17/06/2026
We spent last Thursday in Amsterdam at the AI-themed Leaders in Finance Events, and left with plenty to think about. One observation stayed with us the longest: 80 to 90% of AI projects in financial services never make it from pilot to production. ๐ค
Yorick Naeff, Head of Innovation at ABN AMRO, spent years building and scaling Bux as a fintech before it was acquired by ABN AMRO in 2024.
He identified data as the single most underestimated factor in successful AI deployment.
๐ก Invest in data foundations first. AI ambitions will fail without clean, accessible, orchestrated data.
Because of the double-edged dynamic in large corporations that hold enormous volumes of data but must handle legacy architectures and siloed systems, foundational transformation programs have not taken shape yet in banking.
Moreover, many banking services are getting commoditized. Customers, as Naef puts it, do not care about the payment process, they just want to finish the purchase.
๐ก Therefore, banks need more and more to develop into technology companies, or find the right partner to scale with, not just because of FOBO \(fear of being obsolete\), but to simply meet their customers' expectations.
If these findings resonate, we have plenty more insights from the sessions, which our expert in the field, Raluca Moldovan , made sure to write down. Let us know in the comments if you'd like to hear more of this.