Our founder, Julia Streets, MBE, and our CEO, Ian Stirling, share their big takeaways from Day One of Sibos 2026 in Miami.
For years, the AI conversation in financial services has centred on possibilities: automation, productivity, personalisation, better fraud detection, smarter decision-making. But now, the conversation has moved up a level. AI is becoming infrastructure. Agentic AI is raising questions about how machines will make decisions and act on our behalf. Tokenisation is moving from concept to real-world deployment. Payments are instant and always-on. And geopolitical shifts are changing the corridors along which money and trade flow.
But technology isn’t the whole story. Seven themes stood out from the opening day:
The conversation is shifting from what AI could do to what happens when AI is embedded in the financial system. That means AI supporting everything from fraud detection and payment routing to liquidity and operational decision-making. But it also means preparing for agentic AI – systems that don’t simply provide information, but can make decisions and act on behalf of people and organisations.
The question is no longer whether financial services will use AI. It’s how we safely integrate increasingly autonomous systems into critical financial infrastructure.
The more autonomy we give machines, the more important trust becomes. Who is authorised to act? How do we know an AI agent is legitimate? Who is accountable when something goes wrong? And how do we detect fraud when the fraudsters themselves are using AI?
The challenge is moving beyond simply protecting data and systems to establishing trust between humans, institutions and machines.
Tokenisation has been discussed for years. But the conversation is now much more practical. Swift opened Sibos highlighting the move towards live use of tokenised deposits and 24/7 cross-border payments.
The question is therefore shifting from “Will tokenisation happen?” to “Where does it create real value, and how do we scale it?”
The future isn’t necessarily about replacing today’s financial rails with completely new ones. It is about connecting fiat and tokenised value, traditional and digital assets, existing payment systems and emerging infrastructure.
Interoperability across standards, data, identity and connectivity becomes a prerequisite for scale. The winners of this transformation may not simply be those with the newest technology, but those capable of making different technologies work together.
If AI agents can operate 24/7, the financial infrastructure supporting them can’t effectively operate on yesterday’s timetable. We’re seeing the convergence of instant payments, tokenised deposits, real-time settlement and autonomous transactions.
That creates huge opportunities for faster and more efficient commerce. But the faster money moves, the less time there is to detect and correct mistakes, putting even greater pressure on liquidity, fraud prevention and operational controls.
Trade corridors are changing. Settlement preferences are evolving. Digital assets and alternative forms of money are developing alongside traditional currencies and payment systems.
Financial institutions need infrastructure that is not only faster and more intelligent, but adaptable, capable of operating across changing markets, regulations, currencies and forms of value.
Amid all the conversations about AI, digital assets and infrastructure, there is an important reminder that financial transformation ultimately has to serve people.
Diversity, equity and inclusion are the bedrock of future resilience. So who is designing these new systems? Who has access to the opportunities they create? And are we building technology that broadens participation, rather than simply making existing systems more efficient for those already inside them?
Technology may change the infrastructure. People still determine what that infrastructure is built to achieve.
AI, tokenisation, instant payments and new forms of digital value all create opportunity. But they also create new dependencies, new attack surfaces and new points of failure.
So the challenge isn’t simply adopting new technology. It’s making sure the financial system can absorb all of this change without becoming more fragile. That puts some very old-fashioned words back at the centre of the technology conversation: Trust. Security. Interoperability. Governance. Resilience.
Perhaps that’s the real evolution in the AI conversation.
From “What can AI do?”
To “What do we need to build around AI so that the financial system remains trusted, resilient and fit for whatever comes next?”
That feels like a much more important question.
