Banking Reinvented

by Backbase

Season 2

Agentic payments and the liability gap regulators haven't closed, with Kelvin Chen, Consumer Bankers Association

Kelvin Chen built the Federal Reserve's Innovation Policy Team, setting the initial frameworks for AI in supervised institutions before most regulators had settled on the right questions to ask. He held senior regulatory roles at Capital One and Barclays before becoming Head of Policy in the US at the Consumer Bankers Association. In this episode of Banking Reinvented, Kelvin joins host Tim Rutten to unpack the regulatory blind spot sitting at the center of agentic payments. The Electronic Fund Transfer Act, the law that still governs how consumers are protected from unauthorized transactions, was written in 1978 for a world where a human authorizes every transfer. That world is ending, and the liability rules for what happens when an AI agent moves money on a customer's behalf haven't been written yet. The conversation covers why banks will get pulled into agentic commerce whether they choose to or not, the regulatory vacuum left behind after recent model risk management guidance was updated without addressing generative AI, and why stablecoin rails create a new category of consumer risk with no chargeback protection. Kelvin also walks through the framework the Consumer Bankers Association is building to help close that gap, and why he believes ongoing monitoring, not upfront explainability, is the more realistic path to governing AI agents that behave probabilistically. Curious to find out more about AI in banking? Check out our content hub.

S2 · E10

Aug 6, 2026

40:22

Committee decisions, data silos, and COBOL: what's slowing AI in banking, with Mitch Siegel, EY

As Principal and Partner leading Next-Gen Banking and Payments Tech at EY, Mitch Siegel spends his days with CIOs, Chief Digital Officers, Chief Architects, and heads of retail and commercial banking - the full committee of people trying to move banks forward in the age of AI. In this episode of Banking Reinvented, Mitch joins host Tim Rutten to make the case that the AI gap in banking is not a model problem or a compute problem. It is an architecture problem, a data problem, and an operating model problem. A study he co-led with MIT Technology Review across 250 banks put a number on it: only 16% have agentic AI in production, and even that figure, Mitch suggests, might be generous. The conversation covers why AI transformation in banks is governed by committee and why that is precisely what slows it down, how the regulatory framework banks have treated as a drag is about to flip into a competitive advantage, and what workforce displacement due to AI looks like in organizations. Mitch also walks through how EY itself is reshaping from a pyramid to a diamond structure as AI absorbs the junior work and the premium shifts to people who can navigate complexity at the top. Curious to find out more about AI in banking? Check out our content hub.

S2 · E9

Jul 30, 2026

22:57

Managing the RM transition for commercial banks, with West Monroe’s Tom Collins

Tom Collins is a Senior Partner and National Commercial Banking Practice Lead at West Monroe, a consulting firm with 250 banking professionals working across commercial lending, credit and risk, treasury management, and payments. In this episode of Banking Reinvented, Tom joins host Tim Rutten to make the case that advancements in AI are pushing commercial banking to an inflection point, and the distance between the banks moving and the banks watching is compounding. The conversation covers the generational shift in commercial client expectations that most banks are still underestimating, the growing competition to find and own the white space in client relationships, and the cautionary tale of banks that convinced themselves strong relationship management was a reason to move slower on technology. Tom also gets specific about what AI looks like in production: continuous portfolio monitoring that catches emerging risk and attrition signals before they become problems. He also walks through why banks that get the technology right but leave their people unprepared for what comes next are only solving half the problem. Curious to find out more about AI in banking? Check out our content hub.

