AFB Practice Roundtable: AI in Financial Services: Navigating the EU AI Act and Beyond

The financial services sector is leading in leveraging AI for the creation of competitive advantages, improving customer experience, and enhancing employee productivity. Increasingly, banks are striving to harness AI, not just for cost savings, but as a catalyst for transformation and growth.

AFB, in partnership with Ashurst, invites members to attend an in-person Practice Roundtable on the impact of AI and the implications of the EU AI Act, in particular on both EU and non-EU entities. Whilst the Act directly affects businesses with a presence in the EU, it also has an extraterritorial effect on non-EU providers of services and products in the EU and is quickly being embraced by firms across sectors and borders as a global regulatory standard.

Why attend?

2025 has seen a broadening of AI’s role in banking and payments. From improving operational efficiencies to enabling new business models and revenue streams, banks are focusing on more than just enhancing customer experience and driving internal process efficiencies. AI is increasingly being used in a wide range of high-impact applications like transaction monitoring, cyber threat scanning, portfolio optimisation, sustainable finance, and conducting algorithmic trades.

Bank leadership teams are actively exploring the risks and opportunities of AI adoption, considering transformational use cases for business-wide implementation, and looking at their company and customer’s data in completely novel ways – all in a convoluted and rapidly evolving regulatory environment.

The roundtable discussion, supported and led by digital economy, technology and data & analytics experts at Ashurst, will consider the following key areas:

AI literacy: Understanding the new provisions under the AI Act (in effect and enforceable as of Feb 2025), benefits of uplifting organisational AI literacy, and lessons learned from other banks.

Scoping & risk assessments: Navigating what’s in-scope vs out-of-scope, conducting risk assessments and identifying new obligations under the Act.

Prohibited and high-risk use cases, and general-purpose AI: identifying prohibited and high-risk use cases, navigating provisions around general purpose AI, and focused conversation on the opportunities and challenges participants are experiencing in their business.

AI governance: Best practices for monitoring and governing usage within your organisation, and intersections with other key considerations (e.g. data protection, workforce change & employee usage, culture, information / cyber security, etc.)

Attendees will be invited to share their perspectives, draw upon the points raised and pose questions to the team at Ashurst and each other.

AFB will circulate an agenda and a series of questions in advance to those registered to attend. This will be used to guide the discussion.

Note that the capacity for the roundtable will be limited to 20 members, one person per bank.

Who should attend?

This session is aimed at Business, Compliance, Risk, Legal and AI / Data teams of AFB member banks.

Speakers

Fiona Ghosh, Partner, Digital Economy Transactions practice

Fiona has over 25 years’ experience of complex commercial & technology transactions in transformational projects. She specialises in Deep Tech including AI, payments, fintech and strategic collaboration arrangements. Her practice focuses on navigating clients through significant disruption, business transformation and strategic risk management particularly at the intersection of regulation and technology.

Fiona is listed in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 recognising her work and sits on the Lexis Nexis Commercial Law Board. She advises clients across diverse sectors including financial institutions, governments, corporates and OEMs and on a wide range of payment solutions matters including card issuance, merchant acquiry, platform payments architecture and digital payments.

Fiona is a globally recognised leader in technology, FinTech and commercial services by Legal 500, Chambers & Partners and Who’s Who Legal as a Global Thought Leader in Fintech Law. She regularly appears in Innovate Finance’s Women in FinTech Powerlist and was invited by HM Treasury to be part of the UK Government’s review of the future of Fintech.

Matt Worsfold, Partner, Risk Advisory

Matt is a Partner at Ashurst Risk Advisory, where he leads the UK Data and Analytics practice, having joined Ashurst at the launch of its Consulting division in 2020.

As an experienced data practitioner, his expertise lies in the strategic use and governance of data to address complex legal, compliance, regulatory, and risk challenges. This includes specialised knowledge in areas such as AI, cyber security, data privacy, financial crime and employment having supported clients through regulatory change, enforcement, investigations, redress/remediation and rectification programmes.

Matt has delivered large-scale programmes for a diverse set of clients, encompassing corporate and government sectors, with a particular focus on financial services, energy, consumer and telco. His work focuses on enabling clients to effectively navigate the increasing complexities of regulatory data driven environments.

Joao Marques, Director, Risk Advisory

Joao is a Director at Ashurst within the Risk Advisory Team, specialising in Data & Analytics. He has played a key role in introducing Generative AI (GenAI) technologies to the firm, supporting the development of innovative solutions that add value for clients and internal teams. Joao has been involved in initiatives that use GenAI to support current state assessments, helping to identify findings and shape practical recommendations more efficiently. He has also contributed to the adoption of GenAI for automating and streamlining tasks such as code review, with a focus on improving consistency and efficiency in project delivery.

With over 15 years of consulting experience, including a recent leadership role as Head of NLS Tuning at Deutsche Bank, he has been using technology to address complex business challenges and support ongoing improvements across processes, technology, and people.

Logistics

Fee:           Included in AFB membership

Location:    Ashurst, Fruit & Wool Exchange, 1 Duval Square, London E1 6PW

Date:          Tuesday 10 June 2025

Time:          09:00 – 10:30 (arrivals & breakfast from 8:30)

If you would like to submit a question that you would like the session to address, please send them to the AFB Secretariat. You will receive details on how to join this session a week before the event.