Data democratisation fails when frontline staff lack literacy or breach controls, while specialist data teams drown under ad-hoc requests. A scalable talent model has become board-level priority and the only solution. CDOs must now develop controllable and accountable IT literacy to drive productivity, free up resources, and enable innovation from all business functions.

• Learn how to design tiered data-fluency ladders tied to internal career progression and regulatory competence needs.
• Explore how lesson gamification moves staff off ad-hoc spreadsheets.
• Discover access-tier models that scale self-service, not risk.

Agentic AI is the next leap beyond GenAI: autonomous digital “workers” that execute complex processes at software speed and near-zero marginal cost. Yet no UK bank or insurer has moved past pilot stage. Knowledge gaps, shaky data foundations and governance anxiety stall progress while early movers eye dramatic operating leverage. CDOs need to lay out and execute pragmatic agentic AI development and deployment roadmap before rivals out-automate them.

• Find out how agentic AI can create a scalable digital workforce without blowing up risk budgets.
• Hear executive-level definitions that demystify agentic versus generative AI and frame the opportunity beyond uncertainty.
• Learn a step-by-step readiness checklist covering data quality, orchestration tech, governance and change-management tactics through tried and tested case studies. 

Chatbots trained on public large language models are prone to hallucinations, misquoting policies and leaking PII. RAG pairs a private LLM with permissioned document retrieval, serving proof auditors can trace. Leaders in the space are cutting call-centre average handling time while simultaneously slashing compliance redlines. It all sounds great – but CDOs and their teams need to establish robust architecture and governance, as well as evaluate the technology optimisation cost vs ROI.

• Find out how enterprise-grade RAG turns GenAI into a safe productivity engine.
• Discover month-by-month ROI tracking you can share with the board.
• Compare GPU spend versus manual-query savings across pilots. 

Receive pre-printed GenAI prompts and share tweaks and improvements with other delegates over breakfast.

Success depends on employees fluent in both business context and technical delivery – balance sheets and Python. Yet the talent market offers few such hybrid profiles. CDOs are now looking to offer credential paths, internal gig-marketplaces and reward opportunities that retain such staff without Silicon-Valley-esque pay checks.

• Explore cross-skill training to create business savvy data experts.
• Discover how to launch an internal talent marketplace that shares niche expertise on demand.
• Hear how peers tie hybrid-role performance metrics directly to business outcomes. 

Agentic AI will add armies of synthetic workers, yet most executives and staff still think “digital colleague” means RPA. Ignorance breeds fear and stalls investment. Structured education and change management sprints are urgent musts before scale pilots can land - but fear needs to be addressed first, and the value proposition of AI agents further explained.

Banks admit that when upstream changes corrupt millions of transactions “it’s already too late.” True lineage across multiple hops is not exactly simple, and reconciliation consumes days of analyst time while risk escalates. CDOs need transparent traceability plus fast impact assessment to cut firefights and fines.

Modernisation grinds when every new SaaS vendor faces months of privacy, security and contractual reviews – often up to 18 months. Some organisations prefer to keep a “tight ship” of pre-vetted partners because laws and global contracts make onboarding painful. CDOs must streamline vetting to keep build velocity while satisfying CISOs, CFOs and regulators.

EU, Saudi, APAC and US rules all demand local data anchors; data residency is often viewed as a competitive power play wrapped as regulation, which now shapes every architecture choice. CDOs juggling multi-cloud must prove which data lives where, negotiate exit clauses yet still keep analytics latency low. Delays invite fines - and business users waiting on reports.

In a not-so-distant future geopolitical rifts could hypothetically throttle inter-continental data flows, raising latency, duplicating costs and stranding AI models trained on global datasets. CDOs must scenario-plan today: regional data zones, compliant encryption, local-first analytics and contractual exit clauses.

Imagine this:

1. The US, the EU, and BRICS have now announced data flow throttles, with a 20% tariff on every GB of cross-border data flows between each block.
2. Transfers are throttled to 250 ms minimum latency and are subject to on-the-fly inspection.
3. Regulators in all three blocs require a signed exit plan proving critical workloads can run locally within 90 days.
4. Tariffs take effect in 30 calendar days; fines equal 4 % of global turnover for non-compliance.

Split into 3 teams – your scenarios are:

• Blue Team – Your CEO is under FCA watch for prior violations.
• Green Team – GenAI product launch in 90 days – a global rollout in all affected regions.
• Yellow Team – Your CFO orders a 30% data storage cut.

Each table’s nominated leader shares their team’s findings with the rest of the room