The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Financial Services Industry in Belgium in 2025

Belgium's financial services sector is at a turning point: generative AI promises faster underwriting, fraud detection and personalised offers, but firms must move while balancing measurable ROI and compliance - a theme at PwC's GenAI in Financial Services event that flagged an 80% jump in AI adoption year‑on‑year and stressed governance for scale (PwC Belgium GenAI in Financial Services event report).

Local market guides show the same reality - AI and open finance are front and centre as the National Bank of Belgium (NBB), FSMA and EU rules (including the AI Act) reshape obligations and supervision in Belgium (Belgium fintech 2025 regulatory overview - Chambers and Partners).

For professionals ready to translate strategy into skills, a practical route is a focused course like the 15‑week AI Essentials for Work syllabus (Nucamp), which teaches prompt design and real‑world AI use across business functions so teams can deploy responsibly and competitively.

“from experimentation to execution”

Attribute	Information
Program	AI Essentials for Work
Length	15 Weeks
Courses	AI at Work: Foundations; Writing AI Prompts; Job Based Practical AI Skills
Cost (early bird / regular)	$3,582 / $3,942
Registration	Register for AI Essentials for Work (Nucamp)

In 2025 Belgium's financial sector looks set to move from cautious experiments to scaled, governed AI that augments advisers, tightens fraud defences and squeezes cost out of back‑office workflows: local dialogue at the Belgian Financial Forum highlighted workforce and legal implications for banks and insurers (Belgian Financial Forum: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Banking), while EY Belgium outlines how private banks will use AI to automate mundane RM tasks and deliver real‑time, personalised client insights without eroding trust (EY Belgium: Leveraging AI for Growth and Cost Efficiency in Private Banking).

At the same time global trend reports warn of a 2025 battleground of fraud, model governance and data modernisation: expect sharper investment in cloud, explainable models, liveness checks and database migration so Belgian firms can both deploy generative AI and satisfy supervisors - a vivid image to remember is branches where AI handles the paperwork while human advisers handle the handshakes.

The net effect for Belgium: smarter, faster client journeys and leaner operations, but only for organisations that pair applied AI with rigorous governance, clear data foundations and regulatory-readiness.

“The Digital Industrial Age of Fraud has dawned, fueled by a perfect storm of social, economic and technological factors that have made fraud more common – and easier to commit – than ever.”

Belgium's AI strategy in 2025 is a pragmatic blend of open innovation and a service‑oriented rollout: firms overwhelmingly favour startup partnerships (90% say collaboration is important) even while just 41% rank AI integration as a top priority, so adoption is strong but uneven across organisations; two striking datapoints from a recent study are that 67% of Belgian companies are exploring diagnostic AI projects and that over half are either running or planning generative AI initiatives, which a Google‑commissioned estimate says could add up to €50 billion to the economy over the next decade - details that make Brussels a busy marketplace for AI strategy work and execution.

That marketplace feeds on both global advisory teams and local specialists: established strategy and M&A support from firms such as EY complements hands‑on delivery from Belgian consultancies and developers (see the round‑up of top AI consultancies in Brussels), while PwC and Deloitte resources help translate pilots into operational scale.

The practical takeaway for financial institutions is clear: pair open‑innovation partnerships with a disciplined strategy and vendor mix - strategy consulting for roadmaps, local AI teams for prototypes, and operations partners for deployment - so projects move from promising experiments to regulated, production‑ready services.

“The concept of open innovation isn't new. But the urgency to adopt it, especially in the age of AI, is imperative. Forward-thinking organizations recognize its potential, and as such it is now the norm rather than the exception.” - Hans Cromphout, Sopra Steria (Brussels)

Belgium's AI regulatory landscape is now governed largely by the EU's risk‑based AI Act, a phased rulebook that bans certain practices and makes AI literacy and transparency concrete obligations (the Act entered into force in August 2024, prohibitions and AI‑literacy duties took effect on 2 February 2025, GPAI governance obligations landed on 2 August 2025, and the wider regime becomes generally applicable in 2026) - see the EU's explanation of the EU AI Act risk-based framework, requirements and timeline.

