American Banker Podcast

The company's new CEO, and long-time chief technology officer, shares his views on why some banks are stuck in old ways of determining creditworthiness, how Upstart has been modifying its underwriting models and the objections people sometimes have to AI-based lending.

Rodney Hood, former acting Comptroller of the Currency and former chair of the National Credit Union Administration, says the credit scoring system is broken and AI can fix it.  

Surjit Chana, a board member of Beneficial State Bank, a Harvard Fellow and a tech committee member of the Global Alliance for Banking Values, explains why there's a need for what he calls a moral architecture for AI

JPMorganChase, Citi, Bank of America and Anchorage Digital are among the banks that are using or planning to work with the Solana distributed ledger and network. Solana Policy Institute CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine explains how it works.

Peter Chapman, chief technology officer at Grasshopper Bank, initially saw AI as "the best intern that you could ever have." Today the technology is taking on more advanced work at the bank.

"AI may not take your job, but somebody who knows AI will," says Raymond George, CIO of Clearview Federal Credit Union.  

JPMorganChase, Citi, Vantage Bank and Custodia Bank have all chosen Ethereum as the underpinning for blockchain projects such as tokenized deposits. The chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance explains its appeal.

Some traditional bankers are unsettled by the wave of crypto and fintech banks getting bank charters. This Nashville bank CEO sees opportunity.

The company's recently released 2026 trends report is about "moving and changing the narrative from being Eeyores to being Tiggers," Abbott said in the latest American Banker podcast.

The former Deutsche Bank chair and Goldman Sachs partner shares some of the leadership principles in his new book.

The founder of Digit explains how he got into fintech and why he built an AI-meets-personal-finance app that launched in November.

Former controller of the currency Eugene Ludwig has written a book called The Mismeasurement of America that lays out the shortcomings of the standard economic data that U.S. government and businesses use to make decisions, and how this data obscures the truth about how low-income Americans are actually faring.

The co-founder of Fintech Sandbox says fintech entrepreneurs will figure out how to help Americans struggling with economic stressors.

Rachel Anderika, chief operating officer at Anchorage Digital Bank, sees the Federal Reserve's proposal to give crypto companies limited access to its payment rails as "a really great signal to the market."

Amanda Fischer, is policy director and chief operating officer at Better Markets and former chief of staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission has some concerns about stablecoins.

The former banker Bradley Leimer now advises financial institutions on AI projects, and shared some of his tips for achieving accurate results and a return on AI investments.

Richard Cordray, the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, says the Trump administration seems intent on shutting the agency down, even though it has a legal mandate to exist.

Crypto-as-a-service, stablecoins and tokenized deposits all present opportunities for banks, according to Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital.

  The banks have invested in gen AI and embedded finance, respectively.

John Buran shares how his New York bank and its small business customers are faring with tariff uncertainty — and how some have quickly changed suppliers and modified business plans — in the latest American Banker podcast.  

Staking activities and stablecoins are two of the possible ways banks could have a role in decentralized finance, said Margaret Butler, head of the financial services practice at the law firm Baker Hostetler and Kristiane Koontz, director of Treasury Services and Payments at Zions Bank, in interviews recorded at the Digital Banking Conference in June.

Tarkowski, managing partner at Actuate Law, shares a legal perspective on the lawsuit that Yotta, a savings app provider, filed against Evolve Bank & Trust, in September and recently amended.

Sid Khosla, EY Americas banking and capital markets Leader, predicts that over the next two years, 20% of generative AI cases will drive 80% of the value across financial institutions. In this podcast, he explains what those use cases are and how banks can make the most of them.

Theo Lau, co-founder of Unconventional Ventures and author of the new book Banking on Artificial Intelligence, shares a vision of how banks could help consumers navigate financial uncertainties.

It takes $50 million to $100 million dollars, three to five years of losses and a complete commitment from the board to make it as a banking-as-a-service bank, the CEO of Pathward bank says in the latest American Banker podcast. 

