Transcript
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of What’s Going On in Banking. I’m Ron Shevlin, chief research officer at Cornerstone Advisors, and here, of course, with my co-host Stacey Bryant.
Stacey, how are you doing?
I’m doing fantastic, Ron. Spring is in the air, although here in the New York City and New Jersey area, it’s cold one day and warm the next. A little like the economy we’re going to talk about in a few minutes.
But I’m doing great, mostly because I had a wonderful experience recently at a Michelin-recognized restaurant in New York.
Three Bronx chefs, Sean Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker, created Ghetto Gastro, and they now have a restaurant called Gourmetga. They blend New York City culture, hip-hop, and food traditions with serious culinary training from places such as France and Japan.
What I really loved is that during the day, the space functions as a soup kitchen that feeds tens of thousands of people each week. Then at night, it becomes this creative dining experience.
So I wanted to give them a shout-out. If you’re in New York City, check out Gourmetga, but make a reservation.
How are you doing, Ron?
Doing great. And I’m making a note of Gourmetga because I may be in New York in a couple of weeks, with a little help from you.
Everything is good here. We’re coming off Easter weekend, so all is well.
Before we get into the banking topics, I want to mention something new we’re doing with the podcast.
Hopefully some of you saw the picture I posted on LinkedIn of the What’s Going On in Banking tumblers. I captioned it, “You know you want one,” and a surprising number of people responded that yes, they absolutely wanted one.
We cannot send one to everybody, so Stacey and I came up with an idea.
Once a month, we’re going to choose a social-media post of the month.
It will probably come from LinkedIn, but it could be Substack, Medium, or somewhere else. We’re not going to pretend there is a scientific scoring system.
We’re just looking for something that adds value to the industry conversation. It could be insightful, funny, provocative, practical, or, in my case, preferably a little snarky.
The person behind our favorite post will get a What’s Going On in Banking tumbler.
You good with that, Stacey?
Absolutely.
You know one of my favorite words is thought-provoking. I want something that makes people think differently, maybe embraces a little ambiguity, and hopefully has some wit or personality.
And if you win, take a picture with the tumbler, post it, and tag us. We want to see it.
At the risk of asking for something I may regret, if you think one of your posts deserves consideration, tag Stacey or me so we actually see it.
We’ll find out whether that was a terrible idea.
All right. Enough of the housekeeping. Ready to talk banking?
Let’s do it.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. If Cornerstone ever gets smart enough to fire me, my next job is going to be begging JPMorgan Chase to let me write Jamie Dimon’s annual shareholder letter.
Every year, I look forward to it.
It is probably the second-best annual piece of banking content, right behind Cornerstone’s What’s Going On in Banking report. I have to give us the plug.
Dimon always talks about the economy, politics, regulation, and the broader state of the world. But the part that I think gets overlooked is technology.
Every year, he writes a lot about technology.
This year, I want to focus on a few points, starting with artificial intelligence.
Dimon has discussed AI before, but this year his comments felt more specific and more expansive.
He said AI is coming quickly and that the impact will go well beyond simple efficiency gains.
He talked about AI potentially helping cure cancers, reducing accidental deaths, shortening the workweek, and spreading faster than earlier technologies such as the internet.
Some of those comparisons are a little funny because AI itself depends on technologies such as the internet and electricity, so of course it can spread through infrastructure that already exists.
But the most important line for banking was his assertion that AI will affect virtually every function, application, and process at JPMorgan Chase.
That is the part I think midsize banks and credit unions need to pay attention to.
In this year’s What’s Going On in Banking survey, we asked executives where they expect to use generative AI and agentic AI by function.
Areas such as customer service, risk, and IT were among the most common answers.
But even the highest percentages were only around half of the respondents. In areas such as legal, credit, and other functions, the percentages were much lower.
To me, that signals a gap in expectations.
If we had run this survey in the mid-1980s and asked executives which departments would use personal computers, I bet we would have seen similar answers.
Some departments would have been prioritized first. Others would have seemed less relevant.
Then, within just a few years, PCs were everywhere.
I think Dimon is saying something similar about AI. It will not remain confined to a few departments. It will become part of the operating fabric of the institution.
What do you think?
I agree that there is a huge gap.
Jamie Dimon has a mission for JPMorgan, a broader view of the country, and a very established leadership brand. His annual letter can feel like a geopolitical white paper, a TED Talk, and a shareholder update rolled into one.
