Find partners
Banking Transformed with Jim Marous

Banking Transformed with Jim Marous

Hosted by LLH Media

BusinessTechnologyNewsInterviews guests

Episodes

531

Latest episode

Aug 2026

Language

EN

About the show

Are you prepared to embrace change, take risks and disrupt yourself in response to the digital disruption in banking? If not, this podcast is for you. Hosted by top 5 banking and fintech influencer, Jim Marous, Banking Transformed highlights the leadership and cultural challenges facing the banking industry. Featuring interviews with some of the top minds in business, this podcast explores how financial institutions can prepare for the future of banking.

Listen to episodes

60 recent
August 12, 202611 min

Why Your Next CEO Needs More Than Tenure

Deep institutional experience isn't enough for the job ahead. New thinking alone isn't either. Your next CEO has to bring both. CEOs in financial services stay in the seat about 9 years, longer than almost any other industry, at the exact moment AI, data, and new competitors are rewriting what the job requires. Yet only 9% of banks have identified a CEO successor with a timeline and a plan of action, down from 17% a year earlier. Most succession plans are built to replace the person already in the seat rather than to prepare for the job that is coming. In this Banking Insights episode, Jim Marous argues the job now resembles a barbell. One end is credit judgment, relationships known by name, and having run the institution through a cycle where things went badly. The other is fluency in data and AI, command of partnerships, and a temperament that can carry bets, some of which are supposed to fail. The failure falls in the middle, and one person rarely holds both ends, which makes this a team question rather than a hire. Darius Wise of Red Rocks Credit Union shows what that looks like. He spent 15 years in pastoral leadership and arrived with no banking experience, then rebuilt the senior team around people who knew what he did not. His board runs on reverse mentoring, where the credit union's own employees teach the directors how the institution operates. The episode closes on custodian versus builder, and why that has nothing to do with age. About: Banking Transformed is hosted by Jim Marous, a top-five banking industry influencer and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Banking Insights episodes deliver the most important strategic ideas in under ten minutes, for the executive who wants the takeaway without the deep dive. Subscribe to the Digital Banking Report at thefinancialbrand.com.

August 11, 202642 min

How to Maximize Relationship Depth

A new account costs a bank or credit union over $400 to win, yet more than 40% go inactive within the first year. In this episode of Banking Transformed, Jim Marous talks with Har Rai Khalsa, co-founder and CEO of Swaystack, about closing the gap between account opening and account activation. Har Rai explains why the first 30 to 60 days decide primacy, why onboarding has to be product-specific, and how "reboarding" the existing base surfaces value institutions already own. He shares the results behind the approach, from a 5% portfolio-wide lift in direct deposit to a 71% increase in account openings with no added ad spend, and makes the case that activation is self-funding and that "silent attrition," not weak account opening, is the real threat to loyalty and profitability. Hosted by Jim Marous, Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new conversations on account activation, onboarding, primacy, and the future of banking.

August 10, 202610 min

The Insight Gap Inside Your Bank

Your bank knows the customer. The employee sitting across from that customer usually does not. Banks and credit unions have spent millions learning about the people they serve, then built an access model that keeps most of what they know away from the employees responsible for those relationships. New research from MIT's Center for Information Systems Research finds that only 28% of employees regularly draw on the data assets their organization has already built, and that employees who do reach data spend 61% of that time finding and preparing it rather than learning anything from it. In this Banking Insights episode, Jim Marous examines the gap between data creation and data use inside financial institutions. He argues that the industry measures one kind of risk carefully and never records the other: the relationships lost, the avoidable fees nobody questioned, and the marketing dollars spent acquiring customers who quietly went dormant, all because a signal never reached a person who could act on it. Drawing on the MIT research, the Digital Banking Report study of agentic AI in banking sponsored by OpenText, and examples from Fifth Third and Bangor Savings Bank, he shows why fraud teams have already solved this problem and why far fewer institutions have done the same work for the employee desktop. The episode closes on a question every leader can answer this week. What would change if the person handling your next important customer conversation could see what your institution already knows, and had the authority to act on it? About: Banking Transformed is hosted by Jim Marous, a top-five banking industry influencer and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Banking Insights episodes deliver the most important strategic ideas in under ten minutes, for the executive who wants the takeaway without the deep dive. Subscribe to the Digital Banking Report at thefinancialbrand.com.

August 5, 202610 min

The Branch as a Digital Growth Engine

Branch networks in the United States are growing again, yet only 9% of consumers name branches as their preferred way to bank. Both facts are true because the branch’s job has changed from acquiring new customers to deepening relationships with the institution's existing customers. Jim Marous examines what the largest banks are actually doing with physical distribution. Chase reports that half of the new checking relationships in its expansion markets come from existing credit card customers. Bank of America clients booked roughly 10 million appointments with specialists last year, with 90% of interactions digital, and the bank reports a 50% increase in digital sales in markets where it opens a financial center. Research from Curinos and Adrenaline finds accounts opened in a branch carry higher balances and are 25% more likely to remain open after a year. The episode argues that branch business cases should not begin with projected households and deposits, and that branches should be measured on a market P&L rather than a lobby P&L. It closes with a framework for deciding whether to build, remodel, or close, applied market by market rather than building by building. Hosted by Jim Marous, co-publisher of The Financial Brand and host of the Banking Transformed podcast.

August 4, 202642 min

Banking 2050: Who Owns the Customer?

