Artificial intelligence is no longer just an isolated operational experiment in banking; it is actively restructuring intermediation, workflows, and institutional accountability. In this SFI Roundup, five contributors from academia and practice discuss the impact of AI on banking. Gains only appear when banks redesign processes and invest in monitoring. Trust, relationships, and the ability to verify an answer still give clients reasons to pay a bank, even as new entrants build on the same tools. The contributors also point to risks that get less attention: correlated errors across institutions, Europe's dependence on foreign providers, and the erosion of human judgment. They agree on one point: when a decision goes wrong, people must remain accountable.
 
The Roundup brings together Dr. Gianluca De Nard, Head of Systematic Strategies at Zürcher Kantonalbank; SFI Prof. Markus Leippold, Professor of Financial Engineering at the University of Zurich; Christophe Makni, Head of Data, Automation, and AI at Migros Bank; Dr. Fernando Perez-Cruz, Senior Adviser on Innovation at the Bank for International Settlements; and SFI Prof. Norman Schürhoff, Professor of Finance at the University of Lausanne.

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