The Banking Scene Director's Cut

A recent panel session at the European Payments Council, moderated by Andrew, explored the impact of agentic commerce from the perspective of issuers, acquirers, merchants and customers. Rik summarised his key takeaways from the session in his blog here and discussed some of the gaps in the debate with Andrew in this episode. For more insights on Agentic AI and The Future of Banking, download our...

In our first ever book review, we invited guests, Julia Streets and Wasim Mushtaq to join us along with Chris Skinner, for a dive into Chris Skinner's first foray into fiction, "Diary of a Ponzi Scheme". It's a unique blend of finance and fiction (a completely new genre that Chris calls "Finction"), that challenges conventional thinking about trust and social proof in i...

The Banking Scene LIVE webinar preview of highlights from our latest white paper, "AI and The Agentic Future of Banking". This session explores the monumental shift in financial services from passive Generative AI assistants to fully autonomous, goal-oriented AI agents. Discover how leading financial institutions like ING, Rabobank and Revolut are scaling agentic architectures in product...

Agentic AI is currently one of the most discussed topics in banking, but the conversation is moving beyond the excitement of new technology. For banks, the real question is no longer whether agentic AI has potential, it is how to deploy it safely, measure it properly, govern it effectively and turn experimentation into enterprise value. This was the central theme of a recent conversation we had wi...

Most banks are currently talking about Agentic AI, ING is actually deploying it at scale and seeing real results. In this episode, Thomas Geerinck, ING’s Groupwide Retail Chief Data Officer, shares how the bank is turning AI into tangible business value through agentic AI, beyond just experiments. Discover why scale, infrastructure, and strategic deployment are the key differentiators for banks ai...

"Are we there yet?". When it comes to Open Banking and Embedded Finance, are we still debating if we should, instead of implementing what we can? How do we (the Benelux Banks) stack up against the rest of the world and what can we learn from them? Is regulation a help or a hindrance? We have so many questions and we are sure you do too, which is why we invited Nicola Breyer, an internati...

Stablecoins are often discussed through the lens of crypto, payments innovation and customer experience. But at Money20/20, one conversation stood out: the geopolitical impact of stablecoins and what their rapid growth could mean for Europe’s financial sovereignty. In this episode, Andrew and Rik reflect on the last 2 weeks and discuss Money20/20, the rise of US-denominated stablecoins, the implic...

What does agentic AI actually mean for banks, and where can it deliver real value today? In this episode of The Banking Scene Director’s Cut, Andrew Vorster speaks with Rachael Hadaway, Vice President of Product Management at FICO, about the practical reality of agentic AI in banking. Their conversation explores where AI agents can genuinely improve workflows, why human oversight remains essential...

What does agentic AI really mean for banks, and where does the reality differ from the hype? In this episode of The Banking Scene Director’s Cut, Andrew Vorster speaks with Wesley Wuyts, Senior Customer Advisor at SAS, about how banks are approaching agentic AI, where the biggest opportunities lie, and what it will actually take to move from promising demos to reliable production use in a regulate...

Rik and Andrew discuss the key takeaways from a round table Think Tank session held under the Chatham House Rule with senior financial services professionals on the topic of Agentic AI in banking. You can find a summary of the discussions on our website here if you prefer to skim-read the highlights.

Sára Hanniker, Head of AI Solutions and Research, and Josef Dvořák, Chief AI Officer (CAIO) at Finshape, shared their insights and experience in this candid interview. What emerged was not a story about rapid disruption or easy wins. It was a much more useful conversation. Their view was that agentic AI in banking is real, but the route to value is slower, more structural and more demanding than t...

Martijn de Ruijter shares a clear view on where payment fraud is heading in Europe and why instant payments are forcing banks to rethink the balance between speed, customer experience and protection. Verification of Payee is helping, but fraud is adapting just as quickly.

Dharmesh Mistry is a veteran of banking with over 40 years of experience in the industry. His latest research into what he calls the "Quanvergence" suggests that we are moving past the era of digital delivery into an era of deep, structural change driven by four intersecting forces: Quantum computing, Digital Twins, Agentic AI, and Tokenisation. The challenge for European banks is that t...

ClearBank's recent MiCAR notification does not represent a strategic pivot towards crypto, nor does it suggest a belief in a wholesale transition to new rails. It is an extension of an existing role. We reflect on the fireside chat with Tristan Kirchner, CEO of ClearBank Europe, at our event in Amsterdam. You can read the summary article on our website here .

We love to talk about technology developments and opportunities, but what often remains underexposed is the more difficult question: how do these innovations translate into something meaningful, usable, and trusted by customers? The final session at The Banking Scene Conference 2026 Amsterdam: “From Complexity to Clarity: How Banks Help Customers Keep Pace with Change”, was refreshing, because aft...

The Benelux financial sector faces a decisive moment. Instant payments have become ubiquitous, Verification of Payee is fully operational, and a new generation of scams is being industrialised through artificial intelligence. Fraud is no longer defined merely by technical vulnerabilities, but by behavioural manipulation, identity trust gaps, cross-border information asymmetries, and the criminal w...

Based on the conversations sparked by our recent quiz show on Agentic AI in Banking, and further conversations at our recent event in Amsterdam, it's clear that while we might use the same words, we are not all aligned on the definition of Agentic AI. We reflect on a definition provided by Peter van Hees, best-selling author of "AI Agents: They Act, You Orchestrate", during his keyno...

We recently convened a round-table dinner with banking professionals in Belgium, on "Trust under quantum pressure", where we discussed the urgency (or not) for banks to implement "quantum safe" cryptography. In this episode, Rik and Andrew reflect on some of the more surprising aspects of the dinner discussions, during which Andrew shows his age by "being there" for t...

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 Partn...

“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, f...

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-angl...

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 we...

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...

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 prov...