We attended this year’s Point Zero Forum in Zurich as an invited partner, three days of policy and industry dialogue held June 23 to 25 at Kongresshaus Zurich.
Now in its fifth year, Point Zero Forum is co-organized by the Global Finance and Technology Network (GFTN) and Switzerland’s State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF). It draws over 2,000 central bankers, regulators, policymakers, and industry leaders, this year under the theme “Rewiring Trust: Technology and the New Rules of Money.” Speakers included Swiss Federal Councillor Karin Keller-Sutter, Deutsche Bundesbank’s Burkhard Balz, Bank of Canada’s Carolyn Rogers, and BIS Innovation Hub’s Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, alongside representatives from central banks and regulators across Europe and Asia.
The 2026 agenda was built around three inflection points shaping European finance right now. AI is the first: with the EU AI Act’s high-risk rules taking effect in August, credit scoring, KYC, and agentic AI in financial services all landed squarely in the regulatory conversation. Stablecoins were the second, with sessions tracking their scale toward a trillion-dollar market and their growing role in cross-border payment corridors traditionally underserved by correspondent banking. The third was regulation itself moving from drafting into actual enforcement, a shift several sessions treated as the real test of the frameworks built over the past few years.
The format is what makes the Forum distinct: plenary keynotes on the main stage, deep-dive workshops, and closed-door roundtables run under Chatham House Rule, plus Innovation Tours through Swiss financial institutions and technology labs. As much of the value sits in the room as on the stage, the corridor conversations and partner dinners tend to matter as much as the panels themselves.
Grateful to have been part of it this year, and to spend three days in a room built specifically for the conversation between the people writing the rules and the people building on top of them.