MoneyLIVE North America: Keynotes Are Key

By John San Filippo

MoneyLIVE North America, an event for which Finopotamus was an official media partner, was held in Chicago Sept. 15-16, 2025. The conference offered some 800 attendees the opportunity to hear from more than 100 speakers from across the financial services industry. Most sessions were structured as either panel discussions or so-called “fireside chats” (a conversation between a moderator and one or two guests), giving attendees the opportunity to hear multiple viewpoints on any given topic. The exception to this was the keynote address that opened each day’s events. Those are summarized below.

Day One: Dontá Wilson, Chief Consumer and Small Business Banking Officer, Truist

 

Dontá Wilson’s keynote address focused on the importance of empathy in innovation and modern banking. “Innovation without empathy is empty,” he said. Wilson explained that all great innovation begins with empathy. “Empathy is critical to the process,” he continued, citing the work of Dr. Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology, who found that empathy builds stronger relationships. “When you build stronger relationships, that puts you in a position to deliver more empowered service delivery, which ultimately drives increased revenue, which is better for everybody,” said Wilson.

Dontá Wilson

According to Wilson, banking is undergoing a makeover, moving from “human selling to digital solutioning” and from being a “transaction-oriented entity to actually giving tailored advice.” He stressed that the goal is not to use technology for its own sake, but to “do something different, to do something magical, to solve real problems, to bring something that’s transformative, that makes a difference for individuals and ultimately this country, this community, the community that we serve.” He likened this kind of innovation to Johannes Gutenberg creating the printing press, “revolutionizing information at scale.”

Wilson concluded by stating that the quickest way to improve profitability is not through technology, but through empathy. “Empathy is the key to transformation,” he said. “Empathy is the key to making this world better.”

Day Two Keynote: Sanchita Chanda, Senior Vice President, Head of AWM, RegTech, Data and Analytics, JP Morgan Chase

Sanchita Chanda’s keynote address presented a discussion of artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial services industry, focusing on opportunities, challenges, and strategies for success. She began by noting that Fortune 500 companies could save or earn up to a trillion dollars thanks to AI, a number so large, she noted, it could solve poverty across the world or provide clean, safe drinking water for free for everyone. Echoing ideas that Wilson presented a day earlier, she added, “The real question is, when we end up saving or making profit off that money, what are we going to use it for? Are we going to use it to solve some of humanity's fundamental problems?”

Sanchita Chanda

Chanda highlighted several challenges in making the highest and best use of AI, calling them “delightful challenges” that “make you hone your skills.” She first cited data privacy and governance, noting the difficulty of ensuring the proper data entitlements and governance policies are in place to ensure each person can only access the data to which they’re entitled.

Chanda addressed the challenges that legacy tech stacks can present. She explained four years ago, the systems under her purview migrated from an on-premise to a cloud-native architecture. “It has literally propelled our AI adoption,” she said.

Another challenge, she said, is the ethical considerations of algorithmic biases, noting, “There might be some bias in some model that might prevent a certain group of individuals to not be pre-approved for a loan.” She also touched on regulatory and compliance challenges, which require multiple legal teams to ensure that deployed models and products comply with all applicable regulations, pointing out that compliance requirements can vary from region to region.

Chanda made it clear that effective use of data is the key to AI success. “Data is that star ingredient,” she said. She added that clean, consumable, and well-governed data with the right entitlements and security is “key to succeeding with your models.” She also emphasized the importance of stakeholder engagement, especially during the proof-of-concept stage.

Chanda concluded by highlighting the importance of an agile approach with a continuous feedback loop. “When you run your models, gather feedback, implement that feedback, run it again – rinse and repeat,” she said.