A Program Designed for Decisive Leaders

The worlds of traditional payments and stablecoins, the latter of which combine the price stability of fiat currencies with the speed, availability and programmability of blockchain, are poised for convergence within financial services. If things take off as market observers expect, it could mark the start of the radical remaking of the industry, and traditional financial (TradFi) companies stand to benefit from and be greatly challenged by the rise of stablecoins. With the recent passages of the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act, the financial industry is preparing for both, working to take a leading position in stablecoin cross-border payments, real-time settlement of business-to-business payments, integration with payment service providers, fintechs and card networks, merchant adoption in e-commerce, and the introduction of bank-issued stablecoins.

Financial institutions that are looking to generate business outcomes with artificial intelligence (AI) must identify use cases that drive adoption by creating a strategic framework that aligns business value, data readiness and risk management. The goal is to achieve production-grade deployment that delivers a return on investment. The challenges that institutions face: data ecosystems are often fragmented and unprepared for AI scale, and risks—bias, privacy, security and regulatory compliance—can derail adoption if not addressed early. Among the points to be discussed by panelists:

• Aligning AI use cases with business value
• Data readiness as a foundation
• Risk management and responsible AI
• Scaling AI beyond pilots

Bank and financial services executives face a challenge of moving legacy systems to modern, cloud-based architectures while ensuring business continuity. The leadership issue they face: How to balance investment in innovation with cost control and return on equity pressures. The roundtable discussion will center on how leaders can foster a culture that embraces digital-first thinking across all levels.

When it comes to customer trust and engagement, bank and financial services executives are confronted by declining loyalty and higher expectations for personalized, seamless digital experiences. The challenge for leaders is in developing a strategy that builds trust in an era of data-driven personalization and AI decisioning. The roundtable discussion will focus on how leaders ensure customer-centric strategies while balancing privacy and ethical use of data.

As the digital finance landscape quickly evolves, customers are placing a higher premium on their experience and the level of personalization they get from their financial relationships. For digital natives and tech-savvy consumers, the expectation is that payments will be embedded into digital ecosystems (wallets, super apps, etc.). The roundtable discussion will look at strategies that can be employed to provide seamless, contextual payments for retail and business clients, and how data can be leveraged to deliver personalized offers while also ensuring privacy compliance.

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 agentic AI in banking and financial services is projected to have an enormous impact on the industry. In early days, understanding the potential roles of agentic AI and identifying use cases with the highest impact are critical to creating a successful strategic playbook and implementation. Whether it’s personalized wealth management, customer service automation, credit and lending decisions, or fraud detection, it’s imperative to understand the business value and return on investment (i.e., the reduction in cost-to-serve or an increase revenue through hyper-personalization). The roundtable will discuss the early use cases with the greatest promise and what key performance indicators are being used to measure successful agentic AI initiatives.

Agentic AI differs from traditional predictive or generative AI in autonomy and goal-driven execution. As such, the data requirements for agentic AI are critical and the various data types must be considered—structured, unstructured, real-time streaming—to ensure data quality and completeness to facilitate autonomous decision-making. The challenge for bank executives is how to handle multi-source data integration (core banking, CRM, third-party feeds, open banking APIs, etc.) and create an infrastructure for scalability. The roundtable will discuss issues related to data governance and regulatory compliance, security and risk (for agent-to-agent communication. among other things), and interoperability and integration with legacy core banking systems to enable cross-domain decision-making.

Digital finance affords financial institutions and their customers an enhanced experience, the ability to interact and conduct financial transactions across channels, and the real-time delivery of hyper-personalized new products. Yet the increasingly sophisticated exploitation of security vulnerabilities and gaps to commit fraud using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is set to unleash a tidal wave of fraud. The panel discusses the urgency for banks and financial institutions to develop a multi-layered security strategy to detect and prevent the rapidly accelerating rise of GenAI-powered fraud across channels—much of it occurring through extremely capable, global criminal and nation-state-run enterprises.

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.

Over the next decade, an unprecedented generational wealth transfer—estimated at $84 trillion in the U.S. alone—will reshape the financial landscape. Women are expected to control a significant share of this wealth, making them one of the most influential investor groups in history. At the same time, the definition of “investable assets” is evolving, with growing interest in alternatives such as digital assets, Bitcoin, private markets and real estate. This panel will explore how banks and wealth managers can position themselves to serve women investors during this transformation.

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.

