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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Anne Clarke Wolff is a 30-year transformational leader in the financial services industry with expertise managing large scale global businesses and working with companies through financial life cycles – from initial public offerings to mergers and acquisitions.  In 2021, Anne founded Independence Point Advisors (“IPA”), a women-owned investment bank and advisory services firm, where she serves as its Chief Executive Officer.  Prior to IPA’s launch, Anne spent the majority of her career managing businesses focused on banking relationships, access to capital markets as well as treasury transformation.  During her roles building Bank of America’s $10B Global Corporate Banking business, and as Head of Sales for JP Morgan’s Treasury and Securities Services business, Anne drove double digit revenue growth and built best in class teams to extend the banks global capabilities in serving multinational clients.  She also served as Head of North America Corporate Banking at Citigroup and has been repeatedly recognized as one of The Most Powerful Women in Banking by American Banker and Notable Women in Finance by Crain’s New York.