Events running alongside the main conference 

Breakfast workshop sponsored by Dancerace

0815 - 0915 (Registration opens at 0800), Hall 2 (Receivables stage)

Making technology change work: what implementation really looks like inside a lender

A closed-door breakfast briefing for senior lenders and change managers on what it takes to implement technology change. For many invoice finance lenders, the hard part is no longer finding suitable technology, but implementing it so that it solves a defined problem or achieves a clear objective. Who owns the change, how the process runs and where it stalls differ from one lender to the next, and few get the chance to compare notes or to review what went well and what did not.

• A look at how other lenders organise and own technology change, and where it stalls.
• A chance to name the constraints slowing change in your own business and hear how your peers deal with them.
• Practical questions and lessons to take back to your team, so the next change goes better.

Breakfast workshop sponsored by Alfa

0815 - 0915 (Registration opens at 0800), Gallery Room 

Driving margins up: how to break the link between growth and operating cost

Roundtable focussed on understanding where operational drag builds up across the deal lifecycle, and what it takes to stop operating cost rising with volume.

Growth in asset and auto finance often brings extra cost. As volumes rise, so do exceptions, manual checks, rekeying between systems, and the effort needed to evidence decisions to regulators, funders and auditors. These costs are rarely visible as a single line in the accounts, but they shape how far and how fast a lender can scale. This roundtable follows the deal lifecycle from application and credit through documentation, payout, servicing and end of term.

• Trace the lifecycle to see where operational drag builds up and what causes it.
• Weigh how much of that drag comes from process and how much from systems.
• Consider what it would take to break the link between growth and operating cost.

Workshop sponsored by Nivo

1215 - 1300, Horsfall Room

Treat your AI agent like a new employee: from first case to the whole job

A practical path from giving an AI agent its first case to trusting it with the whole job, shown through two worked examples: loan origination and complaints remediation.

AI agents that run a whole case end to end are already working in lending operations. For an operation built on people doing manual jobs across several systems, handing a whole job to AI is a big leap, so this workshop treats it like hiring a person and follows the agent’s career in four stages.

1. The hire: what an AI agent can do from day one, and how it is set up with a firm’s rules, policies, knowledge and systems.
2. Induction: how to start safely, giving the AI whole workflow stages while people approve, handle exceptions and take referrals.
3. Earning trust: what to measure, and how the human checks ease as the AI proves itself.
4. Promotion: where the role goes next, such as servicing and Consumer Duty checks.

Bring a view of the jobs your team does by hand today, such as communicating with brokers; gathering, checking, chasing and compiling information; and handling complaints cases. Together we'll work out where an AI agent would start, and what you'd need to see before easing the checks.

• See how an AI agent goes from a first case to the whole job, through worked examples from loan origination and complaints remediation.
• Evaluate the guard rails that work and what to measure before easing them.
• Take away a practical path from a safe first step to the whole job.

Workshop sponsored by Odessa

1400 - 1445, Horsfall Room

Before you transform: what do you actually need to change?

Meet the lender-vendor team behind Computacenter’s implementation to find out what you can learn for your own tech implementations.

What other lenders can learn from a system change lies in how it was done. This workshop follows the implementation: the problem it set out to solve, what happened along the way, and what the team would do differently. Lender and vendor give their perspectives, and you can put your own questions to them and compare their experience with your own plans.

• Understand the problem Computacenter’s financing business was solving and what it set out to achieve.
• Hear the problems and challenges the team faced along the way, from both the lender’s side and the vendor’s. 
• Assess how well the process worked and what both sides would do better next time.

If you would like to enquire about any of the workshops, please contact Jessica Soe (jessicasoe@finance-connect.com)