Live from Nordic Banking Forum 2025

About this episode

The episode features interviews with multiple bank CEOs at the Nordic Banking Forum 2025 in Helsinki.

A Full House of Bank CEOs (and One Central Banker) We took Fintech Daydreaming on the road to the Nordic Banking Forum in Helsinki, and somehow ended up interviewing more CEOs in one day than we usually see in a year. In this special episode, Pål, Ville — and Janne, once we caught him mid–event sprint — sat down with: .-Prag Sharma (Citi) on agentic AI, future-of-finance vibes, and why 80–90% of bank data suddenly matters. .-Janne Salminen (Helsinki Fintech Farm) pops in for a quick Nordic Fintech Highlights segment and shares the annual event-planner panic cycle with us. .- Sampsa Laine (Alisa Bank) on SME banking, partner ecosystems, and why mortgages are still a “not yet.” .-Riikka Laine-Tolonen (S-Bank) on running a bank inside a retail empire, loyalty economics, and scaling to 3.4M customers. .-Jarkko Mäensivu (Saldo Bank) on embedded finance, European expansion, and building a lean, credit-focused bank. .-Aleksi Grym (Bank of Finland) on fraud in instant payments, CBDCs, and why Finland quietly invented half this stuff in the ’90s (and already shut it all down long time ago). Been there. Got the t-shirt. Wrote an excellent paper about it. With Citi, Alisa, S-Bank, Saldo…

People in this episode

Hosts: Pål Krogdahl, Ville Sointu

Guests: Prag Sharma, Janne Salminen, Sampsa Laine, Riikka Laine-Tolonen, Jarkko Mäensivu, Aleksi Grym

Topics covered

• banking
• fintech
• interviews
• CEOs
• Nordic finance

Keywords

• bank CEOs
• Nordic Banking Forum
• fintech
• interviews
• Citi
• S-Bank
• embedded finance
• instant payments

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Citi, Helsinki Fintech Farm, Alisa Bank, S-Bank, Saldo Bank, Bank of Finland

Places: Helsinki

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