The Banking Scene Director's Cut

"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 i...

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...

In cybersecurity, conversations today tend to focus on tools and threats, and rightly so. But Sofia Pogrebynska, IT & Cloud Officer at PayPal brought something more subtle to the surface during our discussion: the biggest shift in cybersecurity today has less to do with technology and far more to do with how organisations behave and operate. Sofia will be delivering a keynote at The Banking Sc...

If you were to ask any banking executive today whether innovation is a priority, the answer would be a resounding "yes". Yet, if you were to look into the internal processes of that same organisation, you would likely find an engine designed to do the exact opposite. This is the "Innovation Paradox" in banking: institutions that know they must evolve to survive yet operate with...

In the rapidly evolving landscape of financial services, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly prevalent. However, as banks embrace this innovative technology, they face unique challenges in governance, ethics, and risk management. We sat down with Seppe Housen, Senior Responsible AI Engineer, and Dimitri De Rocker, AI Director at Datashift, to hear their suggest...

In a very relaxed "behind the scenes" session, Rik and Andrew discussed their highlights from The Banking Scene Art Night 2025 and went a bit deeper into some of the points raised by the speakers, sharing their own views and a couple of nuggets not included in the summary article on our website here . The full presentation by Guido Ronchetti is available on YouTube here.

When Paul Maskall, Strategic Fraud Prevention and Behavioural Lead at UK Finance, asked the audience what the difference between fraud and marketing is during his talk on “The Psychology of Online Fraud” at the recent Open Banking Expo in London, it sounded a bit provocative. As Rik found out, the similarities are much more than most marketeers would like to admit! Rik summarised the key insights...

In our deep dive with Francesco Aghemio, Head of Belgium and Netherlands branches at Revolut, he made it very clear that Revolut doesn’t design products to impress the media or regulators. It builds for customers! From Belgian Bank accounts (not just IBANs) to partnering with Wero, Revolut has tailored its offering specifically to the needs of the local market. Find out how they are redefining ban...

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 service...

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'...

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...

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...

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 & G...

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 outp...

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...

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 structure...

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 insi...

Monzo recently announced that they are considering offering eSIMs to their customers - what has that got to do with banking? Quite a lot it turns out! Andrew invited Chris Skinner, CEO of The Finanser (and well known Chief Trouble Maker) for a Director's Cut Debrief Session to dig into the story behind the story. As can be expected by those of you who know Chris, he got the session off to a fi...

Revolut made an announcement on August 22 that could have wider implications than is evident at first glance. What does Revolut's announcement mean for Belgian Banks? After running a poll on LinkedIn, we included views from a few members of our community in this Director's Cut Debrief Session, where we explored what this means for the incumbent banks and speculated as to what might happen...

This time, we're "In Conversation With" Adam Preis, Director Product Solution Marketing at Ping Identity, to explore the critical aspect of third-party access in today's world. The rapid growth of embedded finance, open banking and interconnected ecosystems has dramatically reshaped the traditional perimeter of trust in financial services. As third-party providers become indispen...

In the "story behind the story", Rik explains why he (briefly) blamed his bank for missing the kickoff of the Belgian Jupiler Pro football competition and what lessons bankers can take away from this. Find out why "digital is a dissatisfier" for some customers and how providing services beyond banking could influence customers in the future. The original article discussed can b...

A Director's Cut Debrief session where Rik and Andrew debate the impact of #agenticai on #banking in the #future. Most banks have been quick to adopt #ai for their own internal purposes - but are they considering the (near?) future possibility of their customers making use of agentic ai to fulfil their financial needs? The article published here was inspired by a white paper written by Dave Bi...