How a session in Frankfurt is put together
A supervisory audience, a bank's executive committee and a general corporate room need different versions of the same argument, and which is being booked is the first thing established. Every keynote is tailored after a briefing call, and the larger engagements start before the day rather than on it: a diagnostic of the client's own people, so the room hears its own evidence rather than somebody else's. What the room leaves with is written down.
What that has looked like: about 1,500 people joining a session run hybrid from central London at short notice, for a technology business changing AI tools faster than its people could absorb, which became executive coaching for the transformation lead; and an agency business convening Asia, Asia-Pacific, EMEA and North America into one event, where the work was naming the recurring situations nobody had vocabulary for, and the company took that wording into its strategy.
Six of the seven engagements published on this site produced further work after the session rather than at it. The seven are set out in full at case studies, each with a line saying what it does not show.
How to read these examples. They are published to show how the work is put together, not as a client list for Frankfurt. Most engagements are covered by confidentiality and are described without naming anyone; where a client is named anywhere on this site, it is with their agreement.
Supervised twice, and both ask who decided
A significant bank in Frankfurt answers to two supervisors in the same city: the European Central Bank for prudential supervision, and BaFin for everything else. On algorithms, BaFin set its position out in its supervisory principles of 15 June 2021 on big data and artificial intelligence in decision-making. They require a clear responsibility structure, and that a model’s results are assessed and fed into decisions, automatically or by involving experts.
That last phrase is where the work is. A principle that allows either leaves each institution to decide which decisions get the expert and which get the automation, and most have not written that choice down. The method for doing it is judgement allocation.
What changed in July 2026
Germany’s law implementing the EU AI Act, the KI-MIG, took effect on 29 July 2026. The Bundesnetzagentur became the market surveillance authority and single point of contact, with AI used in workforce management, critical infrastructure and education among the areas it watches. In the fully harmonised sectors the existing supervisors keep their responsibility, and the Bundesnetzagentur names BaFin as one of them.
For a Frankfurt firm that means two things at once. The bank’s own models stay with its existing supervisor, and the AI the same firm uses to manage its people now has an authority of its own. The oversight question has moved from the risk function into HR. What that looks like in practice is at meaningful human oversight.
What Germany has measured
Destatis found 20 per cent of German enterprises with at least ten employees using AI in 2024, up from 12 per cent in 2023. A fast rise from a low base, measured by the federal statistics office rather than a vendor.
Adoption figures count tools, not judgement. The figure that matters to a board, whether the people approving the output could still do the work unaided, is the one nobody publishes. Why that gap grows quietly is at capability debt.
Who books this in Frankfurt, and who should not
Banks and their executive committees, asset managers, insurers, the advisory and audit firms that serve them, and the corporate headquarters around the city. Board sessions, leadership offsites and leadership dinners as often as conference stages, because the serious conversation here happens in small rooms.
He is the wrong choice for an AI Act compliance briefing, which needs counsel. This session asks the question underneath it: which decisions here still need a person, and how would the board know if that person had stopped deciding.
What a Frankfurt supervisor will eventually ask
Frankfurt is where Europe's banks are supervised, so the question of who decided arrives here first. I have spoken to leadership at Barclays and advised companies across Europe, and the session gives your board a written answer before anybody asks for one: which decisions stay human, who answers for each, and what your people must still be able to do. I deliver in English.
Frankfurt boards get Rahim's advisory experience across Europe and the reading behind Box of Amazing, his free weekly letter since 2017. Keynotes · Advisory · Box of Amazing
The three keynotes a Frankfurt am Main room can book
Keynotes run 30 to 90 minutes, in person or virtual. A 30-minute main-stage version of each talk is available for conferences, and the full talk runs 45 to 60 minutes. The sector examples change for the room; the argument does not. All three, with the showreel, are at keynotes, and the programme copy is at the speaker pack.
Drift versus Design is built from your room. Your audience answers five anonymous questions beforehand, their answers shape the talk, and afterwards you get a one-page readout with the three decisions to look at first.
Also speaking nearby: Zurich · Amsterdam · Paris.
Drift versus Design
Drift versus Design: why most organisations hand their judgement to AI without deciding to, and how to design your way through instead.
BaFin's 2021 principles let a model's results reach a decision automatically or through experts. Executives sort which of their decisions get the expert and which quietly got the automation.
We Are Superheroes
We Are Superheroes: AI is the suit. The human decides.
Since July 2026 AI used to manage people has its own supervisor in Germany. For HR and leadership teams the session starts there: which people decisions a machine now shapes, and who can stop it.
WTH (What the Human)
WTH (What the Human): a live test of a board's own judgement.
Directors take two recent approvals and ask whether the people who signed them could have reached the same view without the system. The board leaves with the decisions that must stay human, named.
Where these sessions happen in Frankfurt
- Kap Europa and Messe Frankfurt
- The congress centre beside the exhibition grounds, and the natural home for a large annual meeting or an industry conference.
- Alte Oper
- The restored opera house on Opernplatz, for a set-piece evening where the room itself carries the occasion.
- Bank and firm premises in the Bankenviertel
- Most senior convening happens inside institutions rather than in hired rooms, which means small audiences and no stage. That is a different session and usually a better one for this argument.
- Private dining in the city hotels
- For a leadership dinner, the format where the argument opens the discussion rather than closing it.
The city fills around the Frankfurt Book Fair in October and the large Messe weeks, so hotel rooms need booking early. Delivery is in English.
