Many bankers use gen AI as a search engine. Others use it to help them write or come up with ideas. Still others are more sophisticated and have started to incorporate multiple AI models into the enterprise to leverage AI across the bank. All this helps, but one execution that we found the most helpful...

Many banks either fail to innovate or innovate to their detriment. Artificial intelligence and tokenization are two current examples where either banks are ignoring or in an attempt to innovate have destroyed the value of the product by copying old processes, putting enough guardrails on to limit its use or being so slow to roll...

It was a sunny June day back in 1974 when Herstatt Bank, a German community bank out of Cologne, had thousands of U.S. Dollar payments that it wanted to send out to New York banks before it shut down at 4:30 in the afternoon. Because no NY bank was open, those payments could not be...

This month will likely go down as the “Agentic Big Bang.” The artificial intelligence landscape shifted from “chatting” to mainstream “doing,” and if you are running a community bank in the US, the ground beneath your feet just moved. Over the last two weeks, we had four seminal events – Openclaw exploded, Anthropic released Claude...

In this episode, Chris Nichols and DJ Seeterlin explore what banks can learn from Trader Joe’s approach to strategy, focusing on clear customer segments, intentional trade-offs, and delivering value over price. They discuss how aligning products, people, and experiences around a defined audience can help banks stand out, and how these same principles apply to...

In this episode, Chris Nichols is joined by Samer Saab of Alloy Labs to explore the growing tension between a traditional “debt mindset” and a more forward-looking “equity mindset” in banking. While banks are built to minimize risk and protect principal, that same instinct can limit innovation, partnerships, and long-term growth. Samer shares practical ways...