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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
AI is transforming banking and financial services. From simple chatbots to sophisticated AI deployments that are acting with increased independence on behalf of customers, AI-based solutions are driving some of the biggest innovations in our industry—both in terms of customer-facing tools as well as back-office operations.
In this conversation with Merlin Bise, Chief Technology Officer with Inbenta, we discuss the growing role that AI is playing in financial services, what challenges financial institutions face when implementing AI, how modern AI integrates with legacy technology and, interestingly, why smaller and mid-tier financial institutions might have an advantage over their larger rivals when it comes to quickly getting up to speed with AI-powered solutions.
There was an initial wave a couple of years ago, in which companies didn’t want to get left behind. So everything was being sold based on fear. There are two ways to sell things: fear and emotion. And I think that was what was driving it. Today, they’ve taken a step back and said, “Why should we be building AI that’s already solved? We should be building AI that impacts our core offering. Let’s let other companies that know how to do chat and search and voice bots and these things really well. Let’s see if we can trust them and they’re willing to build a relationship with us. Let’s let them do that. Let’s focus on our core.”
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Allen, Texas, Inbenta enables companies to leverage agentic AI to enhance the customer experience. The company’s platform automates user interactions with accurate, intent-driven responses while simultaneously ensuring both safety and regulatory compliance. With more than 1,000 customers around the world, Inbenta’s agentic AI-enabled suite of Chat, Search, Knowledge, Assist, and Learn solutions features an accuracy rate of 95% and supports more than 100 languages worldwide.
Chief Technology Officer with Inbenta, Merlin Bise delivered a special address at FinovateSpring 2026: AI That Makes It to Production: Deploying Trusted CX in Days, Not Months. In his presentation, Bise discussed some of the common strategic mistakes financial services companies make when it comes to deploying AI. He provided a mental model to help leaders evaluate the build vs. buy decision when it comes to AI technology and explained the different challenges and opportunities faced by small financial institutions compared to larger financial institutions when it comes to deploying and scaling AI.
This month marks the launch of a new series of interviews with companies that recently made their debuts on the Finovate stage. I had a great opportunity earlier this month to catch up with a number of companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Diego, and am looking forward to introducing our blog readers to these innovative fintechs!
First up, we checked in with Joe Steuter, Partner and Chief of Client Strategy with Intention.ly. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in King of Prussia, Intention.ly is a growth consultancy and marketing agency for financial services companies. At FinovateSpring this year, Intention.y demoed its Advisor Brand Builder platform that enables breakaway advisors, fast-evolving firms, and acquiring enterprises to build professional, high-impact grand identities and brand stories.
What problem does Intention.ly solve and who does it solve it for?
Joe Steuter: Intention.ly helps financial services firms grow by solving one of the industry’s most persistent challenges: brand differentiation. Beyond that, the challenge of differentiation with speed to market and thoughtful measurement to trace ROI to marketing efforts. Advisors, RIAs, enterprises, fintechs, bank managers, insurance reps, and asset managers are all competing in a market that can feel like a sea of sameness, where firms often sound alike, look alike, and struggle to clearly articulate why they are different.
That problem becomes especially acute for financial advisors and advisor enterprises. Building a strong brand has traditionally required a long, labor-intensive process with an outside partner that may not deeply understand the financial services industry. The alternative is often a fast, templated website build or brand message that saves time but leaves firms looking, sounding, and positioning themselves like everyone else.
Advisor Brand Builder (ABB) was created by Intention.ly to eliminate that tradeoff. It gives advisors and enterprises a faster, smarter way to build authentic, differentiated brands grounded in who they are, who they serve, and why they matter.
More broadly, Intention.ly solves growth challenges for financial services companies by combining strategy, brand, marketing, technology, content, and execution. We help firms move from ambiguity to clarity, from disconnected marketing efforts to cohesive growth systems, and from generic positioning to a brand presence that can actually support business development.
How does Intention.ly solve this problem better than other companies?
Steuter: Intention.ly solves this problem differently because we combine deep financial services expertise with technology, creative strategy, and execution. We are not a generalist agency learning the industry from the outside. Our team has spent decades building brands, shaping narratives, and helping financial services firms differentiate in a highly complex, highly regulated, and often highly commoditized market.
Advisor Brand Builder, which was the experience shown to the crowd at FinovateSpring 2026, is a strong example of how we approach innovation. The traditional branding process can take months or even years, especially when multiple stakeholders, decision-makers, and rounds of discovery are involved. ABB condenses that process into a guided, AI-backed experience that can build a brand foundation in weeks.
But speed is only part of the story. ABB is not just an automated template. It combines guided discovery, industry-specific intelligence, AI-assisted brand development, and human expertise from strategists, writers, designers, and marketers. The result is faster, but still substantive.
The platform captures the advisor’s authentic story, creates messaging and visual identity, builds a cohesive brand guide, generates assets, and extends that foundation into digital presence and website direction.
