Jouk Pleiter

Jouk Pleiter

CEO

Backbase

Jouk Pleiter is founder & CEO of Backbase, the AI-powered banking platform he helped build from a small startup in 2003 into a profitable, global fintech leader. Under his founder-led stewardship Backbase scaled organically to the hundreds of millions in annual revenue, grew to a two-thousand person team, and built a client roster of 150+ banks and financial institutions serving tens of millions of end users worldwide. Known for a pragmatic, long-term oriented leadership style, he stresses close customer partnership and relentless product innovation. Jouk partners closely with bank c-suite members to turn strategy into measurable customer and business outcomes.

Featured Sessions

Thursday, November 19, 2026
1:20 pm

While Agentic AI will change how customers interact with financial institutions and how financial decisions are made—ultimately, defining who controls the customer relationship—governed autonomy is critical to adapting customer-facing business models. As intelligent agents begin managing cash flow, initiating payments, optimizing liquidity, negotiating financial services and interacting directly with other AI systems, banks face profound strategic choices, including how to build governed autonomy into their enterprise, what capabilities will remain differentiators, which will become commodities, and where they will create value in an increasingly autonomous financial ecosystem.

This panel discussion examines how agentic AI is reshaping competition, including the impact from:

  • Building governed autonomy and why it matters
  • The emergence of autonomous financial agents for consumers and businesses
  • AI-to-AI commerce and machine-driven financial interactions
  • The redefining of customer relationships through intelligent financial experiences
  • Fintechs, hyper-scalers and emerging AI-native platforms as competitors
  • Trust, data, payments and balance sheet strength as enduring competitive assets