In just the past few years, many bank and credit union executives have gone from being unable to define generative artificial intelligence (AI), agentic AI, stablecoin, tokenized deposits and smart contracts to feeling pressure to implement some or all of these technology solutions to keep their financial institutions alive.
And some of those technologies may be in a hype cycle. Corey LeBlanc, cofounder and chief technology officer at Locality Bank, a $358 million digital-first community bank based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last week declared customer facing agentic AI to be the most overhyped new technology during a discussion at S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Community Bankers Conference 2026. He said it is unrealistic at this point for bank CEOs to think they can develop an AI agent that can talk to their customers without it feeling unauthentic or getting something wrong.
Kevin Stein, managing director at the consulting firm Klaros Group, had a different answer. “Stablecoin,” he said. “What makes me nervous about stablecoin is — nobody’s asking for it. I sit on the board of a bank. None of our customers are asking for stablecoin.”
Opinions clearly vary on what the most important new technologies are, which ones are overhyped and which ones aren’t being talked about enough. But some of those same experts and other banking innovation professionals say the answer for each institution lies in its business model.
Who Do You Serve
Bank innovation leaders say look at who your financial institution serves, how it does that and where it isn’t doing that as well as it could.
Starting first with technology and not the business strategy can result in mission creep, says Siya Vansia, chief brand and innovation officer at $14.2 billion ConnectOne Bank, based in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. “It sounds obvious, but there are a lot of new technologies that may draw banks to deviate from their core business,” she says.
Hamza Qadir, director of innovation and digital strategy at $706 million 1st National Bank of Scotia, based in Scotia, New York, says there has to be a solid business case for implementing a new digital tool or solution. “I think putting technology first is probably a quick way to either sour yourself on it or find yourself in a maze that you can’t get out of,” Qadir says. “I look at technology as an enabler, not the solution, right? The solution is you’re looking for a certain outcome or a certain business process or a certain experience that you ultimately want to deliver.”
If a financial institution has that understanding, it can then look at new technologies that might help it serve its primary customer base more effectively, says Vansia. “Now I know that, within that lane, if I want to explore AI, if I want to explore blockchain, if I want to explore a new fintech vendor, [I can ask] what are the use cases?” she says. “And what are the crawl, walk, run approaches to do that?”
When financial institutions use that approach, they are also less likely to be influenced by subject matter experts or fintech providers. LeBlanc says it’s important not to get caught up in someone else’s excitement. “For a commercial bank that doesn’t have any sort of cross-border payments [customers], is stablecoin really the thing you need to invest in because somebody on stage or at some other company or on your board of directors told you they read an article about it?” he asks. “No, absolutely not.”
Establishing a team of trusted individuals within an institution that weighs new technology collectively is another way to ensure no one voice pushes the organization into a questionable decision.
Vansia says she has built a team of stakeholders from each of ConnectOne Bank’s departments. “Now we have a team of people we can bring together to determine this,” she says. “You have to consider the risks. You have to consider compliance, fraud. You have to consider bandwidth and operational ability. So, I don’t know that one person should determine it on their own. I think it’s a highly collaborative process.”
While 54% of the CEOs, tech executives and board directors who responded to Bank Director’s 2025 Technology Survey said that a management-level team or steering committee at their banks has final approval of technology investments, 48% said a C-suite level executive, other than the CIO or CTO, has that authority.
Data Is Key, But Lacking
But the right decision makers are only part of the solution. Investing in the right digital tools to effectively collect, sort and share your institution’s data internally can help inform what other technology solutions can help your organization. A report released this week by software solutions provider nCino found that 93% of the senior banking executives they surveyed indicated their bank has at least one data governance challenge. More than half say their data is siloed and over one-third cite inconsistent or incomplete data as an issue.
LeBlanc puts resolving data problems right at the top of the list for any financial institution. “We own the data, but it’s locked away in all these other systems, right, these service providers and such that we’ve contracted [with],” he says. “It’s understanding how the bank is going to take all of that data and centralize it, at the very least, so that [employees] have access to all of the data that they can to start to implement these systems like AI.”
Qadir says clean and complete data is important but he doesn’t believe it has to be an either or proposition for banks. “If we were waiting for all of our systems to talk together before we start putting AI into it or before we start doing anything more advanced, we’d never get to that point in time,” he says. “So, it’s really about containing it and isolating it in the actual use case that you ultimately want to deploy it in.”
And some banks are aggregating data and using AI as they do. The $3.7 billion Bank of Utah, based in Ogden, Utah, created a 10-person data analytics and AI team to handle both data aggregation and automation, said President Branden Hansen during a different session at the conference. “We’re using Snowflake, and then we’re incorporating AI on top of that. And the team, they’ll get requests from various departments [like], ‘Hey, we’ve got this really repetitive process. Can you come help us automate it?’” he said. “But the bigger, more grand vision is really understanding our customers and bringing in all that data and being able to confidently say, ‘Hey, this is our very best or most profitable customer.’’’
LeBlanc says differences in opinions on the relevance and prioritization of new technologies are natural, even among experts, because no one has a truly clear picture of exactly where things will go over the next 12 to 18 months.
“I actually think it’s good that we disagree because I think banks need to understand there’s no silver bullet in this,” he says. “It’s specific to each organization’s and company’s strategy on how they want to start to leverage things.”
Previous