That combination of executional speed with truly differentiated campaigns and messaging is where our team stands out. We help firms move faster without sacrificing authenticity, quality, or differentiation. And in an industry that is evolving at a faster pace than ever before, this couldn’t be more crucial to a firm’s growth.
Who are Intention.ly’s primary customers? How do you reach them?
Steuter: Intention.ly’s primary customers are growth-minded financial services firms. That includes independent RIAs, breakaway advisors, hybrid firms, broker-dealers, custodians, asset managers, fintechs, banks, large insurance companies, and innovative enterprises that support advisor communities.
With Advisor Brand Builder specifically, we are solving for both individual advisor firms and the enterprises that serve them. For an advisor or breakaway team, ABB provides a faster path to a credible, differentiated brand, complete with messaging, visual identity, brand assets, and website direction. For larger enterprises, ABB creates a scalable way to support many advisors without forcing every firm through a slow, custom, one-off branding process.
We reach our customers through a combination of relationships, industry presence, referrals, thought leadership, partnerships, events, and direct engagement with firms that are actively trying to grow. Because Intention.ly is deeply embedded in the financial industry, many of our conversations begin with trust and shared context.
The firms that come to us are usually facing a transition point: launching, rebranding, going independent, entering a new market, scaling advisor support, or trying to create a more modern growth engine. Our value is helping them move from intention to execution with clarity, speed, and confidence.
Can you tell us about a favorite implementation of your technology, or a particularly valuable partnership experience?
Steuter: One recent example is Brick by Brick Wealth Management, a firm moving from a large wirehouse environment into the independent space. That kind of transition requires much more than a new name or logo. The team needed to create a complete brand identity, clarify its value proposition, reframe the value they brought to clients, develop a differentiated story, and launch a digital presence that could support the next stage of the business.
Through Advisor Brand Builder, we helped bring that work together in roughly six weeks. The process started with the concept for the firm’s name and evolved into a full brand story, visual identity, messaging system, brand assets, and website presence.
What made the implementation special was the balance between speed and authenticity. Brick by Brick needed to move quickly, but they also needed a brand that felt real, personal, and credible. ABB allowed us to capture the firm’s underlying story and translate it into something polished, differentiated, and usable.
That is exactly the kind of moment Advisor Brand Builder was built for. We’ve taken more than 25 firms of every size through this system, and it often works most effectively when advisors need to make a major business move, but they cannot afford to spend months stuck in an identity crisis. They need a brand that gives them clarity, confidence, and momentum.
What in your background gave you the confidence to respond to this challenge?
Steuter: My confidence comes from the team I surround myself with and the more than two decades I’ve spent helping financial services firms and startups tell their story. Collectively, as an organization, our confidence comes from having spent decades inside the financial services industry, working directly on the same challenges our clients face. Our CEO, Kelly Waltrich, built the firm to respond to the challenge she saw as most prevalent in financial services: a lack of purpose-led strategy and growth driven by disciplined execution and measurable goals. Every member of our team carries that same extensive industry experience where they’re drawing on years of having built brands, shaped messaging, led marketing strategies, supported advisor growth, launched campaigns, guided firms through transitions, and helped financial services companies tell more compelling stories.
Advisor Brand Builder is just one product of that experience. We have seen firsthand how difficult it can be for advisors to differentiate themselves. Many firms have a powerful story, but they struggle to articulate it. Others know they need a more modern brand, but the traditional process feels too slow, too expensive, or too disconnected from the realities of their business.
Over time, we saw the same pattern again and again: advisors needed both strategic depth and speed. They needed industry expertise, not generic branding exercises. They needed a process that could uncover what made them different and turn it into messaging, design, assets, and a digital presence.
We were not starting from theory. We were translating years of real financial services brand-building experience into a more scalable, technology-enabled process.
Left to right: Joe Steuter, Partner, Chief of Client Strategy, Intention.ly, and Jamie Recio, Head of Social Media, Intention.ly
You recently opened new offices in Omaha, Nebraska. How does the opening of a Midwest hub drive Intention.ly’s mission?
Steuter: Opening a Midwest hub in Omaha is an strategic step in Intention.ly’s growth and mission. It was also a very personal endeavor for me, as I live in Omaha and understand just how much of a financial hub the city is to this industry. Omaha has a deep connection to financial services, wealth management, fintech, and advisor platforms, and it gives us a strong presence in a market with exceptional industry talent.
Our mission is to help financial services firms grow with more clarity, intention, and impact. To do that well, we need to stay close to the firms, advisors, platforms, and people shaping the future of the industry. Omaha gives us another center of gravity for that work, located in the middle of everywhere.
It also reflects a belief I’ve always held: innovation in financial services is not limited to the coasts. Some of the most important companies, platforms, and advisor communities in our space have been built right here. Having a hub that is centrally located allows us to deepen relationships, expand our team, and support clients from a place that understands the advisor ecosystem.
