MEET THE SPEAKER: JOE JORDAN – THE GREAT UPSKILLING: PREPARING FOR THE AI ECONOMY

Speaker Name: Joe Jordan

What's one thing you hope attendees take away from your session?

I'd like people to leave with a clearer idea of which skills their teams will need once AI is doing the first draft and the first review. In regulated firms, the scarce skill is going to be turning policy and judgement into controls a system can apply consistently, and very few firms are training anyone for that yet.

In one sentence, what do you do and what is your role?

I'm co-founder and CCO of Adclear, an AI platform that reviews financial promotions before they go live and monitors them once they're out, used by Lloyds Banking Group, Allica Bank, Monzo, PensionBee, Blockchain.com and more.

What's the biggest challenge facing the industry in this area?

Producing content has become very cheap and approving it hasn't. Generative AI lets a marketing team turn out ten times the copy, creative and campaign variants it could a year ago, but most compliance functions are still staffed and structured to review one asset at a time. If the control layer doesn't scale with the production layer, firms either slow everything back down or take risks they can't evidence, and neither holds up for long under Consumer Duty.

What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone working in fintech today?

Learn how the approval process at your firm works end to end, even if you never sit in compliance. The people who understand where the rules come from, why a claim gets rejected and what evidence a regulator would ask for are the ones who move fastest, because they stop producing work that gets sent back.

What book, podcast, newsletter, or resource would you recommend to our audience?

Matt Levine's Money Stuff newsletter, which is the most enjoyable way I know to understand how finance actually behaves. For anyone working on financial promotions, Adclear's State of Financial Promotions report covers what's getting approved first time, what isn't, and why.

What topic will you be speaking about at FinTech Connect 2026?

I'm on the panel The Great Upskilling: Preparing for the AI Economy, on the Digital Transformation Stage on day one, alongside speakers from Zopa, Barclays, ClearScore and Commerzbank. My focus is what upskilling looks like for marketing and compliance teams in regulated firms, and the new roles AI is creating there, compliance engineering in particular.

Just for fun: if you could have dinner with any person, past or present, who would it be and why?

Charles Ponzi, mostly to find out how far his marketing would get through a modern financial promotions review. I suspect not very far, but I'd enjoy hearing him make the case.

What industry trend are you watching most closely?

Agentic AI across marketing and compliance. We're close to the point where one agent drafts a campaign and another checks it against regulation, internal policy and previous decisions before routing it to the right reviewer. The technology is the easier part. The harder questions are who owns the policy those agents execute, and how a firm evidences every decision when the regulator asks.

Why is this topic particularly important right now?

Most financial services firms have already handed their marketing teams generative AI tools, so the volume of content needing review is climbing today. The FCA has also been clear that using AI doesn't change who is accountable for a misleading promotion. Firms that build the skills and controls this year will be able to use AI at scale, and the ones that don't will end up rationing it.

What's one prediction you have for the next 3-5 years?

Compliance engineer will be a recognised job title in most regulated firms within five years. Someone will own translating regulation and internal policy into the controls AI systems apply, sitting between legal, compliance and product, and the firms that hire for it early will get marketing to market far faster than the ones still reviewing everything by hand.