For Belgian financial firms this means reclassifying tools (are they limited‑risk chatbots, GPAI used across services, or potentially high‑risk credit or recruitment systems?), building demonstrable AI literacy programmes, and preparing for tighter transparency, logging and governance as national supervisors come online: Member States had to designate competent authorities by 2 August 2025 and publish contact points for market surveillance and notifying authorities.

Belgium's national rollout has been closely watched - official listings show Belgian representation by the Federal Public Service Economy and Agence du Numérique, but implementation choices were flagged as “unclear” in public trackers, and Belgium even opposed the Commission's voluntary GPAI Code of Practice at EU board level, underscoring unresolved tensions over copyright, compensation and legal clarity.

Think of the August deadlines as a referee whistle: compliance processes, clear documentation and named regulators must be ready or firms face enforcement in a landscape that now balances safety, rights and competitive innovation.

Milestone	Date / Belgian status
Act entry into force	1 Aug 2024
Prohibitions & AI literacy effective	2 Feb 2025
GPAI governance obligations & member state authorities due	2 Aug 2025
General applicability (high‑risk rules)	2 Aug 2026
Belgium national implementation status (tracking)	Listed as “Unclear”; FPS Economy & Agence du Numérique represented Belgium; list of 26 bodies published

“This is not the end of the process.”

The industry outlook for AI in Belgium in 2025 is unmistakably pragmatic: projects are shifting from pilots to measurable business value as banks and insurers - names such as BNP Paribas Fortis, KBC, Belfius and Ethias - move AI into core strategy, staffing dedicated units and codifying roadmaps; the 2025 Belgian AI Barometer reports 85% of institutions now have an AI competence centre and over 60% a validated roadmap, while generative AI is already widely used for chatbots and developer assistance, and productivity sits top of the priority list at 92% (see the full FinTech Belgium Barometer).

That transition plays out against a fertile local ecosystem - Belgium remains attractive for fintech growth and partnership-driven innovation per the national fintech review - so expect stronger vendor partnerships, more cloud and data modernisation work, and heavier investment in explainability and governance to meet EU rules.

Practical friction points are clear: system integration complexity (62%), regulatory uncertainty (38%) and data quality (31%) are the main blockers, meaning successful firms will pair technical pilots with enterprise architecture and change programmes; picture a queue‑free branch where a GenAI prepares a personalised mortgage bundle on a tablet in seconds so the human adviser can focus on trust and complex decisions.

In short: measurable ROI and disciplined integration will separate leaders from followers in Belgium's AI race, with ecosystem players, VCs and consultancies ready to help scale promising pilots into regulated production (see the Belgium fintech trends and legal landscape for context).

Metric / Concern	2025 Belgium (Barometer)
Institutions with AI unit	85%
Validated AI roadmap	>60%
Expect break‑even or exceptional ROI in 2025	~45%
Priority: Productivity gains	92%
GenAI for customer service	>60%
AI literacy campaigns	85%
Employees given AI assistants	77%
Top implementation challenge (integration complexity)	62%
Regulatory uncertainty	38%
Data quality issues	31%

“The changing environment of AI, encompassing traditional AI and the nascent GenAI and agentic AI, will unequivocally reveal which organizations possess superior data and enterprise architecture. This architectural strength will become the decisive competitive advantage for deploying AI services with optimal speed to market.” - Anthony Belpaire, Head of AI, BNP Paribas Fortis

Belgian financial firms in 2025 are focusing on practical AI that delivers measurable value: top use cases include GenAI customer‑service chatbots (over 60% adoption), developer and coding assistance, automated KYC and onboarding workflows that slash processing times, and AI‑augmented underwriting and wholesale‑lending workflows to speed complex decisions - all driven by a productivity and process‑efficiency agenda (productivity was a 92% priority in the 2025 barometer).

