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 Strategic 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 customer 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 Strategic 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

Is your bank being unbundled without realizing it?

Most banking leaders are still watching the obvious disruptors. But the bigger threat may be happening behind the scenes, as software platforms, embedded finance, and agentic AI begin to reshape how financial services are delivered and who owns the customer relationship.

In this episode, Rex Salisbury, founder of Cambrian, joins me to discuss what these shifts mean for traditional banking, why legacy moats are weakening, how seriously bankers should take Nubank's long-term U.S. potential, and what leaders need to do now to stay relevant.

In this episode:

• Why financial risk often shows up in strategy long before it shows up in earnings

• What Nubank's model signals for the future of competition in banking

• Why banks need to think beyond products and toward platforms, ecosystems, and execution

#BankingTransformed #Fintech #RetailBanking #DigitalTransformation #AgenticAI #EmbeddedFinance #Nubank #BankStrategy #FutureOfBanking #Cambrian #RexSalisbury

Most banks think they have an attrition problem under control because the closure numbers still look healthy.

But customers are not leaving the way they used to.

They are opening accounts at Chime, SoFi, Robinhood, Cash App, and Acorns while keeping their old bank relationship open. The direct deposit stays, and the account stays active, and even the dashboard says everything is fine.

Meanwhile, more spending, more engagement, and more deposits quietly move somewhere else.

In this episode, I break down what I call “silent attrition” and why the first outbound transfer matters more than the eventual account closure. Using data from J.D. Power, Cornerstone Advisors, Accenture, and a real-world engagement with a $10 billion institution, I explain why traditional retention metrics no longer reflect customer reality, how challenger brands are winning share of wallet without triggering alarms, and what banks can do right now to identify customers who are already halfway out the door.

Because by the time the account closes, the relationship has usually been gone for years.

#Banking #DigitalBanking #Fintech #CX #AI #CustomerRetention #attrition #BankTransformation

Most banks are losing customers after they have already decided to open an account, and it has nothing to do with pricing or competition. The breakdown occurs during the account-opening process itself.

If you want to see it clearly, try it on your own mobile app. Start an application and time how long it takes to complete. In many cases, the experience is slow, repetitive, and built around steps that were never designed for a phone.

In this episode, I walk through what changes when that process is simplified. One institution reduced account-opening time from more than 20 minutes to under 5 and saw new account growth triple in less than 90 days.

The shift did not come from a new marketing strategy or a major brand campaign. It came from removing friction, aligning the front and back ends, and ensuring the experience works the same way across mobile, online, and the branch.

For most institutions, this is one of the fastest ways to improve growth. The real question is whether you are willing to change the process behind it.

#BankingTransformed #DigitalBanking #AccountOpening #RetailBanking #CustomerExperience

Ryan Bailey spent 20 years at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, TD Bank, Fifth Third, and USAA. Then he took over Cambridge Savings Bank, a 190-year-old, $7 billion mutual community bank in Massachusetts.

In this Executive Leadership Series episode of Banking Transformed, recorded live at the Financial Brand Forum, Jim Marous and Ryan get into how community banks actually win against the giants. They cover the strategy behind Ivy Bank, Cambridge Savings’ national digital deposit brand, and why Ryan believes half of the smaller banks in the country won’t be here in 10 years.

They also dig into closing the analytics gap with a JPMorgan Chase, using AI to improve customer experience instead of just cutting cost, bringing legacy employees along on a fast digital agenda, and what USAA taught Ryan about loyalty.

Ryan closes with one Monday morning move every community bank CEO can act on right away.

In this episode:

• Why scale no longer guarantees dominance

• Gathering deposits nationally, lending locally with Ivy Bank

• Ryan’s prediction on community bank consolidation

• Closing the data gap without an enterprise budget

• The Monday morning move every CEO should make

#BankingTransformed #CommunityBanking #DigitalTransformation #Fintech #BankingPodcast #FinancialBrandForum #IvyBank #CambridgeSavingsBank

James Clear's Atomic Habits is the blueprint for professional change, but most banks are applying it incorrectly. In this episode of the Banking Insights series, I unpack the 1% daily compounding math that dictates why some banks quietly lose competitive ground while others compound forward.

I share my personal journey of losing 80 pounds and rebuilding this video series using the same system. Then I introduce the compounding gap framework, the invisible force that explains why so many strategic plans never become customer behavior.

If your institution feels stuck, this episode provides the four-law framework to identify where your system is breaking down and what to do about it tomorrow morning.

Subscribe to Banking Transformed for weekly insights on the future of financial services, and tell me in the comments: which of the four laws is breaking down inside your bank right now?

In This Episode

• The 1% daily compounding math applied to institutional banking strategy

• The difference between goals and the systems that actually produce them

• The compounding gap: the invisible force behind declining growth

• Identifying which of the four laws of behavior change is failing in your organization

Referenced Episodes

Insight Video #9: Agentic AI in Banking

Insight Video #6: The Oura Ring Business Model

#AtomicHabits #BankingTransformed #DigitalBanking #RetailBanking #CompoundingGap