Tokenisation, digital assets, stablecoins, new rails - these are no longer POC's, they are in production and gaining traction fast! Doing nothing, waiting, is no longer an option and the big question is what will banks need to do to remain relevant in this new reality?

Rik and Andrew reflect on recent sessions at our event in Luxembourg, with added insights from Roel Van Noten, Associate Partner at Avantage Capital Markets, included in the second half of the episode.

You can find the blog referred to on our website here.

“Relevance” is one of those deceptively simple words that everyone uses, but few define in the same way. At The Banking Scene Conference Luxembourg, the panel “Rethinking Relevance in a New Wave of Digital Banking” treated relevance as something dynamic rather than a fixed brand attribute, and we explored what it takes for banks to remain meaningful in customers’ lives as technology accelerates, fraud evolves, and expectations keep shifting.

The panel, moderated by Andrew Vorster, Head of Growth at The Banking scene, consisted of:*

• Claire Lubnau, Head of Commercial and Digital Solutions at Banque Raiffeisen
• Arnaud Clément, Head of Payments and Innovation at ABBL
• Josef Dvořák, Director of Artificial Intelligence at Finshape

In the second half of this episode, we caught up with Arnaud to also get his reflections on the panel.

You can read a summary of the key takeaways on our website here:https://thebankingscene.com/opinions/rethinking-relevance-in-a-new-wave-of-digital-banking/

Continuing with our "Fraud Files" series as part of our research for our fraud white paper, we sat down with Remy Knecht, Head of Anti-Fraud Services at Isabel, for a deep dive into current and future fraud-fighting techniques.

From his position in a multi-bank ecosystem that processes around €2.3 trillion a year for some 50,000 companies across around 2,000 banks, Remy has a wide-angle view of how fraud is evolving in the Benelux region, and where banks need to adjust their approach if they want to shift from simply responding to incidents to building real fraud intelligence.

You can find a summary of the conversation on our website here.

In this interview with of Frédéric Lebeau, Founder of Datavillage.ai we dig into the way #fraudsters and #scammers are adapting to changes in #banking and financial services and hear his advice on the steps that fraud fighters need to take in order to keep up - including where and how #ai can help with #fraudfighting

If you prefer to read a quick summary of the interview, you can find it on our website here.

Following Rik's recent presentation in Luxembourg, Andrew questions Rik about the conversations he is having today about his book, exploring the same idea from the outside in: relevance, trust, and judgment under pressure.

It is the same story as Rik originally told in his book, but seen from a different angle.

You can read the blog referred to in this video on our website here.

In the first of our "Fraud Files" series, we follow up with Jorij Abraham, Managing Director of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) with questions we ran out of time to cover during our recent webinar where he presented a Benelux focused view of the Global State of Scams.

Jorij will be delivering a keynote at our flagship conference in Brussels on May 28 - secure your seat today to join in the conversations on our Fraud and Compliance stage https://thebankingscene.com/events/tbsconfbxl/

You can also find a summary of the interview on our website here.

For our first session of The Banking Scene LIVE in 2026 we had Jorij Abraham, Managing Director of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) deliver a truly eye-opening presentation on The Global State of Scams, flavoured with local insights and statistics from Belgium and the Netherlands.

You can find a summary article of the session on our website here and Rik and Andrew discuss some of the more provocative points arising from the session in this episode.

"Rethinking Relevance" in banking is our theme for our first three conferences of 2026 in Luxembourg on January 27, Amsterdam on March 24 and our flagship conference in Brussels on May 28.

We don't do predictions, but we do discuss our views of the forces shaping 2026 in the lead-up to our first event of the year, inspired by the article that Rik wrote here.

AI has crashed into #banking with all the subtlety of a tidal wave over the last year. But if you look under the hood of most institutions, the reality is far less glamorous: fragmented systems, siloed teams and experimental AI use cases that never quite make it into production.We caught up with Deepak Pandey, Vice President of Technology at Backbase, who cut through the noise and laid out what it actually takes to turn AI into a real growth engine, not just another bolt-on to old architectures.

You can read the blog summary of the session on our website here.

NiCKEL has expanded rapidly across France, not with a digital-only strategy as most neobanks, but with a conscious choice to rely on human contact; not through its own branches but through what they called “buralistes” in France: tobacco and newspaper shops.

Earlier this year, they announced a partnership with bpost in Belgium - we caught up with Emmanuel Legras, CEO of Nickel Belgium, to find out how this fits into their expansion strategy and what he considers to be the key secrets to their success.

You can read the summary of the interview on our website here.

UPDATE: We are excited to announce that Emmanuel has confirmed to speak at our flagship event, The Banking Scene Conference 2026 Brussels on May 28 - join us there to hear more insights!

https://thebankingscene.com/events/tbsconfbxl/speakers/