2026 Banking Outlook: AI, Fintech, and Deposits

As we come up on the end of 2025, it’s time to start thinking about 2026. A lot of us are wrapping up our strategic planning and plans for 2026. I’ve asked some of our experts here to give us some of the biggest opportunities they see going into 2026.

So, Terence, what are you seeing as one of the biggest opportunities for our clients headed into 2026?

To me, it’s getting serious with AI. I think we’ve gone from the “What is it? We have to do something about it” stage to really seeing some practical uses it can be put to.

There are ways you can cut wait time in the call center. You can cut talk time in the call center. You can cut decisioning time. You can improve automated decisioning.

I think it’s a year where our clients can start learning about AI, but do it in a way where they’re using a specific project with a specific outcome that gets a desired result. So that’s what I would point to.

Tangible use cases for AI. I think that’s huge. Brandy?

Yeah. So, kind of dovetailing a little bit off of what Terence said, I think our clients need to get serious about fintech and fintech partnerships. But what comes with that is that there are a lot of them, right? So there could be fintech paralysis, if you will, because there are so many choices.

I think they really need to get serious about understanding their tech stack and understanding they don’t have to buy everything from one vendor. There are a lot of boutique, niche fintech opportunities out there that plug into their solutions really well, and I think 2026 is going to be the chance for them to really integrate that technology into their ecosystem.

You have to find best-of-breed. There are plenty of options out there, especially for the edge use cases.

Absolutely. Brad, what are we seeing?

I think it’s a great time to really double down on your deposit growth strategy and stay really focused on keeping your cost of funds low. We’ve all been chasing core deposits. Cheap core deposits for the last couple of years are starting to come back into banking. Let’s build on that.

Also, all the lessons learned we’ve had on how we get our consumer deposit accounts locked in with debit cards and how to be top of wallet. We need to be top of wallet for our small business and commercial customers.

With real-time payments coming, with stablecoins coming and people investing in payments hubs right around the corner, we need to be top of wallet for commercial accounts, too, to keep our cost of funds low and still have a healthy net interest margin.

Yeah, I think there’s a huge opportunity there.

So, what are you folks focused on for 2026? Let us know in the comments. We look forward to hearing from you and looking forward to a productive and exciting 2026.