Banking at SAS Innovate 2026: Where Analytics, AI and Execution Come Together
SAS Innovate has always been a place to go deep into technology, use cases, and how analytics actually gets deployed in production. SAS Innovate 2026 April 27–30 in Grapevine, Texas continues that tradition, and for banking customers, this year’s agenda is particularly strong.
Across sessions, demos, and customer stories, the common theme is clear, banks are moving past experimentation and focusing on governed, scalable execution of AI and analytics especially across fraud, risk, compliance, decisioning and customer engagement.
Here’s what banking practitioners can find on the agenda at SAS Innovate 2026.
Monday, April 27, 2026
Financial Services Banking Solution Connect
This Solution Connect session aligns SAS’s executive vision, platform roadmap and applied banking use cases to demonstrate how AI‑driven decisioning is transforming banking architectures. Attendees gain a technical view of portfolio direction and design priorities across risk, fraud, finance and compliance. The session examines advanced financial crime analytics, integrated balance sheet management, unified risk‑finance modeling, and API‑first analytics to show how trusted AI enables scalable, resilient and compliant decisioning in complex regulatory environments.
Real-Time Decisioning, Rapid Request Resolution & Hyper-Personalization at National Bank of Greece
National Bank of Greece, with Performance Technologies, implemented an Agentic AI customer service and real‑time analytics program using SAS Viya, SAS Event Stream Processing and Azure OpenAI (GPT‑4 with RAG). The hybrid architecture automated request classification, agent guidance and real‑time micro‑campaigns—demonstrating scalable, governed AI‑to‑action execution across service and marketing.
Transforming Compliance: SAS GenAI Copilot for Automated Model Governance
See how SAS Copilot automates model governance—analyzing documentation, completing policy assessments, and preserving full auditability with human oversight.
Advancing Fraud and Compliance Investigations with Copilots
This demo shows how an alert can trigger a broader financial crimes investigation, where a copilot helps investigators uncover connected risk, expose mule networks, and act faster against social‑engineering fraud.
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Unmasking Sanctions: AI-Powered, Real-Time Screening for Real-World Risk
As global sanctions compliance grows more complex, organizations face escalating challenges in real‑time watchlist screening, including high alert volumes, cultural and geographic name variations, and rapidly evolving regulations. This session shows how SAS Real‑Time Watchlist Screening applies advanced AI such as transliteration, cultural affinity matching, geolocation and Generative AI to reduce false positives, streamline case management and enable secure, adaptive screening workflows under heightened regulatory scrutiny.
Financial Services Executive Insights
Join senior leaders from Aldermore Bank, Ally Bank, Banorte and Scotiabank in this fast‑paced executive session. You’ll hear how top institutions are using SAS to evolve, protect and grow their firms, and learn real outcomes you can take back to your organization.
- Explore synthetic data to advance financial modeling in SAS Viya with Aldermore Bank
- Take on financial crimes with SAS fraud and AML solutions with Ally Bank
- Apply sentiment analysis to liquidity risk with Banorte
- Predict consumer bankruptcy using machine learning and quantum computing with Scotiabank
Using AI to Enhance SAS Programming for AML and Data Analysis in Banking
Presented by BMO Financial Group, this session explores how GitHub Copilot can modernize and optimize SAS programming workflows for AML and banking analytics using AI‑assisted code generation. Attendees will see practical applications including PROC SQL optimization, documentation automation, prompt engineering, style guide development, macro generation, and SAS‑to‑open‑source code conversion demonstrated using a real AML transaction monitoring dataset.
Strengthening AML Programs with Advanced Analytics: Rules Engine and Beyond
Presented by Ally Bank, this session examines how advanced analytics and machine learning can strengthen traditional rules‑based AML programs overwhelmed by false positives and growing alert volumes. Through practical demonstrations, attendees will see how enhanced scenario monitoring and data‑driven models improve detection accuracy, adapt to emerging threats, and reduce investigative noise so teams can focus on higher‑risk activity.
A Tale of Two Languages: SAS and Python in One Analytics World
Presented by Hyundai Capital America, this session shows how seamless interoperability between SAS and Python enabled by SAS Viya and SAS Viya Workbench has become a cornerstone of its analytics modernization journey. Attendees will see how integrating both languages enables cross‑skill collaboration, allowing SAS users to extend capabilities with Python libraries while Python users leverage SAS’s enterprise‑grade data management in a unified environment.
