WORKSHOPS

From Strategy to Scalable Deployment
19–20 November 2026 · Amsterdam

Europe’s leading banks have spent years and significant budgets learning how to move AI from pilot to production — including what not to do. This two-day program puts that experience at your disposal. Senior practitioners from leading banks in the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg and Denmark share what worked, what failed, and what they would do differently today.

Between sessions, you work on your own institution’s AI initiative using the BEACON framework, adapting each lesson to your market, your regulator and your resources. The aim is not to replicate what others built, but to leapfrog: to skip the costly detours and go straight to what delivers results.

Banks such as Moldova’s maib have used The Banking 50’s programs to do exactly that. You leave with a prioritized use case, a governance pathway and a 90-day roadmap — ready to execute at home.

The objective is not ideation. The objective is deployment.

What you take home

• A BEACON readiness profile of your institution across six dimensions
• One prioritized, scored AI use case with a clear business case
• A governance pathway and data readiness snapshot
• A stakeholder map and engagement plan
• A 90-day roadmap with named owners, milestones and success metrics

Who should attend

Senior leaders responsible for AI, data, technology, operations, risk or product in banks and financial institutions, especially those with an AI initiative they want to get into production.

Program

Thursday 19 November

09:00 · Opening: Why AI Stalls in Banks, and How BEACON Moves It Forward

Morten Kriek, Founder, The Banking 50
Most banks have AI ambition and funding, but few move initiatives from pilot to production. This opening introduces the BEACON framework and how two days of insight become a plan you take home.09:30 · Delivering AI in Retail Payments, Cards and Cash

Delia Vasile, IT Area Lead, Retail Banking Payments, Cards and Cash Services, ING
Payments, cards and cash run on high-volume, business-critical platforms where every change has many owners. Delia shares where AI readiness gaps show up first, and how business, technology, risk and operations can be aligned to close them.

10:05 · Building an AI-Native Bank: Lessons from a Product-Led Challenger

Ankur Sisodia, Chief Product Officer, RiverBank
Challengers design AI into the product from day one, while incumbents usually add it to existing journeys. Drawing on RiverBank and his time as Head of Product at N26, Ankur shows what incumbents can realistically adopt.

10:45 · BEACON Breakout: Readiness AssessmentScore your institution across the six BEACON dimensions and identify your strengths and critical gaps.

13:00 · AI Against Financial Crime: Scaling Prevention in a Global Wholesale Bank
Ivar Lammers, Global Head of Financial Crime Prevention, ING Wholesale Banking
Financial crime prevention is one of the few areas where banks already run AI at scale under intense regulatory scrutiny. Ivar shares how to choose where AI earns its place in AML and fraud prevention, and how to put it into operation globally.

13:40 · Responsible AI by Design: Ethics and Data Governance as Selection CriteriaEberhard Schnebel, Executive Committee Member, EBEN Europe
Whether a bank should pursue an AI use case depends on more than value and feasibility: it must also be explainable, governed and defensible to customers and supervisors. Eberhard shows how ethical and governance criteria sharpen prioritization rather than slow it down.

14:20 · BEACON Breakout: Use Case Prioritization
Score your candidate use cases on value, feasibility, readiness and risk, and commit to one.

16:00 · AI on Legacy Rails: Modernising Markets Post-Trade
Christian Luckow, Managing Director, Markets Post Trade Technology, and Tobias Prims, Domain Product Owner, FX & Loans, Danske Bank
Post-trade is where decades-old systems, strict regulation and real-time demands meet. Christian and Tobias show how AI-driven development and platform modernisation move forward together in FX, loans and clearing.

16:30 · BEACON Breakout: Governance & Data Readiness
Define the risk tier, decision rights and data foundations your use case needs.

17:30 · Reception and Dinner

Friday 20 November

09:00 · From Prototype to 700 Users: Driving GenAI Adoption Inside a BankMassimo Tumolo, GenAI Product Owner & Innovation Lead, ABN AMRO Bank
Building a GenAI tool is the easy part; getting colleagues to use it and the organisation to back it is where most initiatives stall. Massimo shares how his team took a GenAI product from discovery to daily use by more than 700 colleagues.

09:40 · BEACON Breakout: Stakeholder Alignment & 90-Day RoadmapMap your champions and blockers, and build a 30/60/90-day plan with named owners.

11:00 · From Plan to Production: Roadmap Review and Peer Challenge
Mac Mahalingam, Damir Vodenicarevic and Morten Kriek
Participants present their roadmaps and are challenged by peers and moderators on feasibility, architecture and risk.

12:30 · Closing and Certificates

Moderators

• Damir Vodenicarevic, CEO & Co-Founder, Clehance
• Mac Mahalingam, Senior Solutions Architect, Global Financial Services, Amazon Web Services
• Morten Kriek, Founder, The Banking 50