Rob Abrams, CEO of Mobility Payment Solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments, is overseeing the development of in-car wallet systems that turn cars into rolling credit cards. He explains his vision of what connected cars could look like and do in the future.

Valerie Abend, Accenture's financial services cybersecurity lead, explains what banks get wrong about fending off AI-based threats and what they should do instead. 

Generative AI will remove toil from our day to day jobs, argues Lukic, who is managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group.

"We want to put banks in the risk management driver's seat," says Sima Gandhi, co-founder of the Council for Fintech Ecosystem Standards, which has worked with a group of fintechs to create risk and compliance standards banks can use to evaluate their fintech partners. 

Software code generation and knowledge management are two of the places the bank has begun using generative AI to improve efficiency. 

Thomas Rudzewick, CEO of Maspeth Savings Bank worries about the growing crisis of low savings among millennials and Gen Z. He believes banks like his can help reverse this trend with financial literacy and innovative savings tools. 

The bank, which is headquartered in Pasadena, had to quickly switch to remote work for many employees and come up with relief programs for customers whose homes and businesses were destroyed by fire.

Arvind Purushotham, head of Citi Ventures, shares where he and his team see opportunities and how they vet tech startups.

A lack of resources is one common cause of AML penalties, says consultant Aaron Ansari. 

Some banks are "punching above their weight," according to Dan Latimore, chief research officer at The Financial Revolutionist. Here's how they do it. 

Ian Mitchell, founder of The Noble, an organization that works with law enforcement and with banks to fight human crime trafficking, explains some of his group's recent work and why banks need someone dedicated to human crime.

Elder financial exploitation has been a problem for banks for years, and it's getting worse. Gunther offers practical suggestions for what banks should do when they suspect an older customer is a victim.

The Arkansas community development financial institution has an ambitious goal of making $500 million worth of mortgages in rural, minority and low-income neighborhoods.

The technology will take on routine, dull work, says Alenka Grealish, principal analyst at Celent.

Financial institutions have dramatically increased their investment and trust in large language models since 2023. Kartik Ramakrishnan, Capgemini's deputy CEO of Financial Services and head of banking and capital markets, shares the results of a recent report that analyzed these changes.

Advances in the company's AI-based lending models have made them better at predicting risk, which has led to growth, he says.

Dobrin, founder of advisory firm Qantm AI and former global chief AI officer at IBM, warns that popular generative AI models were trained on the whole of the internet and hallucinate at an unacceptable rate.

Jake Donoghue, author of the book Crypto Confidential, shares some of the worst practices he saw as a founder of a cryptocurrency company.

Karen Petrou, the managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics and a long-time observer of banking and regulation, says banks need to do far more due diligence on potential fintech partners and exert more control over these relationships.

Two veterans and executives at Armed Forces Bank – Tom McLean and Jodi Vickery – share the challenges they see their customers face and new products the bank has rolled out this year to better serve them.

Gene Scalia, the banking lobby's lawyer on retainer for a potential challenge to Washington's capital reform effort, discusses the state of administrative law after the overturning of a key legal precedent.

The Florida bank has emerged from de novo status and can now offer its solar loans in a larger geographic footprint.

Foundational models like GPT-4, the large language model behind ChatGPT, have hoovered up content from publications like The New York Times and social media sites like Reddit and OpenAI, and it faces several lawsuits because of this. John Thompson, global head of artificial intelligence at EY and author of the book Data for All, has set up what is believed to be the largest private, secure generative AI environment in the world, with focus on keeping internal data protected.

Proof of identity is critical for many things, including being able to open a bank account, get a job, or obtain health care. Yet proving one's identity is getting harder in a world of frequent data breaches. We asked Mariana Dahan, founder of the World Identity Network and chair of the Universal ID Council, what she thinks will solve this problem.

Custodia Founder and CEO Caitlin Long says the Federal Reserve has rewritten the rules around accessing the government's payments system. The central bank and a federal court judge disagree. Editor's note: This conversation was recorded on April 17. On April 26, Custodia Bank filed a notice of appeal, signaling that it will challenge the district court decision in favor of the Federal Reserve.