Operationalizing AI and Machine Learning with SAS Fraud Decisioning Professional Models
This session explores how SAS Fraud Decisioning Professional Models deliver high‑performance risk scores for real‑time fraud detection and how to integrate them directly into decision flows. Attendees will learn, step by step, how to apply model scores and reason codes within business rules to operationalize fraud models, improve detection accuracy and preserve a seamless customer experience.
Agentic AI in Financial Services: From Automation to Intelligent Decisions
Join SAS and AWS alongside leaders from JP Morgan Chase and Allianz to explore how Agentic AI is transforming decision-making across banking and insurance. This session will highlight how intelligent automation, adaptive learning, and insight generation are driving operational efficiency, risk management, and customer-centric innovation. Hear real-world perspectives on how Financial Services organizations are leveraging Agentic AI to build trust, scale impact, and stay ahead of disruption.
- Adolfo Lopez (JPMC)
- Andrea Pohlman (Allianz)
- Sri Raghavan (AWS)
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Finding the Signal in the Noise: AI‑Driven AML Alerts in SAS
Rule‑based AML systems generate excessive alerts that slow investigations and obscure true financial crime risk. This demo shows how AI‑driven AML alert prioritization enhances rules with supervised machine learning and explainable AI to score and rank alerts by risk—reducing false positives, focusing investigations, and improving overall program efficiency.
Streamlining Model Risk Management for Operational Efficiency
While regulatory compliance remains a critical focus across the financial and technology sectors, effective Model Risk Management must translate complex governance requirements into tangible operational efficiencies. This presentation moves beyond regulatory summaries to demonstrate how SAS’ Model Risk Management can reduce time and cost while enhancing the trustworthiness and accountability of enterprise risk activities.
Reinventing Fraud Rules with Generative AI and SAS Viya Copilot
This session shows how SAS Viya Copilot replaces manual, complex fraud rule development by generating SAS code using LLMs with deep awareness of available data, profiles, functions, and macros. Attendees will see how no‑code guidance and proactive tuning recommendations help fight AI‑driven fraud with trusted AI improving prevention rates while reducing customer friction.
Pilot to Production: Audit‑Ready Synthetic Data for Finance on SAS Viya
In this session, Aldermore and SAS show how to build and govern bank‑grade synthetic data on SAS Viya to overcome limited historical data. Attendees will see how techniques like SMOTE in CAS and SAS Data Maker support privacy‑preserving generation, validated across fidelity, utility, privacy and fairness, with outcomes documented in SAS Model Manager to move from pilot to production.
Strengthening Operational Resilience with SAS Governance and Compliance Manager
As banks and insurers digitize operations, they face an expanding risk landscape driven by financial crime, regulatory pressure, and environmental, geopolitical, and social factors. This session shows how SAS Governance and Compliance Manager on Viya helps organizations strengthen operational resilience, meet rising regulatory demands, and reduce risk exposure through transparent, integrated, AI‑enabled governance with lower total cost of ownership.
Reverse Stress Testing with Agentic AI: Anticipating Risk Before It Strikes
This session shows how Agentic AI and SAS Viya enable reverse stress testing by automating complex calculations, simulating extreme edge‑case scenarios, and embedding explainability and trust into stress‑testing pipelines to surface actionable vulnerabilities faster even with limited or incomplete data.
Hidden in Plain Sight: How Traffickers Exploit the Financial System via Transactional Data
Human traffickers move billions through legitimate financial channels by exploiting transactional patterns, payment networks, and emerging technologies to conceal illicit activity. This session uses real‑world case studies to show how analytics can uncover trafficking typologies from structuring and funnel accounts to digital payment layering while enabling teams to apply data‑driven models and strengthen collaboration across AML, fraud, and human trafficking response efforts.
Thursday, April 30, 2026
Model Documentation: A Single Source of Truth for Your Risk Models
This session introduces SAS Risk Modeling’s new Model Documentation capability, a fully UI‑driven, audit‑ready solution that captures the complete model lifecycle in one collaborative environment. Attendees will see how documenting data, assumptions, KPIs, validation results, and governance steps in a single source of truth improves compliance, accelerates reviews, and reduces manual effort.
There's More
The Innovation Hub: Banking Solutions in Action
For many attendees, the Innovation Hub is where strategy meets reality. With 60+ booths, live demos and solution theaters, banking teams can see how analytics is being applied across fraud, risk, customer intelligence and compliance and talk directly with SAS experts and partners.
SAS Innovate 2026 in Grapevine, Texas
The agenda continues to evolve, with new sessions added regularly and for banking professionals navigating increasing regulatory pressure, real-time expectations and rapid AI adoption, SAS Innovate 2026 offers a rare combination of technical depth, industry relevance and practical execution guidance. Register now!
Adam Neiberg
