Jon Sisk and Matt Lujano's banks couldn't be more different at first appearance — Sisk is a top executive at a community bank in Santa Cruz, California, near the beating heart of America's tech ecosystem, and Lujano leads a bank primarily based in a rural area of western Iowa where farming is dominant. But they share a positive outlook on the role of tech in community banking. As chair and vice chair, respectively, of ABA's Community Bankers Council, they reflected on what it means to be a tech-forward community bank in a podcast following the committee's recent D.C. meeting. Among other topics, they discuss:

• Forming AI brainstorming groups within banks to facilitate collaborative innovation.
• The use of generative AI tools to accelerate policy development and exam preparedness.
• Being ready to move quickly on stablecoins, tokenized deposits and digital assets, even if customers aren't demanding solutions.
• Good ideas surfaced in conversations among CBC members.

Stay tuned for more conversations on tech-forward community banking within the ABA Banking Journal Podcast channel.