SVP, Strategy and Content
American Banker Live Media
Holly Sraeel is Arizent's Senior Vice President of Strategy and Content, Live Media, leading content creation and innovation for the events portfolio and introducing new multimedia and invitation-only experiences for senior executives that drive critical conversations and action around corporate strategy, innovation and financial performance. She is part of the company's operational leadership team and is focused on developing cross-platform programming that creates higher levels of engagement for subscribers, community participants and partners across the company's brands, including American Banker, The Bond Buyer, National Mortgage News, Accounting Today, Digital Insurance, Financial Planning and Employee Benefits News.
Sraeel is an award-winning editorial director, media executive and content strategist with expertise in developing influential content, communities, and events for C-level executives in the banking and financial services, insurance, and technology industries. Prior to joining Arizent, she held several content leadership and strategist roles, including for B2B media consultancy New York Ventures, capital markets management consultancy Opimas, Oxford University-incubated startup Wise Responder, and as cofounder of Genesys Partners' Agility First Forum.
This new role marks a return to the company for Sraeel. In her previous 12-year run, she was a member of the executive team and was pivotal in driving new cross-platform editorial, events and business innovation as SVP of Brand Management; Group Editorial Director of Banking and Technology magazines; and Founder, President and Editorial Director of The Most Powerful Women in Banking,™ the company's first-ever, community-based media platform, now part of Arizent's flagship American Banker.
Sraeel is an early honors graduate of Marist College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and a concentration in journalism.
As money becomes programmable, trust is no longer enforced after the transaction—it is embedded within it. Identity, compliance, and risk management must evolve to operate in real time and, increasingly, autonomously.
This session examines how banks can extend their role as trusted intermediaries into on-chain environments. The discussion will focus on identity-linked payments, policy-driven transaction controls, smart contract risk, and the emerging role of banks as trust and compliance layers in programmable financial systems.
As payments become autonomous and machine-driven, the nature of trust is being redefined. This session examines how banks can extend their role as trusted intermediaries in a world of on-chain transactions, AI-driven payments, and evolving fraud threats. The discussion includes identity-based payments, real-time risk management, policy-driven transaction controls, and the shifting dynamics of liability and trust. Learn how institutions can embed trust directly into payment flows—and differentiate in an increasingly automated financial ecosystem.
Customers don’t care about rails—they care about speed, cost, and certainty. Banks must remove complexity or lose volume. The urgency is to create seamless user and client experiences that bridge FedNow, RTP, tokenized deposits, stablecoins and CBDCs. This one-on-one discussion will focus on how banks can approach:
This panel focuses on where agentic AI creates measurable competitive advantage: faster risk decisions, proactive client engagement, real-time liquidity management, and scalable growth without linear cost increases. Executives will explore how agentic systems enable banks to operate confidently in on-chain finance, instant payments, and global markets—while maintaining trust with clients and regulators. The discussion will focus on: