The Banking Scene Director's Cut

What will banks put on the 2027 agenda, and what will only make it onto conference slides? We invited Dharmesh Mistry to share his views as we kick off our research looking to the year ahead. Dharmesh has spent forty years working inside banks or building technology for them. His career spans senior positions at Tier 1 institutions, including NatWest and Lloyds, and 7 years as Chief Digital Officer at Temenos, one of the world's leading banking software companies. He has been a practitioner, a serial entrepreneur, an investor, a mentor, and an analyst. He has been present at every major inflexion point in banking technology since the early 1980s, and has the scar tissue to prove it. He currently writes for FinTech Futures, co-hosts the "Dave and Dharm Demystify Podcast" and is chair of the UK office for OpenCoreOS and an adviser to a number of scaling tech companies.In this webinar we covered:- The unglamorous reality of the executive committee agenda- Quantum-safe timelines moving up- Platforms vs. pipes- AI agents and open banking- Digital identity- Stablecoins, tokenised deposits and the digital euro- European payments sovereigntyAnd we closed with the question every Benelux board must answer in the next 18 months, according to Dharmesh - do you agree with him? You can find a summary article with the key insights from this webinar on our website here.

In the first of our "Top of Mind Topics for Banks in 2027" series of interviews, we hear from Kristof Vandenbulcke, Director Banking and Insurance Products at Beobank. We close by asking if he were an Independent Non-Executive on the Board of a Benelux bank, what one question would he put to the CEO in January 2027 that would make the whole room uncomfortable. His answer might make a few bank board members squirm :)If you prefer to read instead of watching or listening, you can find a summary article on our website here.

In this episode, Rik asks Andrew about his approach to the research interviews he is undertaking as input into our Q4 white paper, as it's a bit different from what you might expect!You can find out the details in our blog here, along with the Visa story which wasn't covered in the conversation.

Open banking was supposed to reshape banking. Instead, it mostly built the rails for what comes next and now AI may be the first thing powerful enough to run on top of them.Andrew and Rik discuss why the disruption everyone feared never fully arrived, what PSD2 actually changed, and why the biggest legacy of open banking may be the infrastructure, not the market upheaval. If you work in banking, fintech, payments, or regulation, you will be interested in our latest white paper "Open Banking and Embedded Finance in Europe: A Benelux Perspective on Regulation, Sentiment, and the Road Ahead" which you can find linked in the blog on our website here.

AI agents are about to sit between you and your bank, and that changes everything about trust, authorisation, and who is accountable when something goes wrong. We sat down with Adam Preis, Director of Product Solution Marketing at Ping Identity, to unpack the new chain of trust emerging in financial services and why banks need to prepare for a world where your agent may be negotiating, switching, and transacting on your behalf.Adam breaks down why identity is no longer just about knowing the customer - it has to govern what an agent is, whose authority it carries, what it can access, and which decisions it can make.If you prefer to read, you can find a summary article based on the conversation on our website here.

The Banking Scene LIVE webinar preview and highlights from our latest white paper, "Open Banking and Embedded Finance in Europe: A Benelux Perspective on Regulation, Sentiment, and the Road Ahead".Rik Coeckelbergs shares an early preview of our research on open banking and embedded finance, drawing on desk research, interviews with industry leaders, and years of conference discussions. He traces the last decade from PSD2 to today, then looks ahead to PSD3, PSR, and FiDA, with a strong focus on regulation, API adoption, and the shift from data access to intelligent financial services.During this webinar, Rik covers:1) Regulations We Had - The Foundations2) Regulations to Expect - Where We Are3) Lessons from a Decade of Open Banking4) Looking Ahead - The Next Decade of Open BankingYou may want to watch this one as a video in order to see the slides, although it's not entirely necessary.If you prefer to dive straight into the full white paper, you can download it from our website here.

AI is not the hard part in finance. The hard part is human judgment, governance, and knowing where generative AI actually belongs and where it absolutely does not. Christophe Atten, author of Generative AI for Finance Leaders, shares the grounded playbook finance teams need before they automate the wrong things.We sat down with Christophe to unpack why he wrote the book now, why he intentionally avoids hype-fueled AGI predictions, and why so many AI conversations miss the real problem: adoption. Christophe explains why finance leaders need frameworks that survive beyond today’s tools, not screenshots and product rankings that age out in weeks.In this episode you'll discover:👉 Why the biggest barrier to AI is usually not technology, but people👉 How to spot the difference between tasks that should use generative AI and tasks that should stay deterministic👉 Why fluency is not the same as accuracy, especially when AI sounds convincing👉 How to use human-in-the-loop review without turning it into rubber stamping👉 Why bad data gets amplified fast, and what finance teams must fix first.If you work in banking, finance, or any regulated environment trying to make generative AI useful without losing control, this episode gives you the clarity, caution, and practical direction you need. Essential listening if you want to get AI working on Monday morning, not just looking impressive on stage.You can find a summary article of the key insights and takeaways from the interview on our website here.

PSD2 did not deliver the open banking revolution everyone expected, but it did something more important: it built the infrastructure, ecosystem, and mindset Europe now depends on. In this episode, Rik Coeckelbergs speaks with Karl Illing, Executive Partner Payments and Open Banking at MSG for Banking, about what PSD2 actually achieved, where open banking fell short, and why the next wave of open finance could be shaped by AI as much as regulation. The conversation focuses on the real-world value created by PSD2, the limits of regulation-by-prescription, and what a workable future for FiDA could look like.If you prefer to read instead of watching or listening, you can find a summary extract of the interview on our website here.

Regulation and innovation are not opposing forces so much as two hands on the same steering wheel, occasionally fighting for control, but ultimately needed together if European payments are to remain safe, competitive and sovereign. Rik and Andrew discuss their favourite highlights from the event, along with the key takeaways outlined in the summary article you can find on our website here. There's a bit of bonus content this week in the form of a video from the CEC that was shown on screen before the panel session. If you work in a bank, it will resonate with you!

In this episode, Rik speaks with Lauren Jones, Open Banking Lead at Paylume, about the past, present, and future of open banking in Europe. They break down what PSD2 achieved, where adoption still lags, and why the next wave of regulation may need stronger standards, better governance, and a clearer commercial model. Lauren also shares why AI and open finance could finally make the user experience more meaningful for consumers.If you prefer to read instead of watching or listening, you can find the full interview transcript on our website here.