Earlier this month, PwC Channel Islands hosted its Summer Client Event at The Radisson in Jersey with a 200+ audience in attendance.
The insights and discussion at ’Reinvention in the age of AI’ were energising with a number of key themes raised by speakers Leo Johnson, Lilia Christofi, Chris Eaton and Callum McCutcheon, including:
The human context
- Megatrends such as AI, climate change, and global geopolitics are disrupting systems, industries and economies, often in unexpected ways, and the Channel Islands are no exception.
- As humans, our brains are biologically programmed to resist or ignore profound change. Reinventing our human systems, societies, and economies requires leaders with visionary intent.
- Technology is an amplifier of intent, not an answer. The question needs to be less about what AI can do, and more about what we want it to do.
- The Channel Islands have a history of reinvention, and perhaps our ‘Goldilocks’ size – not too big, not too small, able to experiment but small enough to move as a community – can be a strategic advantage.
The case for change
- The opportunities AI presents for our island and for our finance industry are enormous, if we can harness these whilst navigating the challenges.
- As set out in our Channel Islands CEO Survey 2026, six out of ten Channel Islands business leaders are worried whether their company is transforming fast enough to keep up with technology and AI.
- To succeed, local CEOs report relative strengths in culture, technology environment, governance and risk management, but have more to do on enterprise-wide strategy, investment, data and skills.
How AI is transforming financial services
- Globally, the pace of change is unprecedented, even in the last six months, and is set to continue.
- Keeping up and staying relevant, whilst taking a proportionate approach, goes to the heart of our future industry competitiveness in the Channel Islands.
- Firms are moving from experimentation, through top-down enterprise-wide strategy, to fully agentic organisations.
- This is a cultural transformation more than a technology transformation, breaking down silos and rearranging around a control tower.
- Winning organisations will not have the most AI agents, they will have the most coherent strategy.
- Explainable and trusted AI is expected for regulated processes.
Top tips for reinvention in the age of AI
- Lead with understanding your customers and differentiating their experience.
- See AI as a way to reinvent what you do and how you do it. Apply a growth mindset, not just a productivity and efficiency mindset.
- Ask not, “how do I automate this process?”, but “what outcome do I intend?”.
- Start with mapping your processes and getting your data in order. Don’t just rely on humans to uplift data quality, agents can do that work.
- When technology is no longer the differentiator, your people will be. Reflect on your organisational culture and how this will need to evolve, with human judgement at the core.
- The future of skills is as much about soft skills in creativity, experimentation and entrepreneurship, critical thinking and delegation, as it is about deep technology skills.
