Two dedicated conference halls cover the industry’s most important priorities—from core banking, AI, and digital transformation to financial crime, regulation, and ecosystem partnerships.
The programme below reflects our planned agenda. Speaker slots are open, if you or a colleague would like to present or join a panel, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us via the speaker page https://digitalfinanceconference.eu/speakers/.
European banks are under relentless pressure to replace ageing core systems and exit mainframe dependencies — all without stopping the business. This session brings together architects, CTOs and transformation leads to share what is actually working in live programmes. From core banking migration strategy and mainframe modernisation to vendor selection, hybrid cloud and AI-assisted modernisation tools, Session 1.1 sets the technical foundation for everything that follows across the day.
Why the next decade of banking runs on composable, cloud-native core architecture
A practitioner’s guide to migrating decades of core banking logic without disrupting operations
How European banks are making core banking platform decisions in 2025
Balancing regulatory constraints, vendor lock-in risk and operational resilience in a multi-cloud environment
How AI-assisted analysis and automated testing are changing the economics of mainframe and legacy modernisation
What the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act means for your architecture and third-party risk strategy
Best fit for: CTO / CIO, Enterprise Architect, Solution Architect, IT Architect, Data & platform leads, Tech transformation leads, Platform Transformation Lead, Head of Core Banking, Head of Digital Banking, Cloud Director, IT Area Lead, Core banking vendors
Where is European banking heading, and how do you position your institution to lead rather than follow? Session 1.2 brings together strategy, innovation and commercial leaders to examine the forces reshaping the industry — from AI-
driven personalisation and embedded lending to open banking, tokenisation and sustainable finance. With PSD3 agreed and BaaS competition intensifying, this is the session for everyone thinking about the next three to five years of
product, partnership and growth strategy.
How AI-driven hyper-personalisation is reshaping the relationship between banks and their customers
Lessons from building SME and consumer lending products inside third-party platforms and ecosystems
From PSD2 obligation to PSD3 opportunity — how leading banks are turning API access into revenue
What MiCA and institutional adoption mean for banks exploring digital assets and tokenised deposits
The competitive dynamics between incumbent BaaS providers, challengers and fintech enablers in the EU market
How CRD6 ESG obligations are pushing banks to turn sustainability reporting into a genuine competitive advantage
Best fit for: Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Innovation Manager, Innovation Lead, Head of Fintech Venturing, Venture Builder, Business Developer, Lending & credit leads, Head of Embedded Finance, Head of Convenience Lending, Lending Transformation Lead, Product Owner, Lead Product Owner, Head of Product, CFO / Treasurer, Head of Wealth Architecture, Fintech founders / vendors
The conversation has moved on from whether AI belongs in banking to how fast it can be deployed responsibly. Session 1.3 is a practitioner-led close to the day, focused on what is actually running in production — agentic AI systems, GenAI in lending decisions, automated underwriting for SME credit, and the governance frameworks banks need to satisfy the EU AI Act. The closing panel puts lending at the centre, examining who carries accountability when an algorithm approves or denies credit.
Real deployments, real results — how Dutch and European banks are moving beyond chatbots to autonomous AI agents
How automated underwriting and AI credit scoring are transforming SME and retail lending decisions — and what the EU AI Act says about it
The data, governance and organisational foundations banks need before they can scale GenAI responsibly
Credit scoring, fraud detection and AML are classified high-risk: what August 2026 compliance actually requires
Best fit for: AI Program Director, GenAI Transformation Lead, Head of Robotics & AI, Data Scientist, AI Ethics & Data Risk Lead, Head of Model Risk, AI Risk Manager, Credit Risk Model Developer, CoE Lead Business Lending Analytics, Product Lead Credit Decisioning, CTO / architects, Lending & credit leads, AI vendors & fintechs
Financial crime is becoming faster, more sophisticated and increasingly AI-powered — and the regulatory response is escalating to match. Session 2.1 covers the financial crime challenge in depth: evolving fraud typologies, the transformation of KYC and CDD, the arrival of the EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority, and the growing use of machine learning in transaction monitoring. A morning for FEC specialists, fraud leads, KYC practitioners and the RegTech community working at the frontline of keeping the financial system clean.
