On 17 October 2026, Nesrine Kefi, Associate at Accellency, moderated a panel on AI in Financial Services at an event in London organised by ATUGE UK. The panel featured Karim Hajjaji, former Global COO and Member of the Executive Committee at Santander Corporate & Investment Banking, recently appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of UIB; Seif Khoufi, Partner at Five Arrows Long Term (FALT), Rothschild & Co; Ernst Dolce, CEO and Co-Founder of Banqora, a fintech building agentic AI workflows for banks and financial institutions; and Aymen Karoui, Head of Methodology at Inrate, a Swiss ESG and sustainability ratings provider.
The discussion explored how AI is reshaping financial services, with three main perspectives:
→ For buyout investors, AI is no longer an investment thesis in itself. As intelligence becomes commoditised, adopting AI will not justify a premium. For private equity investors, the real question is how AI redistributes value across an industry and which companies are best positioned to capture it. Customer trust, client intimacy and proprietary data are emerging as key differentiators.
→ In banking, the real AI disruption is in the business model, not the technology. AI is enabling banks to anticipate client needs rather than simply respond to them, shifting from product-centric offerings towards predictive, hyper-personalised services. The opportunity extends well beyond cost savings to fundamentally rethinking how financial institutions are organised and how they generate revenue.
→ The biggest AI opportunity may lie in what AI cannot replace. When answers are free, clients pay for the ones they trust. As analytical capabilities become widely accessible, access to investment opportunities, human judgement and execution become even more valuable. Generating the right answer matters less than having the relationships, conviction and ability to turn it into returns.