You demoed at FinovateSpring in May of this year. How was the experience?
Steuter: FinovateSpring was a great experience because it gave us the opportunity to show Advisor Brand Builder in action to an entirely new corner of the industry. The conference brought together firms in accounting, banking, credit unions, private capital, insurance tech, and other sectors outside our normal realm of exposure (wealth management). Branding can feel abstract when described conceptually, but the demo allowed us to walk the audience through the actual experience: guided discovery, AI-assisted brand development, messaging, visual identity, brand assets, and website direction.
The format was especially valuable because ABB is designed to solve a very specific tension in the market. We were able to demonstrate that there is a better path—one that provides speed without losing substance.
The demo also helped us tell the broader Intention.ly story. We are a branding and marketing growth engine design firm with decades of financial services experience, and ABB represents how we are turning that expertise into scalable technology.
The conversations after the demo were energizing. The feedback reinforced what we already believed: advisor differentiation is a real problem, enterprises need scalable ways to support it, and the market is ready for solutions that combine AI with human expertise.
What are your goals for Intention.ly?
Steuter: Our goal is to become the leading marketing and growth partner for the industry’s top 100 companies. We want to help ambitious firms build stronger brands, clearer strategies, better marketing systems, and more effective paths to sustainable growth.
For Advisor Brand Builder, our goal is to change the equation around advisor brand development. We believe advisors should not have to choose between a long, expensive branding engagement and a generic template that makes them look and sound like everyone else. ABB gives them another option: a guided, AI-backed, human-refined process that creates a differentiated brand foundation in weeks.
At the enterprise level, our goal is to make differentiated branding scalable—quite a contradiction traditionally. Large wealth management organizations need ways to support many advisors efficiently, but without stripping away individuality. ABB gives enterprises a framework for helping advisors show up with more clarity, consistency, and authenticity.
More broadly, Intention.ly is focused on helping financial services firms spend less time stuck in identity, messaging, and execution challenges, and more time earning new business. Stronger brands create more confidence. More confidence creates better growth conversations. And better growth conversations create stronger firms and better-served clients.
What do banking consumers need most from their banks in 2026? How do these and other financial institutions translate major trends into actionable initiatives that solve problems for individuals, families, businesses, and communities? What role do partnerships between banks and fintech companies play in helping bring cutting-edge financial products and services to market?
We caught up with Meghan Kober, Senior Vice President and Head of Fintech Partnerships & Strategic Investments at U.S. Bank, to answer these and other questions confronting banks and their customers today. In her role at U.S. Bank, Kober leads a cross-functional team that scales innovation portfolios and drives enterprise value through strategic partnerships. Her expertise is in translating emerging drivers and market signals into applied strategies.
This interview is part of Finovate’s annual Women’s History Month commemoration. Previous installments include our salute to the women of FinovateEurope 2026 and our preview of the female founders and leaders who will represent their companies at FinovateSpring 2026, May 5-7.
U.S. Bank has long been active in innovation, but your role sits at a unique intersection. How does the Fintech Acceleration team build on that legacy today?
Meghan Kober: There’s a moment I often come back to early in my career, sitting inside a broker-dealer, trying to connect systems that were never designed to speak to each other. That experience shaped how I think about innovation today.
We’ve entered the Great Convergence. Innovation is no longer built inside a single institution. It is shaped across startups, venture firms, accelerators, and universities.
The challenge is not access to innovation. It is translation and direction. Signals are abundant, but without structure, they don’t convert into outcomes.
That is the role of the Fintech Acceleration team. Since 2020, we have built on U.S. Bank’s innovation foundation to act as a system layer across the enterprise. We translate external signals into enterprise execution across product, risk, and partnerships.
My broader thesis is that we are moving from an innovation economy to a participation economy. The institutions that win will not be the ones that invent the most, but the ones that enable the most people, businesses, and partners to participate in the system. Our role is to help design for those outcomes.
That idea of translation and direction is powerful. How do you take something as abstract as future trends and turn them into clear action inside a large, regulated organization?
Kober: We are operating in a period of convergence. AI, digital assets, and embedded finance are not evolving independently. They are compounding. That creates multiple futures unfolding at once.
The risk for large organizations is reacting too late or moving without alignment. In financial services, you cannot separate innovation from risk, legal, and compliance. Execution requires coordination from the start.
This is where applied foresight comes in. For us, it is not about predicting the future. It is about choosing which future to build toward.
We integrate signals from across venture, academia, and global markets. Through my work nationally in regions such as Utah and Minnesota, as well as globally with the University of St. Thomas and studying ecosystems in places like Tokyo and Seoul, we are looking at how infrastructure, capital, and policy shape participation at a systems level.
We then anchor those insights to a business problem and align with business line leaders.
Leadership, in this context, is about creating clarity. It is about giving teams direction so they can build with confidence. Foresight without execution is noise. Applied foresight is what turns signal into strategy.