Nick Cowell, Principal and US retail banking leader at Deloitte, joins Jim Marous to unpack the firm's new series, 2050: Banking Beyond, and the question at its center: in 25 years, will banks still own the customer relationship? They get into why that relationship is the asset most at risk as AI agents, embedded finance, and open banking move engagement outside the bank's walls, why banks know so much about customers but tell them so little, privacy becoming a premium service, and the day talking to a human costs extra. Nick also explains why the next wave of consolidation will be driven by AI readiness rather than asset size, and the three no-regrets moves every bank and credit union should make now. Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

August 3, 20269 min

What You Can't Buy From a Solution Provider

The platform may have been designed to transform the institution, but often, the institution ends up redesigning the platform instead. Two institutions purchase the same digital account opening platform from the same provider. One can open accounts in just 3 minutes, while the other takes at least 9 minutes because it still requires a legacy ID step within the new technology. The provider and the solution are the same; only the results differ. Jim Marous explores why many digital banking investments deliver exactly what was promised but still leave the institution no better off. Drawing on the barbell concept in digital maturity research from Alkami Technologies linked below, where the largest institutions and the strongest smaller ones consistently outperform the middle, he outlines the three conditions no provider can own for a financial institution: the destination, the discipline to protect the intended result, and the ownership that ensures a decision is carried through the building process. Report: https://www.alkami.com/resources/research/reports/retail-banking-digital-sales-service-maturity-model-report/ Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

July 29, 20269 min

How Nubank Could Reprice U.S. Deposits

Nubank can change the economics of deposits that it has never won. The Brazilian digital bank has conditional approval for a U.S. national bank charter and plans to open by 2027, and most coverage is asking whether it can take a meaningful share of the market from American institutions. Jim Marous gives the pragmatic take: Share is the wrong thing to watch. Nubank built more than 130 million customer relationships in Latin America by leading with credit and earning the deposits afterward, in markets where many people had kept their savings at home rather than trust a bank. Its global platform now runs at an efficiency ratio below 20%, compared with a U.S. norm near 60%. That gap is the story. It lets Nubank pay depositors more than a typical U.S. bank or credit union can, and still earn a stronger margin, using deposit rates as an acquisition channel the way it did with Cuenta Nu in Mexico, where the yield went from 9% to 15% and pulled in $3.8 billion in 18 months. The exposure for American institutions shows up as margin, not attrition. Nubank does not have to reprice every deposit in the country. It only has to reset the price of the next dollar you need to keep or replace, and with a national average savings-account rate under half a percent against the best rates near ten times that, your customers are already comparing. Jim Marous is co-publisher of The Financial Brand and host of the Banking Transformed podcast. This Banking Insights episode covers what Nubank built in Brazil, why Chime’s track record shortens Nubank’s path, the one fair-lending question that could slow its rollout, and three moves banks and credit unions should make before someone else sets their deposit floor. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

July 28, 202640 min

Banks Have More Data But Still Can't Get Personal

Banks and credit unions have never known more about their customers. So why does so much of banking still feel impersonal? In this episode, David Acevedo, Vice President at Abrigo, joins Jim Marous to examine the gap between what an institution knows about a customer and what it actually does about it. They get into why more customer data has not led to better personal service, what separates the banks and credit unions that build lasting relationships from those that do not, and how to move from customer data to customer action at the front line. The conversation also covers the real advantage community banks and credit unions hold over the largest institutions, where AI strengthens the human relationship instead of replacing it, the most common and most expensive mistakes banks make when they try to get closer to their customers, and the one move David would tell any executive to make first. Hosted by Jim Marous, co-publisher of The Financial Brand and owner of the Digital Banking Report. New episodes of Banking Transformed are published multiple times each week. Subscribe so you never miss one.

July 27, 20269 min

YouTube: Banking's New Front Door

We can have all the trust in the world, but still lose the moment. Consumers aren’t asking many of their first financial questions in a bank branch anymore. They’re asking them on YouTube, social media, Reddit, podcasts, and increasingly through AI. New eMarketer research shows nearly 40% of adults under 45 now research banking products on social platforms, compared with about 10% of adults over 45. Financial institutions remain among the most trusted sources of financial guidance, yet many are missing from the platforms where consumers begin researching mortgages, savings accounts, investing, debt, budgeting, and everyday financial decisions. In this Banking Insights episode, Jim Marous explains why YouTube has become banking’s new front door, why attention now precedes trust, and how banks and credit unions can combine credibility with engaging financial education to reach consumers before someone else shapes the conversation. Drawing on new consumer research and his own experience transforming his YouTube strategy, Jim explains why YouTube rewards watch time, why Google and AI increasingly surface clear, credible content, and how financial institutions can build discoverable expertise without becoming social media influencers. An audit of 150 financial videos with more than 100,000 views each found three quarters of the people giving advice never stated a credential. If banks and credit unions want to become the primary financial relationship, they need to be present where the first financial question is asked. Hosted by Jim Marous, internationally recognized banking strategist, co-publisher of The Financial Brand, owner of the Digital Banking Report, and host of the Banking Transformed podcast.

July 22, 20269 min

Why Readiness Beats AI in Banking

The five biggest U.S. banks just cleared more than $49 billion in a single quarter, and most coverage treated it as a record profits story. The more important signal sits underneath. In this Banking Insights episode, Jim Marous digs into what the Q2 2026 megabank earnings mean for banks and credit unions that will never match a Wall Street technology budget, and why that gap is about to matter far less than it used to. The cost of using these tools is collapsing, so owning AI stops being an advantage and readiness becomes the moat. Two of the largest bank CEOs, Jamie Dimon and BNY's Robin Vince, said as much on their calls, from two directions. The institutions that build the inner workings now, clean data, fixed processes, clear ownership, and the guardrails set in advance, will absorb each new tool faster than the last. The catch is that the window rewards the few willing to move before it feels safe.

Is this your show?

Claim this listing to keep it up to date, reach guests who want to pitch you, and manage bookings with Guestify.

Claim this listing

More Business podcasts