But if you run a $500 million credit union, a $2 billion bank, or an early-stage fintech, his letter is not necessarily a roadmap. Sometimes it is more like a funhouse mirror. You have to interpret the scale difference.
Still, his point about AI being central to the future is right.
AI is already changing decisioning, fraud, underwriting, customer experience, and back-office work.
Where I would translate that for community institutions is this: AI cannot be treated as an isolated technology project.
It needs to become part of the way the institution builds relationships and operates.
A community bank may never compete with Chase by matching every feature in the Chase app.
But it can use technology to deepen local context and service.
The bigger warning is that if you are waiting for a perfect AI budget or a perfectly finished strategy before starting, you are probably already behind.
I’m going to quibble with one part of that.
I don’t think AI itself will be a sustainable competitive differentiator over the long term.
And by “long term,” I mean three to five years, not 20 years.
Look at the history of technology.
Personal computers were once a differentiator. Companies that adopted them early could move faster and work differently.
Within a few years, everybody had them.
The internet followed the same pattern. Companies initially talked about internet-enabled systems as a competitive advantage. Then internet connectivity became basic infrastructure.
AI is heading in the same direction.
Cornerstone published a report last year making this exact point: AI is infrastructure.
There are AI-powered applications, but AI itself is increasingly becoming part of the underlying fabric that enables other products and processes.
You do not build long-term differentiation on infrastructure. Infrastructure enables you to build differentiated things.
So when Dimon says AI will affect every function, application, and process, I hear him saying it will become foundational.
The advantage comes from what you build with it, how quickly you use it, and how well you redesign work around it.
Can you say that one more time for the people in the back?
AI is infrastructure.
That is something we have to keep repeating.
I get invited to speak to boards, associations, and conferences about how banks and credit unions can remain competitive in the world of AI.
And even now, in April 2026, a significant portion of the people in those rooms have not meaningfully integrated AI into their work.
They are still trying to understand who is doing what and where to start.
So if an institution has not even begun treating AI as part of its infrastructure, the gap is already widening.
And I want to add one more point because this comes up constantly.
I have an upcoming board meeting where the bank sent me materials describing all the ways it is “using AI.”
What I saw was mostly a list of vendor applications that claim to have AI embedded in them.
That is not enough.
I think institutions should ask two questions.
First, how is AI changing how work gets done?
Second, how is AI changing who does the work?
That second question is where agents become especially important.
Are you actually offloading work to an AI agent? Are you changing workflow design? Are you changing decision points?
Or are you simply using a vendor application that has added an AI feature and then patting yourself on the back for “doing AI”?
If the technology is not changing how work gets done or who does it, the impact is probably limited.
That brings us directly into talent.
What does reskilling look like? What does upskilling look like? What kinds of people do banks need to hire next?
And here is something I see on the road all the time.
A meaningful portion of bank CEOs I talk with have been at their institution for decades, and when the conversation turns to AI infrastructure and major transformation, some are already mentally checked out.
They know they are retiring in one, two, or three years.
That makes talent strategy even more important.
What happens after they leave? Who understands the technology? Who can lead the organization through the next phase?
Spot on.
Let’s move to another part of the Dimon letter.
He listed Block, Citadel Securities, Revolut, and Stripe as major nontraditional competitors.
No big surprise there.
But then he separately identified what he called a blockchain-based wave of competition.
That distinction caught my attention.
The way I interpret it is that the fintech disruption of the 2010s was wave one, and tokenization is wave two.
People love to remind everyone that Dimon once criticized Bitcoin.
Fine. But JPMorgan has also spent years building blockchain and tokenization infrastructure.
So the real question today is no longer whether blockchain matters.
The question for community and midsize institutions is when to begin building capabilities, which use cases matter, and who they should partner with.
I recently wrote that for banks still treating stablecoins as a wait-and-see issue, the CEO of the largest bank in the country just told you the waiting period is over.
Your thoughts?
It reminds me of when Dimon announced plans to charge fintech firms for data access and we spent an entire episode arguing about it.
What is interesting now is that the same fintech companies can be threats to JPMorgan and potential partners to smaller institutions.
That creates a very different strategic landscape.
And I am still seeing community banks that do not have stablecoins, tokenization, or digital assets anywhere in their strategic-planning conversations.
