Banking Transformed with Jim Marous

Only 13% of banks and credit unions are operating at the highest level of digital maturity. They are growing revenues at 5X the rate of their less mature peers, and they are not the largest institutions.In this episode of Banking Transformed, Jim Marous draws on new research from Alkami and the Emerald Research Group to explain what digital maturity actually means today, why it no longer correlates with asset size, and the three factors separating the institutions pulling away from everyone else. He walks through the four-segment maturity model, the cost of standing still in the AI era, and what every banking executive should do Monday morning, with a closer look at one community bank that committed early and what its experience tells the rest of the industry.Take the Digital Maturity Model and Assessment Tool. Download the full research report.Banking Transformed publishes multiple times weekly. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Sixty-five million Americans cannot fully participate in the economy that most people take for granted. For many, the issue is not irresponsibility. It is a medical crisis, divorce, job loss, thin credit file, or temporary setback that pushed them outside the traditional credit system.
In this Banking Insights episode, I examine why more banks and credit unions are retreating from consumers with credit scores below 670, even as the need for responsible credit access continues to grow. Based on Digital Banking Report research, this episode challenges industry assumptions about risk, regulation, fees, and financial inclusion.
The opportunity is not simply to approve more applications. It is to build a better credit model around access, education, and financial momentum, where consumers are given the tools, transparency, and a clear path to improve their financial future.
I also share the story of Taeisha Jamison, whose credit score improved by more than 150 points after gaining access to a product that combined responsible credit, embedded education, and a clear path forward. Her story shows what happens when financial inclusion moves beyond messaging and becomes a working business model.
In this episode:
- The data behind the retreat from lower-score borrowers.
- How fees can fund responsible access.
- Why education without access, or access without education, falls short.
- How banks can create financial momentum through smarter product design, alternative data, behavioral tools, and transparency.
Download the full Digital Banking Report, The Ultimate Subscription: Fees That Unlock the System for Millions, at DigitalBankingReport.com.
This Banking Insights episode is sponsored by Credit One Bank.
#BankingInsights #CreditAccess #FinancialInclusion #FinancialHealth #CreditOneBank #BankingTransformed

How will bankers and AI agents be working side by side five years from now?

For most banks, that is no longer a hypothetical. New global research from nCino (link below) finds that 89% of banking executives expect their organization to be a combination of humans and AI agents within five years, and 84% say agentic AI has already changed how most banking roles operate.

Leaders frame this as a move toward higher-value work. 91% say AI lets their people spend more time on the customer-facing tasks that matter most.

In this episode of Banking Transformed, host Jim Marous sits down with Sean Desmond, President and CEO of nCino. Sean's view is that the real question is no longer whether to adopt AI but how to turn that activity into measurable outcomes.

The research backs him up. Four in five executives say their organization prioritizes AI adoption over return on investment. Sean walks through how nCino moved past experimentation, including a personal agent stack he scoped in a single evening, and why he believes the goal is to raise up what bankers can do rather than take work away from them.

In this conversation:

The dual workforce: how humans and AI agents are beginning to share the workload, and what shifts when they do.

Adoption to impact: why so many banks can point to AI activity but not yet to AI return, and how Sean thinks they close that gap.

Beyond the sandbox: moving AI from test environments onto live production data without breaking governance.

The data reality: why 94% of executives want one end-to-end AI solution while 93% still struggle with siloed or inconsistent data.

Sponsored by nCino:nCino's inaugural AI in Banking Benchmark surveyed 150 senior banking executives and the results tell a story of high confidence with a striking blind spot. Nearly 9 in 10 say AI agents are the future, but only 1 in 5 are tying it to revenue.

#BankingTransformed #nCino #DualWorkforce #AgenticAI #AIinBanking #FutureOfBanking #Fintech

Americans are saving less than they have in years, and the banking industry is partly to blame.Jim Marous argues that the savings crisis is partly a design failure. Banks spent decades making spending effortless while leaving saving to willpower, and the programs that actually changed behavior, from Christmas Clubs to round-ups to retirement auto-enrollment, all worked the same way: they built a system and removed the decision. The uncomfortable part is why the industry never automated everyday saving behaviors.This episode covers the difference between a knowledge problem and a behavior problem, what Bank of America, Ally, SoFi, and Acorns understood that most institutions ignored, why the clearest signal a customer can send so often goes unanswered, and the single change that would do more than any new technology.Subscribe for new Banking Insights each week as part of the Banking Transformed podcast.#BankingTransformed #Banking #DigitalBanking #FinancialWellness #BehavioralEconomics #Fintech #Saving

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