#1 - London - Data & Agentic AI in Financial Services - Brainstation

We are delighted to host our 1st event on Thursday, the 4th of December, in London in partnership with Brainstation. This event will focus on Data and AI in Financial Services.

Speakers and Talks:

Speaker: Frank Contrepois
Session Title: The Real Superpower of AI Isn't Technical — It's Contextual
Session Description: We admire LLMs for speed and quality, but technology alone doesn’t differentiate. Context does. Generic tools solve generic problems; your cloud infrastructure, cost models, and optimization workflows are specific to your organisation.
This talk shows how AI, tuned to your context, delivers value that used to require bespoke development. Unlike static tools or dedicated teams, AI evolves with your environment in real time, both a blessing and a curse for the needs of Financial Services.

Speaker: Stephen Toriola - Software & AI Engineer, Compare the Market
Session Title: AI Agents in 2025: Beyond Chatbots to Autonomous Workflows
Session Details: This talk explores AI agents as the next step beyond prompt‑by‑prompt assistants. Modern AI agents use large language models plus planning, tool‑calling, and memory to execute multi‑step workflows, not just answer isolated questions. The session explains, in accessible terms, what makes something an “agent” rather than a simple chatbot: the ability to decompose tasks, call APIs or tools, and maintain context over time. It then surveys real use cases, from automating repetitive knowledge‑work tasks to orchestrating complex enterprise workflows that blend human decisions with autonomous actions. For the technical audience, the talk briefly outlines typical agent architectures and how they integrate with RAG, vector search, and existing backend services. For everyone else, it focuses on capabilities, limitations, and where AI agents are realistically being used in 2025. Attendees will understand what AI agents can and cannot do today, and how they differ from the hype.

Agenda:

• 17:55 - Arrivals and Networking
  18:25 - Welcome and introductions
  18:30 - Frank Contrepois
• 18:55 - Break
  19:10 - Stephen Toriola
  19:55 - Close
  20:00 - Venue closes

Sponsors:
We want to thank Brainstation for sponsoring and supporting this event.

If you'd like to speak, sponsor, or host us. Please get via LinkedIn: