23 March 2026 – A fantastic insight into how AI is developing within the financial sector. In collaboration with IE and the Spanish Embassy’s office for Cultural and Scientific Affairs the BritishSpanish Society brought together a panel of experts for an informative deep dive on the current and expected future role of AI in financial services. Our panel was moderated by Rafif Srour, Dean of Programs at IE School of Science & Technology, with speakers entrepreneur Vishal Shete, Senior international banking executive and strategist Dr Ángel Gavieri, and Head of Innovation and Strategic Projects ADA Piyush Gupta leading the discussion. Our speakers explored topics including the areas in financial services where AI is creating the most tangible value, the relationship between AI and Quantum and AI’s role in protecting against and responding to cyber-attacks. The panel spoke of the value AI had added in risk and compliance, particularly in speed of response, and identified opportunities for nimble new companies to enter the market and make dynamic change faster than established companies. With the banking sector being one of the most regulated businesses the panel spoke of the advantages of AI in mitigating risk, and the need to check risk mitigation against increased risk, with all agreeing that regulation of AI use was necessary. Augmentation and autonomy were hot topics of discussion, with whispers from attendees echoing the panel’s understanding that humans are concerned that AI could replace people. Panel members spoke of current AI being ‘in the loop’ rather than controlling processes and spoke of the complexities of mistakes and blame when it comes to AI’s involvement. The discussion opened up to questions from the audience with an interesting conversation about human intuition and how AI could adapt to have intuition, and commentary on how humans working with AI were adapting language to verbalise intuition, and more exploration of the legal side of AI, environmental impact, cost versus value, and experimentation from small and emerging businesses. The panel left the audience with a sobering thought ‘AI won’t take your jobs, but people who use AI will’. After an evening focussing on Artificial Intelligence we turned our attention to Human Interaction, enjoying post discussion drinks and snacks thanks to Codorniú with the over 100 assembled IE representatives and alumni, BritishSpanish Society members and invited guests A huge thank you to our friends from IE and the Cultural Office for helping us to create such an informative and though provoking evening, to the Spanish Embassy for hosting us, particularly to Minister-Counsellor for Cultural and Scientific Affairs José María Robles Fraga who was thanked in opening and closing speeches for his unwavering support of the BritishSpanish Society ahead of his upcoming retirement, and finally to our panel of speakers for giving so generously of their time to discuss such a pertinent topic. This event was free to attend for members of the BritishSpanish Society, to join the Society and enjoy more discussions such as this, plus a full programme of cultural and social events please head the 'join us' page to register as a BritishSpanish Society member.