Multichannel GenAI agents and retrieval‑augmented chatbots are being used to summarise documents, route tickets and assist advisers so humans handle nuance while AI handles routine work; ING's experiments across customer contact centres, KYC, wholesale banking and marketing highlight this spread of real cases, and practical quality work (like Sailpeak's chatbot assessments) shows the need for RAG, stronger NLU and clear escalation paths to avoid hallucinations.

Adoption is fast but not frictionless: integration complexity and regulatory uncertainty are named blockers, so Belgian teams pair pilots with enterprise architecture and governance to scale safely - see the full 2025 Belgian AI Barometer for the adoption figures and local context, plus case studies of bank chatbot work for implementation cues.

Use case	Evidence / adoption (2025)
GenAI customer service chatbots	>60% deployment (FinTech Belgium AI Barometer)
Coding assistance / developer productivity	Strong adoption reported in barometer
KYC automation & onboarding	Active experiments at ING and across banks
Underwriting & wholesale lending workflows	Efficiency use cases under test to shorten long processes
Document summarisation & agent assist (RAG)	Recommended by Sailpeak chatbot assessments

“The changing environment of AI, encompassing traditional AI and the nascent GenAI and agentic AI, will unequivocally reveal which organizations possess superior data and enterprise architecture. This architectural strength will become the decisive competitive advantage for deploying AI services with optimal speed to market.” - Anthony Belpaire, Head of AI, BNP Paribas Fortis

Data, governance and ethical controls are now the operating rhythm for Belgian banks and insurers: the EU AI Act's risk categories and the GDPR's privacy rules must be reconciled in practice, not just in theory, so organisations build clear inventories, classify models by risk, and bake privacy‑by‑design into training and deployment pipelines - a point well covered in EY's guidance on the interplay between the AI Act and data management and practical privacy controls (EY guidance on the EU AI Act and data management).

Expect hard governance work: data quality, traceability and documented human oversight are the foundations that stop “black box” systems turning into regulatory liabilities, and EY's checklist for safeguarding privacy highlights common tensions (purpose limitation, data minimisation, automated decision‑making) and pragmatic fixes such as impact assessments, logging and consent models (EY Belgium guide to safeguarding privacy in AI).

Finally, governance cannot lag adoption: Belgian sentiment data and EY surveys show a gap between rapid GenAI rollout and controls, so a realistic roadmap ties model registries, third‑party risk checks and staff AI literacy programmes to compliance gates - think of governance as the safety harness that lets organisations race forward without losing public trust.

Metric	Belgium / finding
Belgian employees fearing job losses from AI	74% (EY Barometer)
Data privacy & security cited as adoption barrier	62% (EY surveys)
Organisations with full Responsible AI protocols	~1/3 (only about a third have full protocols)
Executives reporting integrated/scaled AI	72% (EY Responsible AI Pulse)

“Consumer concerns about AI responsibility impact brand trust, placing CEOs at the forefront of these discussions. Executives must address these issues by developing responsible strategies to mitigate AI risks and being transparent about their organization's use and protection of AI.” - Raj Sharma, EY Global Managing Partner - Growth and Innovation

Move deliberately from pilot to production by following a Belgium‑specific road map that combines short, practical sprints with national support: start with a rapid 3‑day ideation jam and a 6‑week use‑case build to surface high‑impact, low‑friction pilots, then commit to a full 9‑month implementation cycle for production readiness -

“3‑6‑9” approach used by Belgian practitioners speeds decision‑making while protecting budgets

(Belgium AI Index 3‑6‑9 approach).

Pair that cadence with a formal six‑phase playbook - readiness assessment, strategy and KPIs, pilot selection, implementation & testing, scaling and enterprise integration, then continuous monitoring and MLOps - to avoid the common fate of promising PoCs that never scale (Space‑O's 6‑phase AI implementation roadmap).

In Belgium this roadmap should explicitly map regional levers (for example, Flanders' AI action plan and dedicated funding) and public programmes so pilots can tap grants, research partners and innovation sandboxes; the practical payoff is tangible: a compliant, production model that reduces manual work in months rather than years, not just a glossy demo.

