Agenda

08.30 – 09.05: Registration & Refreshments

09.15 – 09.20: Chairman's Welcome

09.20 – 09.50: Keynote speaker: Digital Accessibility as a Competitive Advantage

Financial services should look at catering for disabled, neurodivergent and older customers as a strategic opportunity rather than a compliance exercise. Digital accessibility strengthens brands, supports regulatory alignment, and opens access to a global customer base of more than 1.2 billion people whose needs are often underserved. The session will explore the role of AI in accelerating progress, including where it can help teams scale inclusive design and where careful oversight is required to avoid new barriers.

09.50 – 10.20: Presentation – The AI-Savvy Customer: Is your business ready? Sponsored by Transmit Security

Your customers didn't wait for you. While banks, insurers, retailers and telcos were building AI strategies and governance frameworks, consumers were already using AI to compare products, challenge decisions, switch providers and manage their finances – on their own terms. The question for every leader in this room isn't whether AI will change your customer relationships. It already has. The question is whether you're going to lead that change, or be defined by it.

10.20 – 11.00: Panel – Next-gen payments: Real-time, cross-border, interoperability and the future of digital money, sponsored by ACI Worldwide

Payments are shifting to always-on networks where reliability, transparency, and trust are measurable. Shared sector infrastructure that coordinates banks, PSPs, corporates, and public bodies is expected to deliver instant domestic payments, interoperable cross-border corridors, and credible coexistence with emerging digital currencies. The priority is practical outcomes: higher straight-through processing, lower end-to-end latency, fewer errors and fraud, and clearer cost-to-serve economics.

This session examines how institutions can modernise through common rails and utilities: end-to-end ISO 20022 adoption as a product and data asset; scheme-agnostic orchestration across account-to-account, card, and instant payments; pre-validation and verification services to reduce disputes and fraud; and pragmatic digital currency integration patterns that leverage existing messaging, identity, and settlement. Panellists will focus on cross-border corridor design that balances compliance and speed, how shared screening and telemetry improve operational resilience, and the business models that make interoperability durable.

11.00 – 11.30: Coffee Break

11.30 – 12.00: Beyond the Perimeter: Building Genuine Operational Resilience in an Age of Systemic Risk, sponsored by Cockroach Labs

The resilience agenda has shifted from protecting your own systems to surviving failures across the wider ecosystem. As financial institutions converge on a shrinking pool of cloud and technology providers, concentration risk is becoming a defining threat. Regulators including DORA and the FCA are pushing boards to rethink whether their infrastructure is resilient by design. This session explores the architectural choices that determine whether firms absorb disruption or amplify it and the strategic decisions leaders should be making now.

12.00 – 12.40: Panel – Digital transformation and operating models: Aligning strategy, technology, culture, and change delivery at scale

Financial institutions are moving beyond isolated innovation projects towards whole-of-business transformation, where operating models, technology stacks, and organisational culture must evolve in lockstep. The challenge is less about selecting individual tools and more about orchestrating portfolio-level change: modernising core platforms, industrialising data and AI, reshaping decision rights, and building a culture that can execute at pace under regulatory and cost pressure. Institutions that succeed will treat transformation as a continuous capability rather than a time-boxed programme.

This session explores how leaders can design future-ready operating models that connect strategy to delivery: clarifying value pools, sequencing change across business and technology roadmaps, and embedding product-centric ways of working. Panellists will examine how to measure transformation outcomes beyond headline spend, govern multi-vendor ecosystems, and maintain momentum through economic cycles. The discussion will focus on practical approaches to aligning boards, executives, and frontline teams around a coherent digital agenda that delivers resilient, customer-centred growth.

12.40 – 13.10: Tokenisation and the Future of Financial Services

Drawing on his research, Gilles Chemla will cover the various use cases of tokenisation, analyse their projected growth and look at the importance of stablecoins. He will also share how traditional financial firms can use tokenisation to transform their business models.

13.10 – 14.10: Lunch Break

14.10 – 14.40: Panel – Shaping the bank of the future: From purpose to performance, sponsored by Rackspace

In the second half of the decade, banks will compete on customer trust, clarity of purpose and strategic focus rather than incremental technology gains. The bank of the future will be shaped by the choices leaders make now from defining distinctive propositions to building cultures that turn strategy into delivery. This session explores what a future-ready bank looks like, how customer relationships and in-person service will evolve, and how challenger banks and incumbents can learn from each other to create durable value and long-term advantage.

14.40 – 15.20: Session to be announced

15.20 – 15.50: Keynote speaker: Untapped Digital Talent: The £3 billion opportunity

The UK’s digital skills shortage left 12,100 roles unfilled across the financial, professional services and technology sectors in 2024, costing the economy more than £1 billion. The City of London Corporation’s Women Pivoting to Digital Taskforce is addressing this by championing the reskilling of mid-career women into digital roles. Closing the gap this way could unlock £3.3 billion in profits over the next decade while creating new high-skilled career opportunities for women most at risk from AI-driven disruption.

15.50 – 16.20: Chairman's closing remarks, quiz and end of conference

16.20 – 17.00: Networking drinks reception