When that clarity is in place, where do you see it driving the most meaningful outcomes today?
Kober: If you look at the U.S. economy, small businesses represent approximately 43.5 percent of GDP and nearly half of employment. They are one of the most important economic engines we have.
At the same time, many small businesses are still operating across fragmented systems, spending time managing tools instead of growing their business.
If we are serious about economic resilience, we have to reduce that friction.
In partnership with Shruti Patel, Chief Product Officer for Business Banking, and Business Banking leaders, we focused on how to embed financial services directly into small business workflows. That led to solutions like Business Essentials, partnerships with fintechs like Gusto, and capabilities like U.S. Bank Bill Pay for Business.
What is important here is not just the product. It is the system design. We are moving from standalone banking products to integrated operating systems for businesses.
The outcome is simple but powerful. Business owners get time back. They have better visibility. They can make better decisions. At scale, that drives job creation, stronger local economies, and a more resilient financial system.
That is what participation looks like in practice.
That kind of impact clearly depends on strong partnerships. What differentiates the way you approach fintech partnerships today?
Kober: The market has matured. We are no longer in a phase where experimentation alone is enough. Partnerships need to deliver outcomes and scale.
What differentiates successful partnerships is alignment and readiness. We start with a clearly defined business problem and align on shared outcomes from the beginning.
We typically partner with founders who have achieved product market fit, understand regulated environments, and are often backed by venture capital firms.
But what is often overlooked is that partnerships are not just about capability. They are about system effects.
When we partner with a startup, we accelerate our speed to market. We solve real problems for our clients. At the same time, we support that company’s growth, which drives job creation, attracts capital, and strengthens the ecosystem.
It creates a flywheel.
My role is not just to participate in that ecosystem, but to help shape how it connects. Where capital flows, where partnerships form, and where innovation translates into real economic outcomes.
You’ve mentioned participation a few times now. I’d love to connect that back to your own journey. How has your path shaped this perspective?
Kober: My path into fintech was not traditional, but in many ways that is what gave me this perspective.
I started by trying to understand systems: connecting data, teaching myself to code, and building dashboards to make better decisions. That curiosity led me into Minnesota’s innovation ecosystem, where I was inspired by leaders like Susan Langer, CEO of Spave, at Twin Cities Startup Week and became involved with the Minnesota Fintech Collective.
I had the opportunity to join and help build the Fintech Acceleration team alongside some great leaders, and over time, help scale that into a broader platform across the enterprise.
What I learned through that experience is that innovation is not a technology problem. It is a participation problem.
Who has access to networks. Who gets exposure to opportunities. Who is able to build, invest, and contribute.
Leadership is about expanding those surfaces. Creating more entry points into the system so more people can participate and shape it.
Looking ahead, how are technologies like AI and digital assets influencing how you think about the future of financial systems?
Kober: We are at an inflection point where financial infrastructure itself is being redefined.
AI is changing how decisions are made. Digital assets are changing how value moves. Together, they are enabling more programmable, intelligent systems.
But the real question is not what the technology can do. It is how we design systems around it.
At U.S. Bank, we are applying AI across operations and exploring digital asset capabilities, including stablecoin infrastructure on networks like Stellar. These efforts are grounded in real use cases and informed by collaboration across fintech partners, venture ecosystems, and global research.
The opportunity is significant, but so is the responsibility. These systems must be built with trust, resilience, and inclusion at their core.
If we get that right, we are not just improving financial services. We are redesigning how participation in the economy works.
Finally, during Women’s History Month, how do you define leadership in this moment, especially within fintech and financial services?
Kober: The strength of our financial system is directly tied to how many people can participate in it.
Throughout my career, I am grateful to have benefited from mentors, founders, investors, and institutions that created opportunities for me to step in, learn, and build. These ecosystems matter, spanning from accelerators and venture capital to universities and corporate leadership.
Leadership, to me, is about doing that intentionally and at scale.
It is about bringing applied foresight and direction to teams so they can build systems that drive resiliency and prosperity. It is about expanding who gets to participate in shaping the future.
Because ultimately, the next era of financial services will not be defined by who innovates the fastest.
It will be defined by who builds systems that work for the most people.
This article is brought to you in collaboration with Gregory.
AI is rapidly reshaping the competitive landscape in banking, and for many institutions, the real challenge lies not in experimentation, but in implementation. Richard Davies, CEO of Allica Bank, has been focused on exactly that: how to successfully deploy AI across an organization and drive meaningful adoption at scale.
Founded in 2020, Allica is a digital bank focused on established small and medium-sized businesses. To date, it has lent over £3 billion and been twice named by Deloitte as the UK’s fastest growing technology company. In 2025 the Financial Times identified it as the second fastest growing company in Europe.
Richard delivered a fascinating keynote address at FinovateEurope, titled: “Successfully Implementing AI & Scaling Adoption: What Are the Challenges Around Rolling Out to Production?”. Afterwards, we sat down with him to talk about what it really takes to embed AI into a bank’s operating model.
