2026-09-29
On 29 September, the European Digital Finance Association (EDFA) held the first thematic session of the Fintech Visits programme with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA). The session was dedicated to AI in financial services. Five companies from across our member associations shared how the AI Act is landing in practice.
Jeremy Sulzbacher, Co-Lead of the EDFA AI Working Group, opened with findings from an EDFA member survey on AI Act readiness.
Speakers and perspectives:
🔹 Quantfolio 🇳🇴 by Jan Åge Skaathun: Showed how AI can turn an adviser’s meeting notes into structured client documentation for investment advice. The tool also flags the steps that must stay with the client and the adviser.
🔹 identifAI 🇮🇹 by Kate Burns: Presented AI built to detect AI-generated and manipulated images, video and voice, as deepfakes move into identity and payment fraud. She welcomed the transparency obligations under Article 50 of the AI Act. She also made the case for combining provenance, authentication and independent detection, because malicious content will not declare itself.
🔹 Cognivate 🇵🇱 by Adam Pietkiewicz: Brought a Polish perspective on AI adoption, from fast uptake in banking to the obstacles firms name most: compliance costs, data readiness and skills. He pointed to the period before high-risk obligations apply in December 2027 as a window for early guidance and sandboxes.
🔹 Cleartraced 🇸🇪 by Christian Patay: Showed how AI, with human verification of every data point, turns scattered public company disclosures into structured, traceable ESG data for financial institutions.
🔹 Devengo 🇪🇸 by Fernando Cabello-Astolfi: Presented agentic payments over SEPA Instant, where a business gives a software agent bounded payment authority and a licensed institution executes each payment. He set out the open questions on mandates, agent identity and liability. He also explained why Europe’s existing payment infrastructure gives it a head start.
EDFA thanks DG FISMA for its continued engagement with the Fintech Visits format, and Quantfolio, identifAI, Cognivate, Cleartraced and Devengo for their contributions.