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Prof. Dr. Fritzi Köhler-Geib
Member of the Executive Board
Deutsche Bundesbank
Fritzi Köhler-Geib is a Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank and is responsible for IT, Data and Statistics, Risk Control and the Research Centre. Before this, she was the Chief Economist and First Vice President of KfW Group. Previously she worked for over twenty years at the IMF and the World Bank in various positions and regions as well as at private sector financial institutions, last as the World Banks Lead Economist and Programme Leader for Central America. She received her PhD in Economics from Ludwig Maximilian University Munich and Pompeu Fabra University, Spain. She holds two master degrees in economics and in international management from the University of St. Gallen, HEC Paris and the University of Michigan. Her research interests focus on financial crises, their stabilization and growth-enhancing reforms. In addition, she teaches a master’s level course on economic transformation processes at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Speaking at SFF 2026
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3:00–3:30pmThu 19 NovPolicy StageHall 3, Singapore EXPOOpen
Policy Rewiring
Digital Autonomy in AI: Optionality Over Absolute Independence
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Prof. Dr. Fritzi Köhler-GeibMember of the Executive BoardDeutsche Bundesbank
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Dr. Joseph BreedenChief Executive OfficerCALM XAI
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Steven MaijoorExecutive Board Member & Chair of SupervisionDe Nederlandsche Bank N.V.
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Sunayna TutejaFormer Chief Innovation OfficerFederal Reserve SystemModerator
About this session
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. -