Tell us a little more about your role as CEO of Allica Bank and what you’re focused on at the moment?
Richard Davies: Allica is a fintech bank focused on established small and medium-sized businesses. We typically define that as businesses with five or more employees or at least £500,000 in revenue. So we’re not talking about the very smallest microbusinesses, but those that are at a point where things start to get more complex and there are multiple staff to support.
We find these businesses fall into a gap between the corporate banking divisions and retail banking divisions of the major banks. That’s the space we focus on.
We have been building Allica for five or six years now and provide a full stack of services, including current accounts, cards and all types of lending. Increasingly, we are moving into financial operations areas such as spend management and cash flow forecasting. Alongside that, we have been thinking hard about how we can apply AI to power many elements of what we do across the organisation.
In your keynote, you spoke about successfully implementing AI and scaling adoption. What do you see as the biggest challenges for banks when it comes to rolling AI out in practice?
Davies: I would group it into three main areas:
First, ensuring that AI adoption happens across the whole company, rather than sitting in an innovation lab or small specialist team. A big focus for us has been getting people bought in, upskilled and confident, and encouraging teams to create their own simple, agentic use cases. I am a big believer that bottom-up adoption tends to win over purely top-down mandates.
Second is software engineering and product development. Around a third of our staff are in engineering, and that is probably the area that has seen the greatest progress in AI tooling. We have focused on helping people move towards more T shaped or full stack roles, and ensuring our tech stack is AI enabled to unlock significant productivity gains. Depending on what you measure, we are seeing productivity improvements of two to ten times.
Finally, there are more complex agentic use cases. We have specialized teams working on these, and we have been learning a lot over the past two years about what it takes to get them live in production. It’s exciting because beyond engineering, you start solving real world problems that consume a lot of human time and can be inconsistent when done manually.
A lot of banks are investing in AI at the moment. How should they decide where it makes the most sense to focus first?
Davies: My view is that you should not overly narrow your focus. If you pick two areas, you are neglecting ten others, and those areas will fall behind.
Perhaps I have the luxury of leading a fintech organization that is naturally inclined towards this, but I think AI needs to be embraced across the company. Where you do need focus is on infrastructure, including data quality, enabling access to different AI models and ensuring that is done company wide.
If I had to pick one area with immediate and certain benefit, it would be engineering. The productivity unlock in software development is huge. If teams are still working in traditional ways, they need to move quickly, not just for the company’s benefit, but for their own careers. The industry is shifting rapidly, and people need the skills and experience to keep up.
Beyond the technology itself, what changes do banks need to make internally for AI to really become part of how they operate?
Davies: Culture is a big part of it. People need to lean into it. You need the infrastructure in place, as well as training and upskilling so people feel confident using AI.
At the same time, organizations need to remain risk aware. Different AI use cases carry different risks, and teams need to understand those.
In many ways, it’s similar to previous organizational transformations, such as moving from traditional waterfall practices to agile. The enablers are not conceptually different, but it does require deliberate leadership and a clear view of how you enable the organization to change.
From what you’ve seen at FinovateEurope so far, what themes or conversations around AI in banking have stood out to you the most?
Davies: Some of the most interesting conversations have been happening off stage. Recently, we have seen software company valuations come under pressure following major AI model releases, with the view that people can now build their own software more easily.
At the same time, traditional banks have re-rated quite significantly over the past year. In the UK, share prices are up roughly 80 percent. It creates an interesting dynamic.
Fintech has at times in the past been viewed by investors as a poor relation to software, but in reality, building a fintech is much harder than building a pure software company. You have complex regulatory requirements and balance sheet considerations that software firms do not.
It feels like there may be a shift happening in the relative valuation of where companies with real assets versus asset light software companies. For many fintechs, particularly those with strong fundamentals, that could ultimately be a net positive.
Businesses today are confronted with a dizzying array of options when it comes to digital modernization and embracing technological innovation. Decision-making when it comes to technology investment is often slow, and the costs incurred when those investments do not work out as planned can be painfully high. Poor solution choices have resulted in failure rates of up to 75%, according to some estimates, and even those investments that do succeed often come with hefty price tags that can put a drag on revenues.
To learn what companies in the financial services space can do to make better technology choices, I caught up with Charlie Day, SVP, Sales and Advisory, at UPSTACK, at FinovateFall 2025 earlier this year. UPSTACK is a technology advisory platform that helps businesses reduce costs, accelerate deployment, and simplify IT decision-making. The company offers vendor-agnostic expertise, with recommendations powered by both AI and UPSTACK’s vendor experience, all informed by the firm’s proprietary dataset.
In this conversation, Day explains how UPSTACK combines a focus on long-term relationships, human expertise, and AI-powered insights to drive business success and help companies achieve their goals in an ever-evolving technology landscape.
