Penny Crosman

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

The future of tokenized assets will not be defined by a single network—but by the ability to move seamlessly across many. Banks and other firms must operate across traditional networks and systems as well as multiple blockchains and Layer-one and Layer-two environments, all while maintaining compliance and control.

This fireside chat focuses on interoperability as the new competitive advantage. Learn how institutions are approaching integrating on-chain and off-chain systems, and positioning themselves as connectivity hubs in an increasingly fragmented ecosystem.

Small businesses don’t just manage money—they manage a web of disconnected systems: payments, invoicing, payroll, accounting and financing. The result is manual reconciliation, limited visibility, and operational drag.

This fireside chat explores the next battleground: owning the system of record for how a business runs its finances. The one-on-one discussion will examine:

• Why no one has successfully unified the SMB financial stack.
• Who is best positioned to own the operating layer—banks, fintechs or platforms—and why
• Do SMBs need another tool—or a complete re-platforming of how money is managed?

Global corporates and fintechs are shifting to programmable, instant, cross-border payments. Banks without on-chain rails will be bypassed, so they must rapidly develop the ability to send, receive, settle and reconcile payments on-chain. The new economics of real-time global payments are forming now. Banks must shift from experiments to corporate treasury tokenized money movement, including smart-contract settlement for trade, FX, and liquidity management; merchant and cross-border on-chain payment services; and embedded finance rails for fintechs using tokenized funds.

Early bank movers can set the standards—and capture the money flows. Panelists will provide in-depth insight into:

• Building tokenized deposit rails
• Standing up smart-contract–enabled settlement workflows
• Integrating with emerging CBDC, stablecoin and tokenized payment networks.

Generative AI has moved beyond experimentation into production at scale—Goldman Sachs alone has deployed AI tools to thousands of employees and is working with partners to build autonomous agents for accounting and client onboarding. This fireside chat examines how various frameworks must evolve when actions occur at machine speed. Daniel Marcu, Partner and Global Head of AI Engineering and Science at Goldman Sachs, will discuss:

• How Goldman Sachs has introduced generative AI to its workforce—and what has changed as more agentic frameworks take place
• Building trust into AI systems from the ground up: explainability, auditability, and control
• The path forward: which banking functions are ready for autonomy today, and what still requires human judgment