Tokenised Assets, Stablecoins and the Banking Gap for VASPs: Hana Rolles, Bank of London
Graham with Hana Rolles, Chief Commercial Officer, Bank of London
Hana Rolles, Chief Commercial Officer at Bank of London, returns to the podcast to discuss her keynote on the challenges virtual asset service providers face when finding banking partners. She highlights several reasons why traditional banks continue to struggle with VASPs, from regulatory uncertainty to outdated legacy systems that are not equipped for high risk sectors. Newer cloud based banks are stepping in to fill this gap, offering infrastructure capable of handling the significant inflows and outflows common in VASP operations.
Hana explains that although digital assets remain under 1 percent of the global financial system, they already represent a three trillion dollar industry and are gaining traction in areas where stablecoins offer clear advantages. Cross border payments are a primary use case, with stablecoins already involved in approximately 3 percent of flows, a figure projected to rise to 30 percent within five years. Corporate treasuries are another growing application, using stablecoins to manage liquidity across multiple jurisdictions more efficiently.
Looking ahead, Hana believes the next decade will see virtual assets finally break into the mainstream. She also notes the continued rise of embedded finance, pointing to examples such as Tide which, although not a bank, has become central to SME financial services.
Regtech, Data and the Supervisory Future: Dane Whittleston, Bank of England
chatting with Dane Whittleston, Head of Division, Bank of England
Dane Whittleston, Head of the Regtech, Data and Innovation Division at the PRA, outlines how the organisation is modernising supervision while balancing its core objective of ensuring safety and soundness with its newer mandate to support growth and competitiveness.
Dane describes the PRA’s new cloud native supervisory platform, designed to bring together disparate data sources into a single view for supervisors. This enables richer, more frequent insights, integrating regulatory returns, market information, and even social media signals. While advanced analytics and AI will enhance the process, Dane emphasises that human judgement remains central.
Reflecting on the past decade, he highlights the rise of mobile banking as the most transformative shift, describing it as the foundation for today’s wave of personalisation and digital experiences. For the next ten years, he foresees deeper integration of financial services into non financial ecosystems, creating seamless consumer journeys and presenting new challenges and responsibilities for regulators.
Supporting Global Fintech Scaleups: Johnny Morris, London and Partners
with Johnny Morris, International Trade Executive – Fintech & Cyber, London and Partners
Johnny Morris makes his podcast debut to discuss his work as International Trade Executive for fintech and cyber at London and Partners. He explains how the organisation supports high growth London based tech scaleups through its Grow London Global programme, helping them expand internationally through trade missions across North America, Europe, India, China and the UAE.
Johnny highlights the calibre of companies joining the programme, including well known names such as Engine by Starling, Allica Bank and Regtech specialist Sumsub. He notes a clear trend toward more mature scaleups, particularly those at series A or series B stage with the resources to expand into new markets.
When asked about the most significant change in fintech over the past decade, Johnny points to Apple Pay, arguing that it is often overlooked despite having fundamentally reshaped payments behaviour. Looking to the future, he predicts that fraud prevention will dominate the agenda, especially as agentic AI becomes more prevalent. He also anticipates a shift toward Know Your Agent processes to counter increasingly sophisticated threats.
AI Powered Contact Centres and Poland’s CX Leadership: Monika Rohr Lukasik, Axendi
with Monika Rohr Lukasik, Head of Advisory & International Growth, Axendi
Monika Rohr Lukasik, Head of Advisory and International Growth at Axendi, speaks about her session on AI powered contact centres and the rapid evolution of customer experience. She describes how many organisations aspire to implement AI but lack clarity on how best to do so. Axendi’s role is to identify the customer touchpoints where AI can deliver meaningful value and to design solutions that enhance both speed and service quality.
Monika shares a personal example of an AI driven voice bot that automatically managed a card security issue while she was driving, demonstrating the power of proactive, secure, real time AI interventions. She explains that AI can now support voice bots, chatbots, agent assist tools and full quality monitoring across customer interactions.
She also discusses Poland’s rise as a customer service hub. Once seen as a low cost location, Poland now offers high quality, multilingual expertise with over 80 percent of customer service professionals holding degrees. Its EU regulatory environment and deep talent pool have positioned it as a leader in complex service delivery.
Monika identifies AI as the most transformative change in fintech over the past decade. Looking ahead, she envisions self driven financial services that operate seamlessly in the background, responding proactively to customer needs.
AI, Fraud Prevention and the Future of Payments: Professor Ahmed Ebada, BMW Group
with Prof. Dr. Ahmed Ebada, Professor of informatics and AI, a senior product manager, BMW Group
Professor Ahmed Ebada, who also serves as Senior Product Manager at BMW, joins to discuss transforming payment security with AI. He emphasises that AI is moving from hype to practical deployment, enabling real time detection, anomaly analysis and continuous monitoring in ways that would be impossible for humans alone. He notes the growing role of graph based models and the additional strength gained when AI is combined with blockchain.
While AI is advancing rapidly, Ahmed stresses the continued importance of human oversight, particularly as organisations seek explainability in AI driven decisions. He acknowledges concerns around privacy and security but believes that AI will ultimately reach a mature and trusted level of deployment in financial environments.
Reflecting on the past ten years, Ahmed highlights the growing collaboration and openness across fintech, from open APIs to cross border interoperability. Looking forward, he predicts significant advancements in real time AI driven prediction, anomaly detection and widespread tokenisation of physical and digital assets.
Conclusion
Across all interviews, Fintech Connect 2025 showcases an industry that is accelerating into a new era of interoperability, AI powered intelligence and global growth. Whether through tokenised payments, modern supervisory tools, customer centric AI contact centres or next generation fraud prevention, the message from all speakers is consistent: fintech is entering a decade defined by speed, automation and seamless integration across both financial and non financial ecosystems.
