
Hosted by Evergreen Podcasts · EN

The U.S. banking industry is about to enter the largest consolidation cycle in a generation, and the institutions most at risk may not be the ones with the weakest balance sheets. They will be the ones that waited too long to modernize. Drawing on conversations with executives running institutions with $2 billion in assets to over a trillion, and research in conjunction with Alkami Technologies, this episode reframes what resilience means in 2026 and what it requires of leadership.Topics covered: • Why this consolidation cycle is structurally different from the 1990s wave or the post-2008 wave • Why digital maturity now predicts revenue performance more reliably than scale does • What separates the institutions positioned to acquire from the ones positioned to be acquired • Why the grace period banks used to have for technology adoption is gone • The new definition of resilience that determines who survives this cycle #BankingConsolidation #DigitalMaturity #BankingAI #BankingLTransformed #Banking

Why do the same financial brands keep showing up inside ChatGPT recommendations while many traditional institutions barely appear at all?New research from EMARKETER found that brands including Capital One, Klarna, Coinbase, PayPal, and Discover consistently rank among the most visible financial companies in AI recommendations.In this episode of Banking Transformed, Jim Marous speaks with Tiffani Montez, principal analyst for financial services at EMARKETER, about what the AI Visibility Index reveals about consumer trust, digital marketing, and the changing dynamics of financial brand discovery.The discussion explores why fintechs dominate some categories while legacy institutions still lead others, how consumer behavior is shifting in the AI era, and what today's financial marketers may still be underestimating about visibility and relevance.#Banking #AI #DigitalMarketing #Fintech #ChatGPT #BankingTransformed

Chime now opens more new checking accounts than Chase, Wells Fargo, or Bank of America. And the company’s fastest-growing customer segment is no longer financially stressed households. It is higher-income consumers looking for a banking experience that feels simpler, faster, and less frustrating.In this Insight Video, Jim Marous breaks down the Chime flywheel and explains why the company’s growth is not really about fintech technology. Most of the tools driving Chime’s success already exist inside traditional banking today.The difference is operational focus, product innovation, and a willingness to remove customer friction that many institutions still defend economically.This episode explores direct deposit primacy, engagement-driven economics, referral growth, product innovation, and why Chime may be exposing a much larger leadership challenge across retail banking.#Banking #DigitalBanking #Fintech #Chime #BankingStrategy #CustomerExperience #BankInnovation #BankingTransformed

Your bank may already be invisible.Not on Google. Invisible inside ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, where your customers now ask which bank to choose, which credit card to trust, and which financial app is worth their time. The AI gives them three names. Yours may not be one of them.Jim Marous breaks down the eMarketer AI Visibility Index data, the five specific moves a bank marketer can start this week, and the Monday Morning Test every banking leader should run before their next executive meeting. Featuring data from Tiffani Montez at eMarketer and David Evans of The Financial Brand.#BankingInsights #AIinBanking #GenerativeEngineOptimization #DigitalBanking #JimMarous

Banking transformation is rarely limited by technology. More often, it breaks down when teams lose trust, momentum, or clarity during change. In this live conversation from The Financial Brand Forum, Pinnacle Financial Partners Chief Digital and Product Solutions Officer Liz Wolverton discusses what leaders get wrong about mergers, AI adoption, and digital transformation. We explore how to reduce uncertainty during disruption, how AI should be introduced as a teammate instead of a threat, and why urgency without empathy can derail even the best strategy. Hosted by Jim Marous, Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand and Owner and Publisher of the Digital Banking Report. #Banking #AI #DigitalTransformation #Leadership #ChangeManagement

