The Banking Scene Director's Cut

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.

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/

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 Scene Conference 2026 Luxembourg on January 27: “Rethinking Governance in a World of Agentic AI” - secure your seat today to debate the topic with her.In the meanwhile, you can find out how PayPal approaches #cybersecurity awareness and training in order to shift their culture to instinctively deal with threats in this episode.If you prefer to read the summary of the session, you can find it in our blog here.

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 within structures explicitly engineered to prevent that evolution.I explored this concept with Wasim Mushtaq, the founder of 1CG and a veteran of the financial services industry, after reading his paper that was published in The Journal of Digital Banking (which he has kindly allowed us to make available for our readers to download for free in our summary blog post found here). With over two decades of experience, ranging from the coalface of business banking at Abbey National (now Santander) and credit operations at Barclays, to leading global transformation at Standard Chartered and serving as the interim COO of the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT), Wasim offers a rare, holistic perspective. He has seen the industry from the lender’s desk, the operations floor, and the regulator’s office.Our conversation went beyond the usual platitudes about "digital transformation" and "agile working". Instead, we dug into the structural, cultural, and leadership mechanisms that stifle innovation, change and transformation and, more importantly, how to dismantle them.Grab a coffee and get settled in for an epic episode!

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 suggested best practices and insights on the topic.You can find the key insights summarised in our blog post here, which also includes a link to the free "cheat sheet" from Datashift.

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 from the session in this blog post here, which inspired Chris Skinner to publish his own take on the topic here.Rik caught up with both of them in this two-part session to dig deeper into the topic.

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 banking, one day at a time and what's in store for the future.You can find a summary of the key points on our website here.

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) andLisa 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!