Technological advisory has really shifted into more of a strategic relationship. It’s not just about a transaction, an event, or a sale, but a true, long-term relationship beyond the technology choice. We mix the technology expertise we have with marketing insights—everything from pricing to integration capabilities to how certain selections will mix into their overall IT landscape—to ensure that our customers are making not only the right decision in a short snapshot in time, but also what’s going to keep them achieving their goals over the long term.
Charlie Day brings more than 20 years of experience in enterprise sales and strategic partnerships. He has held leadership roles at 8×8, RingCentral, Oracle, and AT&T. Day has business degrees from the University of New Hampshire and Southern New Hampshire University.
UPSTACK is a vendor-neutral, full-service technology brokerage. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in New York City, the company provides expert advisory and execution services to help businesses make smarter technology decisions. UPSTACK works with companies across the entire technology landscape, including colocation, cloud, connectivity, networking, cybersecurity, AI, and more. With more than 60 customers in the Fortune 1000, UPSTACK recently acquired Breakwater Cloud Advisors, a CX consultancy specializing in contact center modernization, automation, and AI transformation. Christopher Trapp is UPSTACK’s Founder and CEO.
For financial institutions deciding on their modernization strategy, what are the options? Does legacy technology need to be abandoned immediately or entirely? Or are there ways that financial institutions can leverage the infrastructure they have while embracing areas where digital and other modern solutions can bring real efficiency gains?
In this interview, I talk with Casey Ferguson, VP of Marketing at Zoot Enterprises, about the company’s phased approach to modernizing financial systems, integrating legacy technology, and enhancing fraud prevention strategies. Ferguson explains why incremental progress, cross-functional collaboration, and layered fraud defenses are key to effective digital transformation.
“At Zoot we look at modernization this way: It’s not about tearing everything down. When you look at this kind of rip and replace mentality you’ve got to remember that it can be pretty risky, it can be very expensive, and it can be kind of slow, as well. When you think about the pace of change, architecting the perfect environment, the world may have changed by the time you have a perfect picture of all this. So working on things incrementally and in phases can really make a difference.”
Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, and founded in 1990, Zoot Enterprises provides acquisition, origination, and decision management solutions that help financial institutions streamline processes, increase flexibility, and accelerate growth. Zoot offers comprehensive and flexible platforms for numerous specific business operations—from loan origination and data acquisition to fraud detection and prevention.
The business of helping small businesses secure the capital they need in order to grow is one of the areas in finance where fintech innovation has been most constructive.
In this Women in Fintech interview, conducted in partnership with William Mills Agency, we hear from Adlon Adams, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Revenue Officer at business lending innovator Casca. Adams talks about the importance of making financing easier to access for small businesses, and why developing real relationships with customers is key to understanding how to best help them solve their problems and overcome pain points.
Adams also talks about being a woman in leadership in a male-dominated industry and shares her advice for women who are building their careers in similar spaces.
Founded in 2023 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Casca won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2024 in San Francisco, and returned to the Finovate stage the following year for FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego. The company’s loan origination platform is used by leading SBA lenders and FDIC-insured banks across the US, including institutions like Live Oak Bank and Huntington Bank.
In August, Casca secured $29 million in Series A funding in a round led by Canapi Ventures. The investment raised the company’s total capital to $33 million.
Tell us about your role at Casca. What drew you to the fintech space, and what excites you about this industry?
Adlon Adams: I serve as both COO and CRO at Casca, which means I support operations, sales, and strategy. It’s the vision of the founders and potential of this company that drew me into fintech.
The U.S. has seen a 45% jump in small business formation over the last decade, but capital access hasn’t kept pace. Casca’s mission is to help fix a broken system—to make business lending faster, fairer, and more accessible. Thanks to the work we’ve done with some of the nation’s leading SBA lenders, small businesses can access capital in a matter of days instead of months. This means businesses can go to their local bank and get what they need from a trusted source and avoid predatory rates and daily payments. I’m motivated by work that makes a tangible difference.
On a personal note, I’m also proud to work alongside a team of fellow alumni and Stanford graduates. Our AI engineers and banking technology experts have built the first AI-native loan origination system that automates more than 100 manual steps out of old, dated processes. We get to reimagine financial services in ways that change lives and build dreams.
What has it been like joining a startup in a new industry as one of the first executive hires, especially as a female now holding two leadership roles? What advice would you give to others stepping into executive roles at early-stage startups or in unfamiliar industries?
Adams: As one of Casca’s founding executive members, I’ve worn many hats, and have been stretched in ways I never expected. I’ve felt the weight of being one of the few female voices in leadership conversations. That can be daunting, but it’s also an opportunity to set an example for others and contribute fresh perspectives.
I constantly prioritize and reprioritize business needs, and must be comfortable making decisions with incomplete information. My advice: focus on what truly moves the needle each day, lean into curiosity, and trust that you deserve to be in the room—even if you’re new to an industry. Ask the right questions, surround yourself with people who help you learn, and stay focused on making an impact.