Banks are racing to harness the power of AI to gain a competitive edge, slash costs, and boost productivity. However, the path to AI success is fraught with obstacles, from managing risk and attracting top talent to demonstrating tangible value. This discussion, informed by ServiceNow’s new Banking AI Maturity Index research report, will provide actionable strategies to help you, your business, and your bank navigate the AI landscape, enhance operational resilience, and thrive in the competitive banking industry. Join Kristin Streett, Head of Banking GTM at ServiceNow, and your financial services peers for insights into what leading banks are focused on to grow their AI footprint and how you can apply them to your own business.

As customers expect banks and financial institutions to conduct business on their behalf in real time, the world of digital finance is rapidly evolving to anticipate and satisfy the needs of retail and commercial customers that are increasingly demanding products and app services—from instant payments to trading settlement and beyond—that are faster, better and cheaper. Panelists discuss the process for developing a roadmap for the successful implementation and adoption of Innovative products and services in various business lines that will appeal to customers who want an instant-everything experience and results.

Leading a regulated entity during the best of times is complicated. But adapting your leadership strategy when you face a confluence of factors—geopolitical instability, cybersecurity threats, disruptive innovation and unknown unknowns—is critical to how your company identifies and mitigates an increasing number of risks (within business units and across the enterprise), capitalizes on emerging innovations without creating excessive vulnerabilities, and anticipates and complies with regulation.

The financial industry is facing a fraud threat landscape that is growing in frequency and sophistication, with a surge in real-time payments fraud such as authorized push payments, account takeover attacks, and AI-fueled synthetic identity fraud and deepfakes for social engineering and phishing. While the rise in fraud types and frequency relies in great part on more sophisticated technology, those committing the fraud also exploit human-factor vulnerabilities. The roundtable discussion will examine the increasing fraud risks in instant payment systems (FedNow, RTP) and P2P platforms, card-not-present fraud in e-commerce and mobile wallets, business email compromise (BEC) and social engineering that targets corporate clients, and emerging fraud schemes within embedded finance and buy now, pay later.

The widespread usage of artificial intelligence (AI) in committing fraud is being countered by financial institutions’ growing reliance on AI and advanced analytics for fraud detection, mitigation and prevention. Increasingly, executives are turning to machine-learning models and behavioral biometrics for real-time detection of fraud. The tough balancing act they face: How to balance speed, accuracy and customer experience with sophisticated guardrails to prevent fraud before it happens. The roundtable discussion will focus on the usage of AI to commit and prevent fraud, strategies being employed to identify fraud patterns and stop them before they occur, and how to model governance, transparency and regulatory expectations for the usage of AI in fraud prevention.

Customer expectations are evolving faster than ever, and banks are under pressure to keep up. This roundtable discussion will explore how financial institutions can combine innovative technology with the emotional connection that customers still want, and what differentiates the best CX in fintech versus traditional banks. From AI-driven personalization to privacy, trust, and the role of empathy in digital design, this discussion will explore what it takes to create truly connected banking experiences for 2026 and beyond, including how banks are addressing legacy systems and internal silos that block CX innovation, how to overcome cultural and organizational inertia, and how banks can maintain empathy and trust in increasingly digital interactions.

As embedded finance reshapes how and where customers access financial services, banks face a defining moment. Should banks aim to power platforms or embed into them? Once the center of the financial relationship, many are now pushed behind the scenes as technology platforms and fintechs own the user experience. This roundtable discussion explores how traditional institutions can evolve with the times—from rethinking partnerships and API readiness to navigating regulation, managing risk, and monetizing embedded opportunities by finding profit in volume and scale and structuring partnership models for sustainable returns.

Leaders from across the industry share how they devised strategies to overcome obstacles—personal and professional—to move their businesses ahead, amplifying their leadership skills and improving desired outcomes.

What’s expected by employees in the workplace—from Baby Boomers to Gen Zers—is radically different from one generation to the next. In the war for talent, how do companies acquire, retain and manage employees’ differing expectations, work and communication styles, and feedback requirements. The intentionality of leadership could unlock greater innovation, productivity and performance across the enterprise.

In a series of inspiring Lightning Talks, hear from top banking and fintech executives as they present the business metric they’re most proud of this year and how that benchmark affects the health of their companies. These quick talks will motivate you to think differently about your own metrics. Plus, each presentation will be followed by a tight Q&A to dig deeper. Join this session to come away with actionable strategies for growing marks in your own business.