As money and assets become programmable and financial activity moves toward 24/7 execution, traditional control models built around reviewing, reconciling and monitoring transactions after the fact will increasingly be insufficient. Identity, permissions, compliance, risk parameters and transaction policies will need to operate in real time—and, in some cases, be embedded directly into the transaction itself. With AI agents capable of initiating and executing financial activity added into the mix, the governance challenge becomes even more significant. This working group will examine how institutions redesign trust and control for programmable finance, determining who and what is authorized to transact, under which rules, with what degree of autonomy—and how accountability is maintained when transactions execute automatically.

Discussion points the working group will take up include:

Moving on-chain initiatives from controlled pilots to production exposes a harder challenge: integrating always-on, programmable financial infrastructure into institutions built around legacy technology, operating models and controls. Scaling requires more than blockchain connectivity. It demands changes across core systems, data, treasury and liquidity management, reconciliation, custody, risk, compliance and organizational accountability. This working group will identify the technology and operating-model dependencies that stand between experimentation and scaled deployment—and develop a roadmap for building an institution capable of moving money and assets continuously, securely and across both traditional and on-chain infrastructure.

Discussion points the working group will take up include:

The boundaries between banking, payments, capital markets and asset management are dissolving as money, assets and execution become programmable. A new financial stack is taking shape across five control layers: money, assets, execution, connectivity and trust. The institutions that control several layers at once will set market structure, capture margin and own the customer relationship. Banks, asset managers, infrastructure providers and crypto-native firms are now competing, and partnering, to decide who sits where.

This closing session brings together a large bank, a crypto-native multi-layer player, an infrastructure provider and an asset manager to debate how the stack will be divided. Each will lay out which layers they intend to own, where they’ll partner and what they’re prepared to concede. Together, they’ll examine where margin is migrating as transactions commoditize and coordination becomes the source of value. 

Panelists will also consider how network effects across layers will reshape competition, whether incumbents or new entrants are better positioned, and what build, buy and partner decisions executives must make in 2027 and 2028 to secure their place in the next generation of financial services. Key points of the discussion include:

Tokenized money market and Treasury funds are blurring the line between an investment and cash. They earn yield, move around the clock, and are increasingly accepted as collateral on exchanges, in derivatives margining and in on-chain lending. In on-chain finance, this is where asset management and the money layer are converging fastest, and it puts asset managers in direct competition with banks for corporate and institutional cash.

This panel of asset managers, banks, exchanges and custodians scaling tokenized funds in production will discuss how these funds are used as on-chain cash equivalents and as collateral, distribution through exchanges, platforms and bank channels, and the mechanics of 24/7 subscriptions and redemptions when underlying markets keep traditional hours. 

The panel will also examine how yield-bearing tokenized funds will compete with deposits and stablecoins for treasury balances, what regulatory and operational hurdles remain to broader collateral acceptance, and how banks can partner, distribute or compete as these products scale. Other discussion points will include: