Banking Transformed with Jim Marous

Banking is no longer competing with the branch down the street. It is competing with every digital experience your customers have before they ever open your app. Expectations around speed, simplicity, and trust are being set by big tech, fintechs, and embedded finance, not by traditional financial institutions. And for many banks, that gap is growing.

That is why today’s conversation matters. I am joined by Phil Tomlinson, Senior Vice President of Global Offerings at TaskUs, and Pragya Agarwal, Vice President of Financial Crimes and Risk Operations. They sit at the intersection of customer experience, advanced technology, and financial crime prevention, where speed and trust have to coexist every day.

In this episode of Banking Transformed, we unpack what next-generation banking really looks like, where AI is delivering real value right now, and how banks can move faster, innovate responsibly, and still protect customers in an always-on, app-driven world.

This episode of
Banking Transformed is sponsored by TaskUs

TaskUs is a
leading provider of outsourced digital services and next-generation customer
experience to the world’s most innovative companies, helping its clients
represent, protect and grow their brands. Leveraging a cloud-based
infrastructure, TaskUs serves clients in the fast-growing sectors, including
social media, e-commerce, gaming, streaming media, food delivery and
ride-sharing, technology, financial services and healthcare.

https://www.taskus.com/services/financial-crime-compliance/

Nearly half of the skills banking leaders rely on today will be obsolete within five years.

In this episode of Banking Transformed, Jim Marous explores why continuous learning has become the most critical leadership skill in financial services, and why failing to adapt is the fastest path to irrelevance.

Jim shares the personal transformation that reshaped his career, explains how AI is accelerating the divide between learners and laggards, and outlines the daily habits leaders must embrace to stay relevant in a world where change will never be this slow again.

Banks love to claim they are high-tech and high-touch. The truth is, most are neither, and the gap between what institutions promise and what customers experience is widening fast. It is costing banks billions in lost trust, slower growth, and missed opportunities, especially as expectations accelerate across the rest of people’s financial lives.

At Fintech NerdCon in Miami, I sat down with two leaders who are actually closing that gap. Siya Vansia, Chief Brand and Innovation Officer at ConnectOne Bank, and Suzan Chaffin, EVP of Solutions at LoanPro, are showing what modern banking looks like when technology, culture, and leadership come together with clarity and purpose.

Our Banking Transformed conversation dives into the real work behind transformation. Not the marketing language, but the decisions, processes, and organizational alignment needed to deliver both speed and empathy. These leaders expose why retrofitting new technology onto old processes always fails, and how banks can rebuild for a future where high-tech and high-touch finally work together.

If your institution is trying to modernize, improve experience, or break free from legacy constraints, this discussion offers a practical look at what it takes to move faster and deliver better value today.

What if the biggest myth in banking is that customers don’t need branches anymore?

Because every time Bank of America opens a new financial center, digital sales in that market jump by 50 percent. Physical presence isn’t competing with digital — it’s accelerating it.

Now, Bank of America is putting $750 million behind a bet the rest of the industry walked away from too soon, opening 150 new financial centers across 60 markets by 2027 at more than $5 million per location. Bold? Yes. Contradictory? Maybe. But the timing suggests something deeper: after shrinking from 6,000 branches to about 3,700, they now believe the future isn’t fewer branches… it’s smarter ones.

These next-generation centers aren’t transaction factories. They’re advisory hubs staffed by 12,000 relationship bankers, designed to anchor communities and handle the conversations digital can’t — at least not yet.

My guest on the Banking Transformed podcast, Will Smayda, leads this transformation. He’ll explain why Bank of America is expanding while others retreat and what these new financial centers reveal about how clients actually want to bank.

So, here’s the question we all need to wrestle with: Is this the future of the branch — or the most expensive contradiction in banking?

Every bank today is trying to appear modern. But you can’t operate a digital institution with a core system that hasn’t been updated since the iPhone was introduced.

After years of adding new features on top of outdated infrastructure, the limitations become clear: legacy cores slow innovation, hinder personalization, and make it nearly impossible to compete in an AI-driven world.

Modernization is no longer just a tech project. It’s a strategic choice for whether a bank can stay competitive. Banks adopting unified, modern architectures aren’t doing it for appearances; they’re doing it because it provides the speed, flexibility, and resilience that legacy systems cannot match.

The good news? Modernizing no longer requires years of planning and implementation. Progressive methods are giving banks safer, lower-risk options to move forward.

Today on the Banking Transformed Podcast, I’m joined by Sai Rangachari, Chief Product Officer at Temenos, to explore what modern core banking really entails, why it’s important now, and how banks can update without disrupting their operations.