Day One

Cybercrime is projected to cost the global economy £12 trillion this year and the threat landscape facing financial services is escalating faster than ever. Despite cybersecurity being identified as a critical growth industry, the sector faces a severe talent gap, with millions of cyber roles unfilled globally.

For BFSI leaders, the challenge is twofold: strengthening defences against increasingly sophisticated attacks while continuing to deliver seamless, trusted customer experiences. Drawing on real-world incidents and emerging approaches, this session explores how organisations can rethink cyber resilience, talent and strategy without compromising CX.

• How the cybercrime threat landscape in BFSI is evolving and where institutions remain most exposed

• What understanding hacker behaviour and attacker psychology can reveal about strengthening defences

• How to protect customers and sensitive data without introducing friction or damaging trust

• New and innovative approaches to cyber-risk mitigation, skills development and talent pipelines

Fergus Hay

Founder, Chief Executive Officer
The Hacking Games

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Customer experience in financial services is shaped as much by back-office operations processes as by frontline support, with smooth onboarding, effective KYC, financial crime prevention, and seamless payments just as high on customer priority lists. To deliver on these expectations at scale, learn how Wise - serving 15 million + customers globally - shows how AI can copilot with financial crime teams, payment flows, onboarding & KYC - as well as bring exceptional customer contact experiences - and bring operational efficiency while protecting customer trust. The trade off between cost, quality, and speed is no longer a trade off - you can have your cake and eat it too.

Uncover the measurable impact AI can have and walk away with practical insights on embedding it responsibly as this case study explores:

Rohan Basu

Global Head of Operations
Wise

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When AI enters the front line of customer support, the impact extends well beyond cost reduction to fundamentally reshape the customer experience.

Drawing on a recent AI agent deployment, this session shares first-hand learnings from Gradient Labs on how AI was embedded into mission-critical support journeys, and why success depended as much on process design and operating model alignment as on the technology itself.

• Understand what real AI ROI looks like in regulated customer support environments and why measurable value can be delivered far faster than many organisations may expect

• Learn how to deploy AI agents effectively by addressing underlying process and operating model gaps before scaling automation

• See how UK financial services organisations operating in highly regulated environments can directly link AI deployment to CX outcomes, cost efficiency and enterprise-wide scale to demonstrate tangible, CX-led impact

Dimitri Masin

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Gradient Labs

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Watermelon is a Voice of the Customer company. We analyse millions of pieces of feedback every year, turning insight into action and strategic direction.

But we faced a challenge. Customer experience data only tells part of the story.

Long before someone becomes a customer, they’ve already formed opinions about a brand. Reputation, advertising, word of mouth and expectations all shape how a brand is perceived and experienced, with 81% of consumers say they need to trust a brand before they even consider making a purchase.

Our clients wanted to move beyond touchpoint-level metrics to understand the commercial reality of their customer experience: where they sit in the market, how they compare with competitors inside and outside their sector and which investments they need to make to drive growth.

To answer this, Watermelon developed the Canvas Index - a pioneering benchmarking study that brings together customer experience and brand perception to reveal what’s really driving brand performance.

In this session, Watermelon will share the thinking behind the Canvas Index, explain how it works and share some early insights from the first wave of results launched in January.

Mark Squires

Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Watermelon Research

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Sophie Stanhope

Marketing Director
Watermelon Research

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With a ‘customer first’ philosophy at its core, learn how Tandem Bank pairs product and customer service excellence to power their growth journey as a digital bank. This session explores how Tandem Bank is building the operational and cultural foundations for sustainable expansion, with a customer focus, scalable infrastructure and data-driven insights turning customer signals into meaningful action:

• How customer signals and sentiment data are guiding strategic priorities and investments

• Operational frameworks that connect service quality to measurable business outcomes

• How Tandem thinks about growth enabling operations and culture to scale customer first growth

Paul McGarrigle

Chief Operating Officer
Tandem Bank

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Michelle Beattie

Head of Operations
Tandem Bank

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In this roundtable session, we’re bringing together peers to explore the most critical opportunities and challenges of AI in BFSI today, where four focussed tables mean you can take a deep dive into practical use cases, share lessons learned and debate strategic choices to determine how your organisation drives efficiency, improves CX, stays compliant and invests widely in AI capabilities – whether in-house or outsourced.