Carter Pape

Loosening regulatory expectations are increasing just as banks are being pushed to innovate faster. This panel examines how bank leaders can pursue digital finance transformation while maintaining regulatory credibility, auditability, and consumer protection—turning compliance into an enabler of innovation rather than a constraint in a market undergoing radical transformation.

The fastest-growing fraud threat doesn’t come from external hackers—it comes from customers exploiting their own accounts and synthetic identities created specifically to defraud banks through payment networks. First-party fraud schemes using ACH, mobile deposits, and peer-to-peer platforms are surging because they look like legitimate customer behavior until it’s too late. Check kiting rings that move funds across multiple institutions, bust-out schemes that max out credit before disappearing, and synthetic identities built from real and fabricated data that pass KYC checks—all exploit the trust embedded in payment systems. This panel examines how network-level visibility reveals fraud patterns individual banks can’t detect, what rules and risk frameworks actually prevent these schemes, and where liability falls when the fraud originates from inside your own customer base.

Artificial intelligence has shattered the economics of cybercrime, enabling sophisticated, personalized attacks on an industrial scale. Regional banks and credit unions face asymmetric warfare: attackers using cutting-edge AI while defenders operate with limited budgets, legacy infrastructure, and small security teams. This panel examines how AI-powered threats are evolving, why smaller institutions are increasingly attractive targets despite lower volumes, and what realistic defense strategies look like when you can’t outspend the threat. From behavioral biometrics to threat intelligence sharing and consortium-based defense models, panelists discuss practical approaches to surviving the AI arms race.

Authorized Push Payment fraud—where criminals manipulate victims into willingly sending money—cost Americans over $8 billion in 2024. Unlike traditional fraud, customers authorize these transfers, creating a liability gray zone. The UK now mandates reimbursement for fraud victims (up to £85,000), and U.S. regulators are watching closely. Banks face a three-part challenge: detecting social engineering in real-time without blocking legitimate payments, determining liability when customers override warnings, and balancing protection with personal responsibility. This session examines behavioral analytics, friction-based interventions, effective customer education, and evolving liability frameworks.

Combating cyber risks and fraud in today’s digital banking environment, where threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and more vulnerabilities are being exploited, requires institutions to develop a multi-layered, iterative approach to cybersecurity that safeguards sensitive data, adheres to regulation, and proactively anticipates and mitigates risks. Learn from industry executives and cybersecurity experts on the evolving sophistication of cyber-attacks and what components of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy are most critical, including a robust cyber infrastructure, artificial intelligence-driven fraud detection systems, advanced authentication and access controls, cyber resilience and risk testing, and cyber incident response guidelines for distributed denial-of-service attacks, ransomware, insider threats, phishing and social engineering, and more.

Synethic identity fraud, which is projected to cost banks $23 billion by 2030 (and more in operational and reputational costs), is on the rise, and it’s getting more complex with the use of general artificial intelligence and deepfakes by bad actors to carry out attacks. Fraudsters rely on automated tools to create and scale AI-generated fake identities and documents across multiple platforms, exploits gaps in identity verification systems, notably with digital accounts. To prevent the orchestration of ID fraud, banks must work to shore up points of vulnerability and secure digital platforms to guard against data breaches that expose sensitive data that makes it easier for ID theft to occur. Industry practitioners and experts detail why proactive usage of AI/machine learning, strong identity verification, Know-Your-Customer technology-enabled document verification, and tokenization of customer data are required to combat ID fraud.