How the threat picture has shifted — from fraud typologies to cross-border AML challenges facing EU banks today
How banks are rebuilding onboarding and CDD processes to be faster, cheaper and more effective at the same time
The new EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority is operational. What direct supervision means for your compliance framework
AI is being used against banks — how to detect and defend against the next generation of identity fraud
Moving beyond rule-based systems — how machine learning is reducing false positives and catching what rules miss
The case for inter-bank data sharing in fraud prevention — and the regulatory path to making it work in the EU
Best fit for: Global Head of Financial Crime, FEC Strategy Officer, FEC Specialist, Global FEC Consultant, KYC Design Lead, KYC Expert Lead, KYC Innovation Manager, Head of KYC & Regulatory Affairs, CDD Specialist, Transaction Monitoring Lead, Global Lead Transaction Monitoring, Onboarding Specialist, Fraud specialists, AI & data leads (FEC), RegTech vendors
The EU regulatory calendar has never been fuller. DORA came into force in January 2025, CRR3 is reshaping capital requirements, CRD6 transposition is due in January 2026, PSD3 is agreed and the EU AI Act is approaching its August 2026 deadline for high-risk systems. Session 2.2 gives CROs, compliance officers, risk directors and legal teams a clear-eyed view of where the pressure points are, what the ECB’s supervisory priorities signal and how to sequence an overloaded regulatory agenda without losing ground on any front.
Six months in: where European financial institutions are struggling with ICT risk, incident reporting and third-party oversight
How CRR3 is reshaping capital calculations, RWA models and risk reporting — and what CRD6 adds from January 2026
Why risk data aggregation and reporting accuracy remain the ECB’s top supervisory concern, and how to fix it
Model risk, explainability and the EU AI Act: what a mature AI governance framework looks like inside a bank
Banks are the most cyberattacked sector in Europe — what DORA’s resilience testing and incident response requirements mean operationally
With the November 2025 agreement reached and 18 months to comply, what do banks and PSPs need to start now?
Best fit for: Global Head of Financial Crime, FEC Strategy Officer, FEC Specialist, Global FEC Consultant, KYC Design Lead, KYC Expert Lead, KYC Innovation Manager, Head of KYC & Regulatory Affairs, CDD Specialist, Transaction Monitoring Lead, Global Lead Transaction Monitoring, Onboarding Specialist, Fraud specialists, AI & data leads (FEC), RegTech vendors
The most competitive banks in Europe are no longer thinking of themselves as product companies — they are platform orchestrators, embedding services into third-party ecosystems and building partnership models that generate new
revenue streams. Session 2.3 closes Hall 2 with a commercial and strategic lens on ecosystems, BaaS, AI vendor partnerships and the open finance future that PSD3 is unlocking. The ideal closing session for innovation managers, partnership leads, fintech founders and anyone thinking about where the next layer of value creation in European banking comes from.
How banks are evolving from product providers to platform orchestrators, and what it takes to win in an API-first world
What separates the BaaS programmes that scale from those that stall — lessons from live deployments across Europe
Build internal capability, buy a solution or co-innovate with a vendor? How banks are structuring their AI ecosystem relationships
Beyond payments: how the Financial Data Access framework will reshape data-driven partnerships across banking, insurance and investments
Best fit for: Lead Partnership Development, Head of Innovation Partnerships, Open Banking Partnerships & Sales, Head of API Banking, Area Lead BaaS, BaaS Product Owner, Head of Embedded Lending, Innovation Manager, Business Developer, Chief Commercial Officer, Head of Customer Insights, Product Manager (Open Banking), Fintech founders / vendors, Compliance (PSD3 angle)
The day’s sessions close at 17:30 and the Money Party begins. Join fellow attendees, speakers and sponsors for an evening of drinks, food and informal conversation. The networking reception is where deals get started, speaker conversations continue and the connections made during the day get a chance to go deeper. All registered attendees are welcome.
