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“Self-service, automated workflows, and AI-enabled employee tools can absorb more routine volume,” says Amanda Swanson, senior director at Cornerstone Advisors. “Outsourced partners can provide the specialized infrastructure and staffing required for transaction-heavy work.”

"Stablecoins will become a product of scale and interoperability," Tony DeSanctis, senior director at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker. "It is much more likely that a consortium of banks or payment processors will be the end state solution for stablecoins." Similar to Zelle for P2P payments, the ultimate stablecoin solutions will have to be mass adopted by the entire industry, according to DeSanctis.

Chris Miller, a managing director at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker: "As embedded banking continues to gain traction, providers need to make it easy for fintechs, software companies, and other third parties to integrate financial products into their platforms."

Marketing infrastructure—which includes CRM and campaign platforms, analytics and attribution tools, and the integrations connecting them—rose from 11% of total marketing budgets in 2025 to 12% in 2026 per a Cornerstone Advisors study commissioned by Fintel Connect.

Ron Shevlin, chief research officer at Cornerstone Advisors, agreed, writing on LinkedIn: “Musk has a history of jumping the gun with product announcements and timelines. That pattern matters when you’re asking people to deposit real money somewhere.”

Research by Cornerstone Advisors commissioned by InvestiFi found 75% of Gen Z and millennial consumers are interested in investing directly from their checking accounts.

John Meyer, a managing director at Cornerstone Advisors, said, "Even simple AI tools like meeting notetakers need to be vetted to ensure the data is not stored in Europe or is used to train other call data, since many of the topics for internal credit union meetings involve member services or ways that the credit union might consider differentiating,"

Catherine Wright, a consultant for Cornerstone Advisors, said recent research found internal productivity and knowledge-management tools are already helping employees work more efficiently.

Cornerstone Advisors research shows 45% of Millennials and 40% of Gen Z want investment tools built directly into the checking accounts they already use—and more than half say that experience beats a traditional account relationship on value alone.

Tony DeSanctis from Cornerstone Advisors lays it out plain: payments play a crucial role in the deposit game, and if banks don't step it up, fintechs who know the value of this niche are going to keep winning.