Agenda

2025 agenda to be announced...

09.20 - 09.30: Chairman’s welcome
Jonathan Easton, Editor, FStech

09.30 - 10.00: Keynote speaker: Leading change with a culture of innovation and positive disruption
Saira Khan, Head of Innovation and Partnerships, First Direct Bank

Innovation leadership requires enabling, collaboration, and a ‘collective genius’. The world is changing rapidly, as are customer expectations and skills required. Saira Khan, Head of Innovation and Partnerships at First Direct Bank will look back and ahead to the future in this opening keynote session.

10.00 - 10.30: Building a new kind of business current account
Nida Sattar, Head of Product for Payments, Allica Bank

Nida Sattar, Head of Product for Payments at Allica Bank, the UK’s “fastest-growing” FinTech, talks through how Allica has built one of the UK’s leading business bank accounts: the Business Rewards Account. Allica describes the account as the first of its kind built especially for established businesses (those with 5-250 employees.) She’ll cover how Allica has built an intuitive, easy to use and feature-rich current account for what is a complex segment that few other banks can serve.

10.30 - 11.10: Building the Bank of the Future: Unlocking innovation while managing legacy systems - sponsored by SaaScada
Panellists: 
Peter Donlon, Chief Technology Officer, Zopa Bank
Thea Loch, Head of Change Optimisation, Lloyds Banking Group
Kalpana Varsani, Head of Analytics, Allica Bank
Nelson Wootton, Co-founder and Chief Executive, SaaScada

Legacy systems present a major challenge for financial institutions seeking to innovate and meet rising customer expectations. This panel brings together key decision makers to discuss strategies for balancing legacy maintenance with building the bank of the future. Speakers will provide insights on leveraging modular microservices and APIs to modernise monoliths incrementally, while still running existing systems. They will share approaches for prioritising innovations that simplify the customer experience, while optimising investments in old and new technology stacks. They will also discuss talent strategies for embracing incremental change and managing technical debt through modular platforms. Other topics include focusing on data, preparing for AI opportunities, and developing organisational readiness for change. Attendees will leave this session with actionable frameworks for unlocking innovation and building future-ready banks, while effectively managing complex legacy systems during the transition.

11.10 - 11.40: Coffee break

11.40 - 12.20: Regulation ready: how are FSIs harnessing data to transform regulatory compliance? Sponsored by InterSystems
Panellists:
Nikhil Asthana, Head of Data, Regulatory Change, RegTech and Digital Advisory Practice, Grant Thornton UK
Irene Galperin, Senior Advisor for Financial Services, InterSystems
Dizem Ozalp-Sari, Head of Data Services, BNP Paribas
Chris Waring, Head of Digital Customer Journeys, NatWest

As financial services organisations navigate a dynamic and complex regulatory landscape, they are also faced with the challenge of harnessing the exponential growth of data, often sat in disparate internal and external systems, needed to meet the regulator’s requests. Regulatory compliance and risk management responsibilities compel firms to prioritise data management as part of their strategy, particularly when it comes to integrating and connecting data across an organisation and its external sources to provide a unified view. However, complicated technology, poor data quality, manual processes, and legacy systems can all prove a barrier to providing the regulators with the information they need. Ultimately, failing to adhere to the rules and standards expected of them can lead to hefty penalties and long-term reputational damage. In this discussion, expert panellists will explore the challenges and opportunities for firms as they look to harness their data with innovative technology to improve their regulatory compliance strategy. 

12.20 - 12.50: Revolutionising wealth management: Leveraging ChatGPT for personalised investment advice
Philip Treleaven, Professor of Computing, UCL and Director, UK Centre for Financial Computing

In the rapidly evolving landscape of financial technology, conversational AI has emerged as a game-changing innovation poised to disrupt financial services. This insightful presentation explores the transformative potential of leveraging ChatGPT to deliver highly personalised investment advice. Delve into the cutting-edge natural language processing and machine learning capabilities that enable tools like ChatGPT to comprehend complex financial data, market trends, and individual client preferences with unprecedented accuracy. Attendees will gain valuable insights into the ethical and regulatory considerations surrounding the deployment of LLMs in the financial sector, ensuring compliance, transparency, and the prioritisation of client interests.

12.50 - 14.00: Lunch break

14.00 - 14.40: Transforming FinCrime and compliance: Aligning intelligent technologies with regulatory obligations sponsored by Smartsearch 
Panellists
Shilpa Arora, Head of AFC Products and Solutions,ACAMS
Phil Coole, MLRO and Head of Compliance, OakNorth
Zowie Lees-Howell, VP of Enterprise Sales, SmartSearch
Rajitha Prabhakaran, Group Financial Crime Officer, Domestic & General Insurance

As financial crime grows more advanced, financial institutions face increasing pressure to combat threats efficiently while meeting expanding regulations and tightening budgets. This panel session will see expert speakers from across financial services discuss data-driven strategies that utilise cutting-edge technology for optimising financial crime prevention and compliance. Our panel of speakers will discuss how banks and other financial companies can take advantage of new technologies such as AI and machine learning to better detect financial crimes, explore how to effectively onboard customers and perform due diligence while also providing a positive customer experience, and address the ethics of using customer information for compliance purposes. Attendees will gain insights into aligning compliance duties and innovation through transformative technologies and come away with strategies to enhance FinCrime and compliance approaches as budgets tighten with intelligent automation, advanced analytics, and strategic data usage. 

14.40 - 15.10: Keynote speaker: Re-wiring banking and finance: how technology is transforming the sector
Phillip Mind, Director of Digital Technology and Innovation, UK Finance

New technologies such as AI, APIs, tokenisation and blockchain are having a transformative impact across the banking, finance and payments landscapes. Phillip Mind, Director of Digital Technology and Innovation at UK Finance, will review where this innovation is having the greatest impact, how the regulators are responding, and what the key considerations for organisations operating in the sector will be in the years to come.

15.10 - 15.30: Quiz, chairman’s closing remarks and end of the conference

15.30 - 16.30: Drinks reception