It’s both a challenging and incredibly rewarding experience. Pushing myself outside of my comfort zone is exhilarating; it ensures growth both for me personally and the company.
I understand you’ve spent a lot of time working on-site with banks, seeing their processes and challenges up close. As someone new to fintech, has that hands-on experience helped you learn the space more quickly? Would you recommend that approach to others entering the space?
Adams: That’s a resounding “yes!” I recommend anyone entering fintech get as close as possible to their end users on all levels, including those in the weeds of the day-to-day processes. Immerse yourself in their world, listen, and ask questions. Understanding their processes will enhance your technical knowledge and instill empathy for the people who use your product. The best solutions are built with close partnerships and collaborations like this.
For me, that means working alongside bankers, underwriters, credit analysts, and small business owners. It is invaluable to sit alongside loan officers, watching their workflows, and hearing their frustrations. Working hand-in-hand with banks like Live Oak Bank, the nation’s #1 SBA lender, gave me a front-row seat to how SBA lending works in practice. The experience also shaped Casca’s approach. By sharing in the frustrations of bankers, we designed a system that directly addresses their challenges. When you see how legacy systems force long timelines and delays to capital access, you understand the urgency of enabling same-week approvals and faster closings.
Why did Casca choose to focus on SBA lending? What gaps are you aiming to fill, and where do you see the greatest opportunities and challenges for financial institutions in this space?
Adams: SBA lending is a lifeline for small businesses, but it’s also one of the most complex and underserved segments of financial services. Traditional loan origination systems weren’t designed for SBA programs, leaving banks with slow, manual processes that limit their ability to serve this market. Alternative lenders saw this and built faster options, but often at the cost of predatory interest rates, burdening entrepreneurs with unsustainable debt. It is time to disrupt this market. Our AI-driven platform automates the hundreds of manual steps in SBA workflows and enables banks to serve entrepreneurs with fair, community-based rates at fintech-level speed.
The opportunity for financial institutions is enormous—commercial lending demand has grown 65% in the past decade. By streamlining SBA lending for traditional institutions, entrepreneurs can rely on their trusted financial partners for long-term success. Strengthening these local businesses helps the banks and their local communities in the process.
In your conversations with small business owners and entrepreneurs, what pain points or unmet needs are coming up most often?
Adams: The themes I hear most often are speed and simplicity. Business owners frequently feel forced into high-interest loans because they can’t wait months for a traditional bank process to finish. Start-ups often win new business because of their agility and grit, and they need access to capital to execute at the speed with which they do business. Others describe the SBA application process as overwhelming, with documentation and compliance requirements that take focus away from running their business. They simply don’t have the capacity to tackle such a challenging process.
Thankfully, we can alleviate these pain points, providing small business owners a sustainable path to growth. The impact is evident—banks using Casca are closing loans in days, which simply wasn’t possible with legacy systems.
How do you see small business lending evolving over the next few years, especially as AI continues to advance and gain traction?
Adams: We’re at a pivotal moment. AI is shifting small business lending from being manual and reactive to intelligent and proactive. In the coming years, I expect banks to use AI not just for faster loan processing, but also to better assess risk, personalize offerings, and expand access to credit for underserved groups.
Casca is already showing what’s possible: analyzing thousands of pages of financials in minutes and enabling banks to launch new products in weeks instead of years. With a pace of change this fast, we’ll soon begin to see a growing divide between institutions that embrace modern, AI-driven infrastructure and those still tied to legacy systems.
The winners will be the ones who use AI thoughtfully—enhancing transparency and fairness rather than replacing human judgment. My hope is that this evolution will give small business owners the fast, reliable access to capital they need to focus on building their businesses, rather than financing them. This has the potential to bring a new wave of innovation to the world.
Looking ahead, what’s next for Casca? Are there plans to expand beyond SBA lending? How do verticals like nonprofits and other underserved markets factor into the broader vision?
Adams: Looking ahead, Casca is focused on significant expansion across multiple dimensions. On the product side, the company plans to extend well beyond small business and commercial lending into additional loan categories and products. This expansion will be supported by continued platform enhancements, particularly around automation capabilities with deeper integrations into banking core systems. To support this growth, Casca is scaling its engineering, product, and customer success teams to accelerate product development and improve onboarding capabilities for financial institutions.
Any final advice for women entering fintech or stepping into leadership roles in male-dominated industries?
Adams: Trust your expertise and speak up confidently. You earned your seat at the table—own it. Don’t diminish your contributions or wait for permission to share your insights. Your perspective is valuable precisely because it may differ from the majority voice in the room.
Build genuine relationships, not just networks. Focus on creating authentic connections. The best advocates for change are often those who actively use their influence to amplify others.
Don’t do it alone. Seek out other women in fintech and adjacent industries. These relationships provide not just support, but strategic insight into navigating challenges that may be unique to your experience.