For teams that lack specialised staff, bring in delivery partners and use targeted PoC guidance to lock success metrics early and make the jump to regulated, repeatable deployments (BDO: turning ideas into validated PoCs), because in Belgium the right mix of quick wins, regional funding and disciplined governance is what converts pilots into business‑critical systems - imagine a branch where the AI has already prefilled the mortgage dossier and the human adviser focuses on the decision, not the paperwork.

Phase	Typical timeline	Key outcome
Ideation	3 days	Validated opportunities & shortlist
Use‑case development	6 weeks	Feasible pilot with success metrics
Implementation	~9 months	Production‑ready system with testing & integration
Scale & Operate	Ongoing	Enterprise rollout, MLOps and continuous monitoring

Belgian banks and insurers face a sharply practical set of hurdles as AI moves from pilots into core services: the 2025 FinTech Belgium AI Barometer flags systems integration as the top blocker (62%), with regulatory uncertainty (38%) and data‑quality gaps (31%) close behind, while workforce readiness lags with many staff having limited GenAI experience - a pattern mirrored in EY's analysis that only about 11% of firms are fully prepared for incoming rules and just 25% have established GenAI training programs (see the FinTech Belgium AI Barometer and EY Belgium GenAI adoption review).

These figures translate into real operational risk: firms must reconcile GDPR constraints and customer‑consent limits when reusing transaction data, document human‑in‑the‑loop controls, and be ready to run formal Fundamental Rights Impact Assessments for high‑risk use cases such as credit scoring under the EU AI Act (for legal detail, see Timelex's guide to the AI Act's impact on financial services).

The practical implication for Belgian teams is clear - pair aggressive data cleansing and enterprise architecture work with targeted upskilling, transparent logging and impact assessments so AI delivers productivity without opening regulatory or reputational exposure; picture an adviser freed from paperwork because the model is trusted, explainable and auditable, not one that creates a compliance headache overnight.

Key challenge	2025 Belgium
Integration complexity	62% (FinTech Belgium AI Barometer)
Regulatory uncertainty	38% (FinTech Belgium / EY)
Data quality concerns	31% (FinTech Belgium AI Barometer)
Workforce with limited GenAI experience	78% (EY Europe survey)
Organisations fully prepared for AI regulation	~11% (EY)

“The changing environment of AI, encompassing traditional AI and the nascent GenAI and agentic AI, will unequivocally reveal which organizations possess superior data and enterprise architecture. This architectural strength will become the decisive competitive advantage for deploying AI services with optimal speed to market.” - Anthony Belpaire, Head of AI, BNP Paribas Fortis

For beginners in Belgium, the sensible next steps are clear: start with AI literacy, pick a tightly scoped pilot that ties to productivity or cost savings, and lock measurable KPIs before scaling with strong data and governance controls - advice backed by FinTech Belgium's 2025 AI Barometer which shows 85% of institutions now run dedicated AI units and more than 60% have validated roadmaps, while GenAI and productivity sit at the top of the agenda (FinTech Belgium 2025 AI Barometer report); pair that approach with broader monitoring to capture ROI as recommended by the EY European AI Barometer, which highlights Belgium's leading productivity gains and the need for upgraded dashboards and training (EY European AI Barometer 2025 report).

For practical skills, a focused, 15‑week course such as Nucamp's Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus (15‑week course) helps newcomers learn prompt design, workplace use cases and how to run pilots that are compliance‑ready; think small, prove value, harden data pipelines and governance, then scale - this is the path from experiment to enterprise in Belgium's regulated landscape.

Metric	Belgium (2025)
Institutions with AI unit	85%
Validated AI roadmap	>60%
Productivity priority	92%
GenAI for customer service	>60%
Integration complexity (top blocker)	62%
Regulatory uncertainty	38%
Data quality concerns	31%

“The 2025 AI Barometer paints a clear picture: AI is no longer something futuristic, but a core component of strategic growth for Belgian financial institutions.” - Raf De Kimpe, CEO, FinTech Belgium