Navigating the transformation of the finance industry
The LUXHUB Team recently met with Rik Coeckelbergs, Founder and Managing Director of The Banking Scene. As the Luxembourg edition of The Banking Scene takes place on January 27th – with LUXHUB once again supporting the event – Rik tells us more about innovation and the overall transformation of the financial services industry. He also shares what he believes to be the upcoming biggest challenge, and the biggest opportunity, for the banking sector in Europe.
You are a well-known figure in the financial sector in the Benelux region and beyond, and The Banking Scene continues to grow through its events and content. Could you walk us through your career in the banking industry, and share the moment (and reason) you decided to launch The Banking Scene?
Today, The Banking Scene is a full-time job where I organize events and meetups across Benelux to help organizations and people shape the bank of tomorrow. It hasn’t always been a full-time position, though.
The Banking Scene started more as a hobby back in 2017. At that time, I was working at bpost bank as a Senior Product Manager Daily Banking. During a period of important growth in Fintech events in 2016-2017, I wanted to create something different, specifically for the banking industry. This led to the creation of The Banking Scene, a Benelux initiative to unite the industry and discuss relevant topics now and in the future.
Before bpost bank, I held various roles in finance, process management, strategy, and IT. One constant throughout those years was Innovation in Payments, a LinkedIn Group I established at the very start of my career, eight years before the first event I organized.
Today, this group has grown to more than 140,000 members and is the world’s largest dedicated to payments. It provided me with daily updates on the latest trends in payments and banking, helping me recognize the importance of networking.
You’ve written a lot of content, including a book recently “A New Ethos in Banking: Embracing Values and Ethics for a Meaningful Transformation”, which focuses strongly on change. In your view, which three innovations have had the greatest impact on the banking industry over the past decade?
In digital transformation, I believe the combination of instant payments and APIs has significantly strengthened the instant banking mindset and the drive to accelerate banks’ overall processes and customer experience. Open Banking may not have led to the revolution many hoped for, but it did trigger a mentality shift that should not be underestimated in the innovative thinking of financial services.
In the last few years, we have heard a lot about AI, and although much of it has been hyped, it has pushed every bank to at least investigate the opportunities, and those opportunities are enormous, as well as the risks of ignoring AI. Most banks still view it through an efficiency lens, but imagine the possibilities once they realize the true meaning of hyperpersonalization.
Today, most of that is rule-based and, at best, personalized, rarely hyperpersonalized. I believe AI can change that in the coming years, making it no longer a purely efficiency game but one of effectiveness, taking into account the organization, the customer, and other stakeholders.
As I explained in my book, thanks to these new developments, banks finally get the tools to start building their unique experience again, as they had with branches and trusted relationship managers in the past.
Blockchain is another loaded term, with a lot of talks 5-10 years ago, and today you see this has shifted to press announcements and new releases on a daily basis in a variety of use cases. The industry is in an incredible change right now and underneath a lot of that is done with blockchain, up to the level that even Swift is adding a blockchain-based ledger to their technology infrastructure.
It will be interesting to see how, in 10 years’ time, the combination of AI and its agents; blockchain technology as the trust engine and transaction network; and quantum computers that will scale all this, will have transformed the industry in ways we cannot envisage today.
How can financial institutions navigate these changes while ensuring that employees, clients, and partners are fully engaged and aligned with this transformation?
Financial institutions can navigate today’s transformation only by recognizing that it is not primarily a technology challenge, but a Human one.
Employees, clients, and partners engage when they understand why change is happening and how it connects to a broader purpose. Clear communication, strong change management, and consistency between strategy and day-to-day behavior are therefore more important than the technology itself.
This is where ethos becomes critical. Transformation succeeds when values are turned into concrete actions: how employees are empowered and aligned, how customers are treated in complex situations, and how partners are held accountable within broader ecosystems. Trust is built through behavior, not through hollow statements.
Regulation plays an essential role in enabling trust and stability, but it cannot replace responsibility. When regulation provides direction and safeguards outcomes, it enables innovation. When it becomes overly prescriptive, it risks slowing progress and degrading customer experience. The challenge is to treat regulation as a foundation, not a ceiling.
In short, institutions that align people, purpose, and behavior — while using regulation as an enabler rather than a constraint — are best positioned to navigate transformation in a sustainable and trusted way.
Looking ahead to January 27, could you tell us more about the key themes and discussions that will shape the next edition of The Banking Scene Luxembourg?
On January 27, the next edition of The Banking Scene Luxembourg will focus on the central theme of Rethinking Relevance—questioning what it truly means to be a relevant bank in an increasingly complex, fast-moving environment.
Relevance today is no longer static. It is dynamic, situational, and deeply contextual, shaped by customer expectations, regulatory pressures, technological acceleration, and broader societal shifts. The discussions will therefore focus not only on how banks deliver services, but also why they do so, for whom, and to what end.
Against that backdrop, the agenda will focus on banking in a hyperconnected world, where clients, platforms, and ecosystems are increasingly intertwined, forcing banks to rethink their role beyond traditional boundaries. Artificial Intelligence will be explored not merely as a technological capability, but as a driver of trust, decision-making, and responsibility, with profound implications for governance and client experience.
We will also address virtual currencies and crypto, examining how this domain is moving from experimentation and volatility towards greater maturity, regulation, and integration with the traditional financial system. Finally, private and wealth banking will be discussed in light of shifting client expectations, intergenerational wealth transfer, and the growing demand for personalized, values-driven advice.
Together, these themes are designed to challenge conventional thinking and to encourage banks to reflect on their future role—not as utility providers, but as meaningful, trusted partners in a rapidly evolving financial ecosystem.
If you look five to ten years ahead, what do you believe will be the biggest challenge—and the biggest opportunity—for the banking sector in Europe?
If we look five to ten years ahead, I believe the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for European banking are, in fact, closely intertwined: the ability to navigate profound technological disruption while remaining anchored in long-term responsibility.
On the technology front, we often discuss AI extensively, but I would argue that quantum computing deserves far more attention. If you consider how influential computers have been in our day-to-day lives, including banking, it is worthwhile to imagine what might happen when the computer itself is revolutionized. The potential is immense: from cryptography and risk modelling to portfolio optimization, and much more. However, so are the risks. Quantum computing fundamentally challenges current security assumptions, and banks that fail to anticipate this shift could find themselves exposed at a very structural level.
At the same time, one of the most significant opportunities for European banks lies in the ongoing regulatory and societal push for action on climate change. European institutions are being forced to take global warming seriously, not as a communication exercise, but as a core risk and opportunity driver. It is hard to understand how the science behind climate change can still be ignored in some parts of the world, especially when its impact is already directly affecting banks through credit risk, asset valuation, and long-term portfolio resilience.
In that sense, Europe has a unique opportunity. By embedding climate considerations into risk management, capital allocation, and financing decisions, European banks can position themselves not only as compliant institutions but as credible, forward-looking actors in the real economy.
That same long-term responsibility may also lead to increased competition through FiDA, PSD3, and perhaps even PSD4 by then, opening a new box of opportunities to enhance customer service, lower costs, and develop a unique and competitive banking landscape across Europe.
The challenge will be to move beyond ticking regulatory boxes and to turn both technological disruption and (climate) responsibility into sources of lasting relevance and trust.