliver change at scale safely?

• How can Fis embrace the fintech ecosystem to drive cost savings, increase efficiency and maximise product distribution?
• As tech stacks become increasingly complex what does composable banking mean to banks and to fintechs?
• Build, buy or partner at the forefront of innovation. With fintech valuations down is now the right time to buy?
• What are the challenges around fintech acquisitions – especially around corporate culture?
• Why FIs will have to work with external providers in an open finance world and how collaboration will create new financial services
• Harnessing partnerships to increase efficiencies, serve customer better and provide long-term value. What are the risks?
• Big tech: essential partners or existential threats?
• What are the secrets of a successful partnership? How fintechs and banks can navigate their partnerships from ensuring that your values and goals align to determining if the partnership will be long term. The need for total transparency and how to spot any red flags
• Why financial institutions need a dedicated leader to work on partnerships

• What are the strategic questions for neo banks as they reach maturity and achieve scale?
• What are the key pillars of success for neo banks? Has their laser focus on CX and UX been the differentiating factor?
• As their technology starts to age will they have to start upgrading it? Are neo banks starting to have to face the process and governance issues large banks face?
• Will we continue to see the rise of neo banks licencing their technology to incumbent banks?
• To be or not to be a bank? What are the pros and cons of having a banking licence? What does a banking licence give you that you can’t do today other than more regulation?
• Are IPOs at an inflection point? Why go public when you will face more scrutiny, risk becoming a slave to shareholders and losing talent. How can you maintain your culture when you become a listed company?
• London’s stock market rules are being revamped for the first time in 30 years; will these changes make listing in London more attractive?
• Does the new Labour government in the UK pose a threat to the UK fintech market – especially around possible changes to capital gains tax?

• Fintech funding – will the growth of highly profitable fintechs in Europe drive a positive turnaround in fintech funding?
• Where will we continue to see strong investment?
• What are the market dynamics driving the growth of wealth tech companies? Is there now an appetite for digital assets?
• Where have bubbles burst and why? Which bubbles might burst next? Are mono line fintechs most at risk?
• How will high interest rates and the cost of living crisis affect fintechs? Will there be a drive to focus on fundamentals and profitability?
• What are the complexities in preparing for an exit and how can fintech startups overcome them?