The Banking Scene Director's Cut

Join us as we delve into the fascinating world of quantum computing and its potential impact on the banking industry with insights from a panel with IBM, BBVA, and CWI at SIBOS and beyond.

We discuss the complexities of quantum technology, its dependence on AI, and the hybrid future of computing. Discover insights from industry experts on how quantum computing could revolutionise financial services and the importance of collaboration in navigating this technological frontier.

You can find the article discussed in this session on our website here.

Rik shares insights and opinions from the recent Open Banking Expo, where he moderated a panel featuring representatives from Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and the UK, who all approach Open Banking & Open Finance from different angles.

We also explore the psychology of fraud and the future of consumer finance as presented by Paul Maskall and Marko Sjoblom respectively.

You can read Rik's key takeaways in his blog post here.

Is #blockchain finally shedding its image of "The Wild West of Technology" within the #banking and #financialservices industry?

In his extremely colourful article based on moderating a session at Sibos with Co-Pierre Georg, Director at the Frankfurt School Blockchain Centre, (and stepping into the shoes of Rita Martins, Head of Products Ecosystem, Digital Assets at London Stock Exchange Group, who unfortunately couldn't make it due to travel troubles), Rik paints a picture of the evolution of blockchain over the years:

From a dusty, lawless frontier where coders were gold diggers and algorithms their pickaxes, to blockchain being the plumbing of a modern civilisation.

In this episode, Andrew digs into the stories behind the story (and it is a particularly good story) published here.

While most of his scepticism around #cryptocurrency remains, Andrew felt positively buoyant about the future of blockchain.

Where do you sit on the spectrum?

Rik had a deep dive with Joris Hensen, the Founder and Co-Lead of the Deutsche Bank API program, to find out how Deutsche Bank approaches FiDA as an opportunity, following our visit to the evening session showcase after a full day FiDA Data Studio workshop held in collaboration with TechQuartier at their Eintracht Lab in Frankfurt.

See our event recap, including our key conclusions in our article here.

Is your AI culturally aligned with the region it is deployed in, or is it a "copy and paste" implementation from wherever it was created?

Andrew moderated a panel on Culturally Aligned AI during Sibos 2025 in Frankfurt, with perspectives provided by:

• Ammar Younas (Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for Long-term Artificial Intelligence in China)
• Patricia Shaw (Global AI/Data & Governance Advisor, Beyond Reach Consulting) and
• Lisa Russell (Emmy-Award-Winning Filmmaker and AI Artist, ArtsEnvoy.ai)In this deep dive, Rik and Andrew dig into some of the key points raised during the panel.

In this deep dive, Rik and Andrew dig into some of the key points raised during the panel.

You can find the key action points and takeaways in the full article on our website here.

FiDA – the proposed Financial Data Access Regulation, has been a bit of a contentious topic over this year. During Sibos 2025 in Frankfurt, Rik and I were invited by Joris Hensen, the Founder and Co-Lead of the Deutsche Bank API program, to join an evening session following a full day FiDA Data Studio workshop held in collaboration with TechQuartier at their Eintracht Lab, to see and hear the output from the day.

You can read our own thoughts and insights on the blog here, but for this episode we go behind the scenes with two industry experts who actually participated in the full day programme.

First up we hear from Nicola Breyer, Open Finance Advisor and Expert from the Open Finance Ecosystem organisation, who some of you might remember from our conference in Amsterdam earlier this year.

Then we hear from Anne-Sophie Morvan, Chief Commercial Officer at Luxhub, who will be a familiar face and voice to those who attended our conference in Luxembourg earlier this year.

We have a date in the diary to take a deeper dive into the topic with Joris Hensen himself, so stay tuned for more updates and don’t forget to subscribe!

We recently held a round table Think Tank session with senior leaders from fraud, payments, and cybersecurity, in collaboration with our partner XTN Cognitive Security. The session focused on scams and how the Belgian banking sector is evolving to the age of instant payments and more advanced fraud tactics.

After attending Sibos this week, we reflected back on the dinner with a few added insights from conversations and sessions we moderated and attended.

You can read the blog summary of the Think Tank session, along with the key learnings on our website here.

We've had numerous conversations about the future of payments over the last week, from The Banking Scene BBQ Night to a roundtable Think Tank dinner on scams and fraud, and a few more in between.We share our key takeaways (and Andrew has a bit of a rant about why banks have taken so long to address cross-border payments speed and cost problems) in this episode.You can find far more structured thoughts in our blog summary of BBQ Night here.

A short intro that Rik and Andrew recorded off-the-cuff to explain what The Banking Scene Director's Cut is all about and why they like doing it ..... and why we hope you enjoy listening to it too!

Feel free to get in touch directly with one of them if you'd like to join us in the studio to share your views.

Hot on the heels of the 2025 collaborative study by Argenta, Deloitte and Ghent University on the state of Financial Health in Belgium, we look at what BBVA and ABN AMRO (via BUUT) are doing to improve their customers' financial health.

Rik and Andrew called on industry experts Anette Broløs, Director and Co-Founder, Finthropology and Els Lagrou, Co-Founder, Dagelijks Geld, to share their insights on the topics of Financial Education and Financial Health, during a discussion where Andrew posed a potentially inflammatory question to Rik..........

You can read the article and find links to the report referenced in the discussions here.