Bots & Bubbles: How AI Is Rewiring Financial Services
Thu Apr 23, 17:30 - Thu Apr 23, 19:00
Innovation City
ABOUT
Bots & Bubbles: How AI Is Rewiring Financial Services
23 April 2026 | 17:30–19:00 | Innovation City Cape Town
Artificial intelligence in financial services has moved beyond experimentation.
What was once positioned as future-facing - smarter service layers, predictive dashboards, automated support - now sits much deeper within financial infrastructure, shaping fraud detection, authentication, underwriting and payment flows.
This candid panel discussion will explore how machine learning is being deployed across the financial stack; from identity and trust to transactions, risk, and insurance. Not as hype, but as operational infrastructure.
In partnership with Finance Isle of Man, this edition of Food for Thought brings together leaders working across fraud detection, digital security, payments infrastructure and AI-enabled insurance. The discussion will examine how AI is influencing trust, compliance and risk, and what this means for institutions operating at different layers of the financial system.
Key Takeaways
- A clear view of where AI is already embedded within financial systems, beyond pilots and experimentation
- How fraud, authentication and risk models are evolving as machine learning becomes more sophisticated
- The role of AI in shaping payment flows, infrastructure and digital commerce
- The relationship between regulation, trust and AI, and where constraints still exist
- What financial leaders should prioritise as AI becomes more deeply integrated across the stack
Who Should Attend
This session is designed for fintech founders, banking and insurance professionals, payments operators, investors and policymakers who are interested in how AI is being applied in practice within financial services.
Expect a fantastic discussion with some complimentary networking bubbly!
Seats are limited.
SPEAKERS
Thalia Pillay is the Co-Founder of Orca Fraud, a South African fraudtech company building AI-driven systems to help financial institutions detect and prevent increasingly sophisticated financial crime.
She brings a strong engineering background to the problem, having previously led engineering teams at Stitch, one of South Africa’s leading payments infrastructure companies, where she worked on building and scaling financial systems in production environments.
Thalia developed a deep understanding of banking systems, risk, and regulated financial environments, through her time at Investec as a software developer. She has also held engineering roles at Aerobotics, working on data-driven platforms, and was part of the Women in Engineering programme supporting the development of technical talent in South Africa.
Her work sits at the intersection of machine learning, financial infrastructure, and fraud prevention, with a focus on building systems that can adapt to evolving threats in real time.
FINANCE ISLE OF MAN X INNOVATION CITY
Innovation City has partnered with Finance Isle of Man to bring global perspective into our Food for Thought series - a founder-first platform designed to help businesses think earlier and more clearly about international growth, structuring, data, IP, and long-term scale.
Finance Isle of Man works with internationally ambitious companies looking to expand into the UK, EU, and broader global markets, offering a stable, business-friendly jurisdiction and access to established legal, financial, and regulatory infrastructure.
Through Food for Thought, the partnership creates space for practical, honest conversations around the decisions that compound over time — from corporate structuring and investor readiness to treating data and IP as strategic assets. The aim is simple: equip South African founders with the insight and relationships they need before complexity becomes expensive.
EVENT ATTENDANCE
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DISCLAIMER
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