We were just at American Banker’s On Chain conference talking with people from Citi, TD Securities, and other large institutions that are already building rails and use cases.
If a smaller institution uses Jamie Dimon’s letter as a kind of North Star, the answer should not be “copy JPMorgan.”
It should be “understand which changes matter to us, choose a lane, and partner selectively.”
Exactly.
We talked in the last episode about three layers of tokenization: balance-sheet impact, payment and money-movement impact, and technology-infrastructure impact.
If an institution waits several years before even understanding those layers, it could get hit on all three fronts.
And remember, this is not only about what the bank offers.
It is about what the bank’s commercial customers are doing.
If those customers operate internationally, manage complex contracts, or interact with tokenized assets, their needs may change before the bank itself sees an obvious retail use case.
You mentioned earlier that some institutions are already overwhelmed with priorities. Let’s play devil’s advocate.
Suppose I’m a board chair and we are already in the middle of a core conversion. We are integrating our business-banking platform with our loan-origination system. We have cybersecurity projects and digital-account-opening work underway.
Where am I supposed to make room for tokenization and blockchain?
That is exactly why I think many strategic-planning processes are really project-prioritization exercises, not strategic planning.
The conversation becomes, “Here are the projects I want funded this year. Please approve the budget.”
That is not the same thing as asking where the industry is going and what capabilities the institution needs over time.
I prefer to think about emerging technologies on a lifecycle.
Is it not on the radar?
Is it on the radar, meaning executives and the board are discussing it?
Are we running pilots or proofs of concept?
Have we deployed something?
Putting tokenization on the radar does not mean spending millions of dollars this year.
It means having informed conversations now about how it could affect the business, when it may matter, what decisions we need to make, and which partners we may eventually need.
That is what I mean by pre-building.
You answer important strategic questions before you build or buy the technology.
I think there is another word that belongs in that conversation: radical.
Institutions may have to become more willing to question assumptions and embrace ambiguity.
Not reckless. But willing to rethink the existing playbook.
We have a few minutes left, so let’s hit one more part of Dimon’s letter: agentic commerce.
Dimon raised concerns about customer-data misuse in a world of AI and agentic commerce, but he also positioned the issue as an opportunity for JPMorgan.
His argument, essentially, is that consumers and businesses will need a trusted intermediary or data guardian as AI agents begin acting on their behalf.
And JPMorgan wants to be that trusted party.
Community banks and credit unions need to ask themselves the same question.
If customers are using agents to shop, make financial decisions, move money, and interact with businesses, who is going to be the trusted intermediary?
A community institution probably does not want that role automatically ceded to JPMorgan Chase.
I do not have much to add except that this reinforces the need to be more proactive.
We talked about Mastercard and Visa investing in new rails and agentic-commerce capabilities.
That does not mean a $1 billion bank should copy them.
But the topic needs to be in the peripheral vision at a minimum.
And this is where I keep connecting everything back to strategic planning.
If tokenization, agentic commerce, and AI are changing how money moves and how customers interact with financial services, institutions cannot treat those discussions as optional extras.
I think you are also highlighting a weakness in how organizations define strategic planning.
Strategic planning should not be a two-month event every fall.
It should be an ongoing management process.
One board meeting every few months should include a discussion like, “Here is what Jamie Dimon wrote. Where is he right? Where is he wrong? What does it mean for us?”
So no, the shareholder letter is not a planning blueprint.
But it is a useful discussion starter.
If I had to reduce the entire letter into a rough playbook for community institutions, I would focus on four things.
First, own and use your local data. Do not simply store it. Use it to understand and anticipate customer behavior.
Second, partner rather than trying to copy megabanks. Let fintech partners help with scale and technology while the institution protects its own trust and relationship layer.
Third, turn security into part of the product. Cyber risk, fraud prevention, and business continuity are no longer purely compliance topics. They affect the customer relationship directly.
Fourth, treat regulation as a potential differentiator, not only a burden. If you can be safe, compliant, and easy to work with, that has value.
I’ll let you have the last word there.
Well, almost. Because I’m taking one more second to remind everybody about the tumblers.
We want to see your posts. We’ll be launching the post-of-the-month idea soon.
Thanks everybody for listening, and we hope to see you on another episode of What’s Going On in Banking.
If you enjoyed today’s episode, follow and subscribe wherever you listen, whether that’s Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
We’ve got more witty, gritty conversations coming your way.
Stay tuned.
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