Banking Transformed with Jim Marous

The convergence of artificial intelligence, real-time payment rails, open banking, and embedded finance is creating both unprecedented opportunities for innovation and significant competitive pressures. Banks must navigate the delicate balance between embracing cutting-edge technologies, such as generative AI, and maintaining the trust and security that customers demand. In this episode of the Banking Transformed podcast, we delve into the rapidly evolving payments ecosystem with Rich Clow, Head of Innovation and Strategy at Global Payment Solutions, Bank of America. With over 25 years of experience spanning from the early days of branchless banking to today's AI-powered financial services, Rich provides unique insights into the transformative trends reshaping how we think about money, payments, and banking relationships. Join us as we explore these critical trends with one of the industry's most experienced innovators, who has been at the forefront of digital payments evolution for over two decades.

Most banks say they're customer-centric, but very few are customer-obsessed. And that gap shows up directly in the numbers: obsessed customers are 88% likely to repurchase, and 42% have already recommended the company 5 or more times in the past year. Marbue Brown led customer experience at JPMorgan Chase's Consumer Bank, built Amazon's AI-driven CX operation, and has done the same at Microsoft and Cisco. His book, Blueprint for Customer Obsession, lays out nine practices across three pillars that define what the best companies actually do differently. Today, we discuss the practices where banks keep falling short, and what financial institutions of all sizes can do TODAY to elevate their customer obsession scores.

Most banks still treat lending as a point-in-time decision. Pull a score. Make a call. Wait. In today’s environment, that model limits growth and weakens earnings durability. In this episode of Banking Transformed, I speak with S. P. “Wije” Wijegoonaratna, Co-Founder and CEO of Aliya, about how AI-powered operational intelligence is transforming lending from episodic approvals into continuous, governed opportunity exploration. Aliya’s platform connects bank-account data, marketing intelligence, risk decisioning, and post-origination monitoring into a closed loop designed to improve efficiency without increasing balance-sheet risk. Are you operating episodically — or intelligently? #Banking #Lending #DigitalTransformation #AI #CustomerExperience

For the past decade, financial institutions have poured billions into improving customer experience. Digital journeys. Frictionless onboarding. Personalization. Higher satisfaction scores. But according to Joe Pine, that era is over. In this episode of Banking Transformed, I sit down with Joe, the author of The Transformation Economy and co-author of the landmark Experience Economy, to explore what comes after customer experience in banking. If experiences are now expected rather than differentiating, where should banks compete next? Joe argues that the next stage of value creation is transformation. Not better moments, but better outcomes. Not engagement metrics, but measurable progress in customers' financial lives We discuss what transformation really means for banking, why most institutions are still optimizing for the wrong thing, and why banks that fail to evolve risk becoming irrelevant in the most important conversations their customers are actually having. If your strategy still centers on CX as the competitive moat, this conversation will challenge your assumptions. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for weekly conversations with the leaders reshaping the future of financial services.

Credit unions entered 2026 with more digital ambition than any segment of the banking industry. Yet 60% are still in early stages of transformation or lack clear goals. That’s not a strategy issue. It’s an execution issue. In this episode of The Experience Factor, sponsored by Q2, Jim Marous sits down with Jesus Garcia, Chief Experience Officer at OceanAir Federal Credit Union, to examine what the 2026 Retail Banking Trends and Priorities report reveals about the credit union sector and how one institution is moving beyond ambition to measurable results. This conversation covers: * The execution gap * The branch expansion paradox * The talent contradiction * Fintech partnerships that actually drive impact * The open banking blind spot * AI: substance vs optics This discussion isn’t about strategy decks. It’s about what’s actually working and what must change. The Experience Factor is sponsored by Q2. Download the 2026 Retail Banking Trends and Priorities Report here.

If your bank is still competing on features, you don’t have a strategy. There was a time when products and features made a difference. That time is gone. Digital is now expected. Rates are aligned. Features are replicated. And AI can compare them instantly. If you're leading with just what you offer, you're competing in a race where everyone looks the same. Allison Netzer's "Think Like a Brand, Not Like a Bank" Version 2 shares three years of implementation data from banks and credit unions that stopped competing on features. Her framework explains why leading with product specs is mistaken. Customers first decide emotionally, then justify rationally. This edition includes a reflection on which principles have remained valid and which ones need rethinking. The institutions winning today treat brand as their strategic operating system, not a marketing exercise. They solve customer pain through counterintuitive thinking that violates industry patterns. In this episode, we discuss what’s changed since 2022, what surprised Allison in the real-world execution of these ideas, and why moving beyond product thinking may be the only way to avoid becoming invisible in a marketplace defined by sameness.