Founder, The Most Powerful Women in Banking & SVP, Strategy and Content
American Banker Live Media
Holly Sraeel is Founder of The Most Powerful Women in Banking and SVP of Strategy and Content, American Banker Live Media, leading content creation and innovation for the events and live media portfolio and introducing new multimedia and invitation-only experiences for senior executives that drive critical conversations and action around corporate strategy, innovation and financial performance. She is part of the company's operational leadership team and is focused on developing cross-platform programming that creates higher levels of engagement for subscribers, community participants and partners across the company's brands, including American Banker, The Bond Buyer, National Mortgage News, Accounting Today, Digital Insurance, Financial Planning and Employee Benefits News.
Sraeel is an award-winning editorial director, media executive and content strategist with expertise in developing influential content, communities, and events for C-level executives in the banking and financial services, insurance, and technology industries. Prior to joining Arizent, she held several content leadership and strategist roles, including for B2B media consultancy New York Ventures, capital markets management consultancy Opimas, Oxford University-incubated startup Wise Responder, and as cofounder of Genesys Partners' Agility First Forum.
This new role marks a return to the company for Sraeel. In her previous 12-year run, she was a member of the executive team and was pivotal in driving new cross-platform editorial, events and business innovation as SVP of Brand Management; Group Editorial Director of Banking and Technology magazines; and Founder, President and Editorial Director of The Most Powerful Women in Banking,™ the company's first-ever, community-based media platform, now part of Arizent's flagship American Banker.
Sraeel is an early honors graduate of Marist College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and a concentration in journalism.
The financial services industry is on the cusp of its most transformative decade since the commercialization of the internet. Venture capital is fueling the rise of AI-native fintechs, digital identity platforms, and tokenized financial ecosystems that promise to upend traditional models. Instant payments, programmable money, and agentic AI are reshaping everything from lending and fraud prevention to wealth management and cross-border payments. But with this tidal wave of innovation comes unprecedented challenges: how do financial institutions strike the right balance between speed and security, compliance and creativity, disruption and trust?
This super panel discussion brings together venture capitalists, fintech executives, bank executives and management consultants to explore the future of venture-backed fintech innovation, its impact on all stakeholders in digital finance, and the biggest opportunities and challenges ahead. Panelists will examine where capital is flowing in 2026, which technologies will define the next wave, how banks and fintechs can collaborate without compromising resilience, and what governance and risk frameworks must evolve to keep pace.
A candid look at what happens when top financial leaders step away from their C-suite and executive management roles to pursue other equally challenging business turns—from joining or launching start-ups to championing social causes to reshaping industries from the outside. This dynamic panel brings together executives who have successfully pivoted from traditional finance to new business ventures (of all sorts) where their finance capabilities are serving them well while allowing them to play to their desire to take on the next, new thing. They’ll share personal stories about what drove their decisions, the skills that carried over, what it took to make the leap, and the lessons they learned in taking on new chapters in their careers.
Real-time payments (RTP) and FedNow adoption are crucial for banks to remain competitive and meet evolving customer demands for instant payments, which offer benefits like better cash flow, improved customer relationships and new revenue opportunities through request for payment (RFP) services. While the urgency for banks to accelerate adoption and be future-ready is clear, they face challenges with real-time transactions that include fraud prevention, operational integration and network competition. The roundtable discussion will consider how quickly banks should be integrating RTP and FedNow payments into their offerings, liquidity management and fraud prevention strategies, and models to monetize instant payments beyond transaction fees.
The Future of Financial Market Infrastructure
Global financial markets are currently at an inflection point. Capital markets are moving faster towards an always-on operating model and at the same time, digital assets and blockchain technology are becoming mainstream. The discussion delves into the forces driving the future of financial market infrastructure.