No bank can or should build every AI capability itself. The real strategic question isn't build versus buy; it's whether institutions retain meaningful choice over the technology they depend on. As agentic AI begins making decisions that affect customers, capital, and risk, financial institutions must ask: How much digital dependency is acceptable? Can they trust and explain the decision of models they didn't build? What happens when the AI underpinning critical operations is controlled by a single provider?

The panel explores what digital autonomy should look like in the AI era. Rather than arguing for complete self-sufficiency, the discussion focuses on optionality: the ability to choose between providers, maintain control over sensitive data, satisfy regulatory expectations for explainability, and preserve resilient fallback options when business or technology priorities change. The conversation will examine how banks can adopt AI at scale without sacrificing transparency, governance or strategic independence - and why genuine optionality may become one of the industry's most important competitive advantages.

The more money behaves like software, the more the decisive questions become legal and political rather than technical. Who is liable when a smart contract executes exactly as written and wrongly? How do sanctions and AML function when compliance is embedded in code rather than checked after the fact? What does systemic resilience mean when value moves at machine speed and a flawed rule can propagate across the system in a single run cycle? We will close the track with the question programmable money must answer to earn its licence: governance-by-design or not at all.

Cross-border tokenized corridors are moving from proof-of-concept to production. Hear from the people who made the crossing: what broke first - tech, legal or liquidity; what the operating model actually looks like when someone has to issue, settle and supervise; what they would never build again; and the honest timeline from pilot to scaled corridor. This discussion will be around the gating factors, the requirements, and what it really takes to move live value across borders on tokenised rails.