Most banks and credit unions say growth is the top priority heading into 2026. At the same time, fintechs are winning the relationships that drive future deposits, payments, and engagement. In this episode, Lee Wetherington from Jack Henry joins me to break down the findings from their 2026 Strategy Benchmark Study and explain why many financial institutions still struggle to act on signals already sitting in their own data. We discuss silent attrition, payment flow analytics, Gen Z deposit growth, AI investment priorities, and why payments have become the control point in the accountholder relationship. This conversation is not just about technology. It’s about how the game of banking is changing. This episode is sponsored by Jack Henry®. At Jack Henry, we believe the world is a better place with community and regional banks and credit unions. For 50 years, we’ve put financial institutions at the center of our modernization. We’re here to help you innovate faster, differentiate strategically, and compete successfully – with one goal in mind: to improve the financial health of the people you serve. To learn more about the findings discussed in today's episode, download the full Strategy Benchmark study here: https://discover.jackhenry.com/strategy-benchmark-study-2026 Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes published multiple times weekly. #BankingTransformed #Banking #DigitalBanking #Fintech #AIinBanking #Payments #BankStrategy #CustomerExperience #FutureOfBanking #GenZBanking

If you earned your marketing degree more than five years ago, you are already playing catch-up. Most banks are mailing in their response to AI. I break down the four AI moves the best banking marketers are running now: targeting that finds micro-cohorts of one, personalization built around the customer instead of the account, predictive analytics that tie marketing to revenue, and whether AI search tools even mention your bank. Each move draws on Banking Transformed interviews with Raja Rajamannar of Mastercard, Andrea Brimmer of Ally, and Olly Downs of Curinos. Using AI is no longer the goal, because every bank will get that far. The marketers who win refuse to mail it in and build something a competitor cannot copy. AI marketing has no finish line. Hosted by Jim Marous, Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand, Owner and Publisher of the Digital Banking Report, and host of the Banking Transformed podcast. #BankMarketing #AI #marketing #Banking #BankingTransformed #FinancialServices

Most banks still treat AI as a faster way to do the same work. Citibank believes the entire operating model of banking is about to change. Recorded live at the Financial Brand Forum, Driss Temsamani, Head of Digital at Citi and author of The Agentic Bank, explains why the next phase of AI is not about chatbots or isolated use cases. It is about rebuilding how banks deploy software, organize teams, serve customers, manage operations, and create decisions at scale. We discuss why software development costs are collapsing, why subject matter expertise becomes more valuable in an AI-driven organization, how agentic systems could reshape customer engagement, and why technologies like blockchain may become foundational to the future of financial services infrastructure. This conversation goes well beyond automation. It looks at what banking may become once intelligence is embedded into every part of the organization. Hosted by Jim Marous, Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand and Owner and Publisher of the Digital Banking Report. #Banking #AI #AgenticAI #DigitalBanking #BankingTransformed #Citi #Fintech #CustomerExperience

Banks are collecting more customer data than ever before. Yet most institutions still do not understand the customer any better. In this Banking Insights episode, I explain why that gap is widening, what Bank of America has built with Erica over 3.2 billion conversations, and why the real advantage in banking is shifting from collecting information to learning from it in real time. Drawing from my conversation with Jorge Camargo, Head of Digital Platforms at Bank of America, I explore why most personalization strategies still fail, why transaction histories are not customer insight, and why the institutions that win will be the ones that ask better questions and act on what they learn. #Banking #DigitalBanking #AI #CustomerExperience #BankingTransformed #Fintech #Erica #BoA

Most banks still treat AI as a chatbot or efficiency tool. Bank of America built something much bigger. In this live conversation from the Financial Brand Forum, Jorge Camargo, Head of Digital Platforms at Bank of America, explains how Erica evolved from a simple virtual assistant into infrastructure supporting 65 million clients across consumer banking, wealth management, and treasury services. Today, Erica is becoming the foundation for how Bank of America approaches agentic banking. We discuss what 3.2 billion customer conversations revealed about consumer behavior, why proactive engagement matters more than reactive service, and how Bank of America is moving from AI as a destination to AI embedded throughout the customer experience. Hosted by Jim Marous, Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand and Owner and Publisher of the Digital Banking Report. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week. #Banking #AI #AgenticAI #DigitalBanking #BankingTransformed #BankofAmerica #CustomerExperience #Fintech