S2 · E8

Jul 21, 2026

20:55

Why your AI strategy is stalling: Architecture, readiness, and board pressure with Endava's Eugene Deeny

92% of bank leaders feel prepared for agentic AI, but only 36% have funded strategies to act on it. Meanwhile, 87% of AI-related projects never make it to production. In this episode of Banking Reinvented, recorded live at ENGAGE Americas in Nashville, host Tim Rutten sits down with Eugene Deeny, Principal Industry Advisor at Endava, to explore what stands between banks and AI at scale. Eugene argues that the gap between strategic intent and operational readiness is an architectural problem that decades of incremental improvement within fragmented operational silos have made significantly harder to close. The digital transformation journey of the last decade and the AI journey share the same prerequisites, but the difference is that AI is not giving anyone a decade to get there. The conversation also covers what it takes to organize a bank for AI adoption, why governance and transparency matter more than organizational structure, and why the institutions that will lead are the ones addressing the constraints that have always been there.

S2 · E7

Jul 7, 2026

26:21

Building Albania's first digital bank with JetBank's Fatbardha Rino

After more than two decades inside established banks, Fatbardha Rino founded JetBank - Albania's first fully licensed digital bank - to build what she had always believed banking could be. In this episode of Banking Reinvented, host Tim Rutten sits down with her to unpack what it takes for a bank to go from initial setup to live operations in six months, without branches, legacy debt, or inherited processes. Fatbardha speaks about the decisions that made that possible - from hiring for character and emotional readiness over experience alone, to outsourcing development and IT entirely, to designing the full architecture upfront and confirming what was genuinely needed before buying anything. The episode also covers how JetBank chose its hero products based on specific customer behavior in the Albanian market, and why 50,000 people registered on the waiting list in the first two to three weeks - before the bank had processed a single transaction.

S2 · E6

Jun 25, 2026

33:56

What neobanks get right and incumbents keep missing, with Theodora Lau, Unconventional Ventures

Theodora Lau spent 20 years in telecom and tech before turning her focus to the well-being of consumers at the intersection of technology and money. She is the founder of Unconventional Ventures and author of Banking on Artificial Intelligence, and she has spent the last decade exploring what it means to serve a consumer well. In this episode of Banking Reinvented, Theodora joins host Tim Rutten to make the case that the shift in consumer behavior is already happening, and most banks are not in the room when it does. 51% of AI users are already asking financial questions through AI tools, and the institutions not showing up in those results are missing the signals, the data, and the relationship moments that everything else depends on. The conversation covers the structural gap between neobanks and incumbents, why Nubank's 113 million customers are a product of asking different questions rather than building different products, and why the real threat to traditional banks is not a dramatic exodus but silent attrition. Curious to find out more about AI in banking? Check out our content hub.

S2 · E5

Jun 18, 2026

22:25

How fragmented banking systems became fraud's best weapon, with Feedzai’s Pedro Bizarro

Pedro Bizarro has spent 15 years building the AI systems banks use to make real-time decisions on billions of transactions. As Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Feedzai, he has seen what responsible AI requires. In this episode of Banking Reinvented, Pedro joins host Tim Rutten to make the case that safety, fairness, and accuracy in AI are engineering decisions made at the start of the build, not compliance checkboxes added at the end. He walks through FairGBM, Feedzai's open source model that optimizes simultaneously for decision quality and fairness across age and gender, and why the industry was wrong when it told him he had to choose between the two. The conversation covers the asymmetry between banks and fraudsters, why fraud has become one of the top crimes in the world surpassing heroin and cocaine, and why the answer has to involve anonymous cross-institutional data sharing. Pedro also introduces RiskFM, Feedzai's new foundation model purpose-built for financial crime - designed from scratch for millisecond inference at banking scale, not adapted from LLM architecture built for something else entirely. Curious to find out more about AI in banking? Check out our content hub

S2 · E4

Jun 11, 2026

49:15

Why simplicity wins in banking transformation: Dirty data, feature parity, and the wild west of AI with Aequilibrium’s Adrian Moise

