I am the Head of Daily Banking & Channels at Nordea, the largest financial services institution in the Nordics. I lead the digital channels and daily banking agenda across the Nordics – helping customers manage everyday finances, payments, onboarding, and digital self-service in simpler, smarter, and more personalised ways.

I’ll be speaking about how banks can stay relevant in a world where digital banking, payments, and AI are converging – and where the customer experience is increasingly shaped outside the traditional bank interface.

My focus will be on how established financial institutions can modernise digital channels, embed intelligence into customer journeys, and deliver value at Nordic scale while maintaining trust, resilience, and regulatory discipline. This builds directly on our ongoing work at Nordea, including modernising the mobile experience, improving seamless access to payments and investments, scaling digital onboarding, and actively preparing for more conversational and agentic customer journeys.

I hope attendees leave with the conviction that the future of banking will not be won simply by adding more features, but by making financial services easier to understand, easier to act on, and more relevant in the moments that matter. The most successful banks and fintechs will be those that combine excellent digital execution with trust, data, AI, and human-centred design – turning complex financial needs into simple, intuitive journeys.

The biggest challenge is balancing speed and trust. Customers naturally expect the same level of simplicity and personalisation they receive from the world's best digital platforms. However, financial institutions operate in a highly regulated environment where security, operational resilience, privacy, and absolute reliability are entirely non-negotiable. The industry needs to move faster on delivering modern customer experiences while simultaneously simplifying legacy technology, handling regulatory complexity, and protecting the core trust that banking is built on.

It matters immensely right now because the customer interface in financial services is being contested more intensely than ever before. Payments increasingly originate in digital wallets, merchant platforms, business software, and external ecosystems, while AI is beginning to completely redefine how customers search, decide, and act.

At the same time, regulatory changes, the push for instant payments, stringent resilience requirements, and open data are reshaping the fundamental economics and infrastructure of banking. This creates a clear, immediate challenge: banks must modernise faster, but they must do so without compromising trust, stability, or compliance.

I’m watching the shift toward conversational and agentic banking – where AI moves from being a reactive support tool to becoming a primary new customer interface. The truly interesting question is not just whether an AI can answer basic questions, but whether it can actively help customers understand their finances, take meaningful action, complete complex tasks, and make better decisions in a trusted and compliant way. This shift will fundamentally change how banks design channels, journeys, service models, and even core product propositions.

In the next 3-5 years, I believe the most competitive financial institutions will be those that successfully combine three distinct pillars:

• Strong, frictionless digital self-service

• Intelligent, automated personal engagement

• Human guidance when it truly matters

Banking will inevitably become more embedded, more real-time, and more conversational - but customers will still disproportionately value institutions that can offer security, clarity, and confidence when their financial decisions become complex.

Stay close to the real customer problem. Technology moves incredibly fast, but the winners are rarely those with the most advanced technology for its own sake – they are the ones who solve something deeply meaningful in a way that customers actually adopt. Be ambitious, but match that ambition with pragmatism: build for trust, measurable impact, and operational scalability from day one.

I highly recommend the Acquired podcast, hosted by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. In a world dominated by surface-level tech takes and rapid-fire soundbites, Acquired does the exact opposite: they provide multi-hour, deeply researched historical deep dives into the world's most iconic companies.

For anyone working in fintech or banking, it is an absolute masterclass in long-term strategy, corporate execution, and understanding how enduring competitive moats are actually built. It’s a brilliant reminder that truly impactful innovation isn't just about launching a flashy front-end feature today, but about mastering the underlying structural, economic, and operational forces that allow a business to scale and endure for decades.

I would choose Leonardo da Vinci. He combined art, science, engineering, and pure curiosity in a way that feels incredibly relevant to modern innovation. The best breakthroughs often happen at the intersection of entirely different disciplines. I think a conversation with someone who saw no hard boundary between creativity, technology, and human progress would be both fascinating and deeply inspiring.