2026 Canadian Finance Summit

Networking begins. Download the Finance Events Mobile App to setup meetings in the Networking Hall throughout the day. Numbers in the app correspond with numbers on the tables.

Rewiring Canadian Finance: Canada’s investing landscape is being reshaped by higher-for-longer rates, new product wrappers, and AI-driven personalization. In this fireside, Som Seif will share what innovations actually matter (vs. hype), how Canadian portfolios evolve over the next decade, and the tradeoffs between broader access, transparency, and risk.

Rewriting the Rules of Credit: The traditional bureau score was built for a thinner-data economy. Today’s lenders deploy cash-flow analytics, alternative data, AI-assisted underwriting, and consortium intelligence. Speed has increased. So have losses in unexpected tiers. This panel examines how to expand access without underwriting illusion and how collections and recoveries are evolving in parallel.

The Infrastructure of Prevention: Fraud is shifting from brute force to persuasion—social engineering, account takeovers, and synthetic IDs across banking, lending, and wealth. This session explores the modern prevention stack—ID verification, device and behavioural signals, and KYC/AML—designed to stop bad actors without adding friction that breaks approvals or the customer experience.

The M&A Ecosystem in Canadian Finance: This panel explores the comprehensive financing environment in Canada from sponsors’ and acquirers’ perspectives. Discussion topics include public markets, strategies for raising capital, and closing transactions, offering insights into the entire deal process.

Stablecoins vs Real-Time Payments: Will Canada’s Real-Time Rail define the 24-hour economy, or will tokenised money become the preferred settlement layer? This debate focuses on liquidity economics, compliance programmability, cross-border efficiency, and finality.

How Fintech Programs Get Off the Ground: Behind every successful card, lending, deposit or payments program is a complex partnership between fintechs, banks and infrastructure providers. This session explores how products actually get launched and scaled, from sponsorship and compliance to operations, economics and long-term program management.

Embedded Finance and the Fight for Distribution: Financial services increasingly appear inside platforms that are not banks. Embedded lending, cards, and payments promise scale, but margins compress and ownership blurs. Who owns the customer? Who carries the risk? And does embedded finance create distribution leverage or channel conflict?

When the Consumer Starts to Crack: Delinquencies are rising across credit cards and consumer loan portfolios, and lenders are shifting from growth mode to defence. This panel examines what’s driving the uptick, which segments are flashing first, and how leading teams are adjusting underwriting, limits, and pricing—plus what “modern” collections and loss-mitigation looks like before the cycle turns.

Scaling Customer Experience with AI and Workflow Automation: Banks are using AI to deliver faster, more personalized service at scale—while keeping cost-to-serve under control. This panel looks at what’s working in production across onboarding, servicing, proactive financial health, and segment-specific journeys, and how teams measure impact (NPS, containment, conversion, churn) without compromising trust or compliance.

Fireside Chat: In this fireside chat, Tangerine’s CEO will share her perspective on the future of banking a year into her tenure as CEO of the bank. The conversation will cover changing customer expectations, where innovation is reshaping the industry, and how banks can balance speed, simplicity, and trust in the years ahead.

Closing the Execution Gap: Financial institutions have invested heavily in data, analytics, and AI—but turning insight into timely customer action is still hard. This panel looks at what’s blocking real-world execution (tech, compliance, operating models) and what’s working across personalization, acquisition, cross-sell, and engagement.

AI is everywhere… except in retail wealth: Consumers trust AI for search, writing, and service, but most still rely on familiar models for investing and advice. This panel explores what’s really slowing adoption – accountability, regulation, data and integration, and the bar for proving better outcomes – and what “responsible” AI in portfolio management could look like next.

How Servus is Modernizing Member Banking: Servus Credit Union operates at major-institution scale, but with a cooperative, member-first mandate. In this interview, we’ll dig into how a leading Canadian credit union is approaching digital transformation, core technology decisions, fintech partnerships, lending and deposit strategy in a higher-rate world, and what “competing with banks” looks like while staying true to the credit union model

The CLA is proud to present the 2026 EQ Bank Finance Awards: Executives and thought leaders who think outside the box to develop and foster innovative concepts and strategies that help advance lending and finance in Canada. Nominate close on April 26th. Nominate candidates here: https://www.canadianlenders.org/awards/

Reception & networking: Hunt down that last meeting, close your final deal, and then grab a drink to catchup with old colleagues and new!