The credit union sector is consolidating quickly. In the United States alone, a sector that once counted over 20,000 institutions has shrunk to around 4,000. In Canada, the number has fallen below 300. In this episode of Banking Reinvented, recorded at ENGAGE Americas in Nashville, host Tim Rutten sits down with Adrian Moise, Founder and CEO of digital transformation firm Aequilibrium, to explore what it takes to survive and thrive in this environment. Adrian challenges some of the most deeply held assumptions in the industry. Feature parity, widely treated as a non-negotiable during mergers and platform migrations, is in his view one of the most expensive decisions a credit union can make. He argues that it imports legacy baggage, stifles differentiation, and risks stripping away the very value proposition that made an acquired brand worth buying in the first place. He also argues that even though the topic of AI dominates every conference agenda in financial services, most institutions remain stuck in pilots and limited sandboxes. More often than not, the obstacle is the data. Dirty, fragmented, and unintegrated, it does not get cleaner when you add an AI layer on top. Instead, it gets amplified. Tune in to also learn why in today’s market, the speed at which an organization learns is one of the most consequential advantages, and how the institutions best positioned to lead are running the cycles of iteration - shipping, learning from real users, and improving continuously.

S2 · E3

Jun 4, 2026

23:52

High-touch, high-stakes: rethinking client relations in investment banking with Fatima Mansoor

Season 2 Episode 2 of Banking Reinvented steps into a world where client bases are smaller, relationships run deeper, and every interaction carries more weight - investment banking. Host Amjad Ramahi sits down with Fatima Mansoor, Head of Client Relations at SICO, a leading regional asset manager and investment bank based in Bahrain. With nearly two decades at the firm - from broker to leading client relations - Fatima brings a practitioner's perspective on how client expectations have evolved and what it actually takes to bring AI into a high-touch, trust-driven business. Together, they explore how SICO is using AI to handle the admin and analysis so relationship managers can focus on high-value client engagement, why the hybrid model - digital tools and human advisory working as one - delivers a better experience than either alone, and what it takes to shift mindsets in an industry where people still see AI as a threat rather than an enabler. Tune in to hear how SICO is rethinking client relations, navigating cultural nuances across the Middle East's diverse client base, and putting the client at the center of every technology decision. Check out our content hub Timestamps (00:00) – Welcome to the "Banking Reinvented" podcast (00:46) – Introduction to Fatima Mansoor (02:03) – How client expectations have evolved over two decades (04:34) – Building trust through technology, not despite it (06:25) – The hybrid model: AI and human advisory working as one (08:26) – Understanding what clients actually expect (09:05) – AI in action: portfolio insights, self-service, and 360 client views (10:42) – Why human interaction still matters - and how AI makes it better (13:04) – Removing friction: faster decisions, better client outcomes (15:56) – Personalizing the investment experience at scale (17:23) – Building an agile ecosystem for the next 5-10 years (19:31) – The biggest barrier to AI adoption: mindset, not technology (21:49) – Proving value through real test cases, not roadmaps (25:04) – Why transformation has to be driven from leadership (29:23) – Advice for driving change from within (29:44) – Using AI to strengthen regional culture and identity (32:07) – Personalizing across a diverse, multicultural client base (34:22) – The biggest opportunity ahead: hybrid, personalized, ethical (34:58) – Final words: every decision starts and ends with the client

S2 · E2

May 28, 2026

42:35

The UK's largest fintech transformation with Lloyds Banking Group's Suresh Balaji

Suresh Balaji, Group CMO of Lloyds Banking Group, joins Banking Reinvented to unpack what it really takes to run a fintech transformation at the UK’s largest digital bank. The conversation covers restructuring a 250-year-old bank into agile cross-functional platforms, rolling out enterprise AI to 45,000 employees, and launching new brand platform "Bank on Lloyds." He also walks us through "Project Turing," Lloyds' blind experiment putting human creatives, AI engineers, and a hybrid team against each other to deliver the same campaign brief, judged by a jury that included behavioral economist Rory Sutherland. Plus, you’ll learn about the Three T's framework he uses to navigate transformation and the Royal Society motto that guides how he thinks about AI tools.

S2 · E1

May 21, 2026

47:38

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