Finextra and Cloudera set webinar on bank digital sovereignty

Finextra will host an online webinar with Cloudera on 28 July 2026 focused on digital sovereignty in banking transformation, with 86 people registered according to the event listing. The session is scheduled for 15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST and 10:00 EDT, and will examine how financial institutions can adopt AI-driven workflows while retaining control over data, cloud infrastructure and model operations.

The event places digital sovereignty at the centre of banks’ technology programmes. Finextra describes the issue as the capacity of banks to master, develop and apply critical digital capabilities freely and independently, as financial institutions and payment processors build AI-powered and agentic workflows for customer service and operational automation.

The agenda reflects a broader concern for banks: AI systems can require access to sensitive institutional information, while regulated firms remain responsible for data governance, resilience, security and compliance. Finextra says sovereign cloud arrangements isolate data and AI physically, logically and operationally from public cloud environments, with the aim of supporting compliance standards, security and operational control.

Cloudera is associated with the webinar, and its EMEA Field CTO, Chris Royles, is listed as a speaker. Jane Cooper, a researcher at Finextra, is listed as moderator.

Data control and AI adoption

The webinar will address the role of data and AI in banking transformation, the rationale for digital sovereignty, the capabilities needed for sovereign AI, cloud and data, and practical steps and use cases for financial institutions.

Finextra says sovereign data and AI can allow banks to retain control over core assets and to train and run models on sensitive data in secure environments. It also says AI outputs depend on organisational context, which requires secure and governed access to data within a sovereign digital environment.

The event listing cites a figure that 74% of customers now expect personalised services and financial advice from their banks. Finextra says this has reinforced the view among financial institutions that AI is central to competitiveness, while raising questions about how banks can transform operations without losing control over critical systems and information.

In practice, sovereign cloud refers to an operating model in which regulated data and AI workloads are separated from broader public cloud environments through technical and operational controls. The objective, as described by Finextra, is to let banks use data-intensive applications while maintaining oversight of where data resides, who can access it and how models are developed and run.

Registration for the webinar is available through Finextra’s event page, which asks attendees for business contact details, organisation information, country and institution type. The page also includes consent options for email updates from Finextra Research, Cloudera and third parties, as well as links to Finextra’s privacy policy and cookie information.

Finextra lists registration details for the webinar on its website.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.