Lead with your values, but be strategic. You can push for change while being pragmatic about how you do it. Pick your battles, but don’t compromise on what matters most to you and your team.
Celebrate your wins—and help others celebrate theirs. In male-dominated spaces, women’s achievements are often overlooked. Make it a point to recognize your own successes and spotlight other women rising in the industry.
Finally, bring others up with you. As you advance, actively mentor, sponsor, and advocate for the next generation of women in fintech. Real change happens when we create pathways for those who follow.
This article is brought to you in collaboration with Gregory FCA.
AI and personalization are redefining the rules of engagement in business banking. As Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer for Business Banking at U.S. Bank, Shruti Patel (pictured) brings a unique lens to the discussion, drawing from her deep experience in banking, payments, and fintech.
Following her appearance at FinovateFall 2025, we sat down with Shruti to discuss the evolving needs of business customers, the transformative role of AI, and the growing importance of partnerships between banks and fintech.
Tell us a little bit more about your role at U.S. Bank, your title, and what you’re responsible for.
Shruti Patel: I am the Executive Vice President, Chief Product Officer for Business Banking at U.S. Bank. In this role, I oversee services for our small business customers, ranging from $100,000 to up to $50 million in annual revenues, across banking, payments and our full suite of digital capabilities.
You spoke on the panel about the customer experience revolution. In your view, what do today’s business banking customers expect from their financial partners that they didn’t expect five or ten years ago?
Patel: We consistently hear two key expectations from our small business customers. First, they want banks to deliver best-in-class, highly sophisticated digital capabilities. Nearly 80% of small business customers, including U.S. Bank customers, have time and again told us that they’re expecting their banks to give them a one-stop shop. Many are already banking with us across our deposit products. They engage a lot with our payment products, whether this is small dollar loans, large dollar loans, or credit card solutions, or operating lines of credit.
But beyond these core services, they increasingly expect seamless, integrated digital experiences. By that, I mean not just dashboards that track transactions, but robust features like money moment insights, best-in-class accounts payable and receivable tools, and embedded payroll capabilities. To address these needs, we recently announced two exciting developments: our new accounts payable solution in partnership with Melio and Fiserv, and embedded payroll capabilities in partnership with Gusto. Both are part of our broader commitment to delivering integrated, end-to-end experiences for small business customers.
AI is everywhere in the conversation this year. Beyond the hype, how are you seeing AI deliver real value to business banking customers, whether through engagement, personalization, or entirely new experiences?
Patel: We are still in the early stages of deploying AI, but we’re already seeing strong impact across several use cases. The first is fraud monitoring and detection—security is top of mind for our business banking customers, and AI has proven valuable for fraud monitoring early detection.
The second area is customer service. While not a new application for AI, we’re using it to transcribe interactions, synthesize information, and provide our service teams with a complete view of the customer relationship. Because business owners are pressed for time, they expect seamless, efficient support from us, and AI helps ensure our teams can respond quickly and effectively.
We’ve seen a wave of innovation in areas like billpay and payroll, often driven through partnerships between banks and fintechs. Why are these types of collaborations becoming so important for small business banking?
Patel: As I mentioned earlier, small business customers are navigating an unprecedented macroeconomic environment. They’re dealing with tariff pressures and uncertainty, persistent inflation, supply chain disruptions lingering from the pandemic, and ongoing challenges in accessing capital. In this context, anything financial institutions can do to help small businesses operate more efficiently and cost-effectively is critical—not only for their success but also for deepening engagement and trust.
That’s where fintech partnerships have become so important. Business owners often tell us they feel overwhelmed by the number of software options available. They’re looking for simple, integrated solutions that support core needs like cash flow management, accounts payable and receivable, and payroll. For example, if you’re a small business with fewer than 10 employees, you want easy-to-use payroll software that just works.
With this in mind, we’ve anchored our strategy on fintech partnerships and selective acquisitions to create a one-stop shop. We launched embedded payroll capabilities with Gusto, accounts payable solutions with Fiserv in partnership with Melio, and made strategic acquisitions such as talech, a point-of-sale solution, Bento for spend management, and TravelBank, which complements our corporate card offering. Together, these investments strengthen our ability to support small businesses end-to-end.
As you reflect on FinovateFall, what are the biggest themes or innovations you heard about that excite you about the future of business banking?
Patel: For me, the most exciting theme is personalization. I participated in a session on AI and personalization, and it reinforced that while banks and financial institutions have access to strong data, we still have a long way to go in harnessing it effectively. Accompanying customers through their end-to-end journeys and across different stages of the business lifecycle is critical.
For example, the needs of a startup are very different from those of a mature, established business. A startup might be focused on accessing small-dollar loans, while established businesses may require large operating lines to scale and expand. Small businesses need a very simple operating account with some benefits around digital transactions and money movement, but our large customers are looking for robust money movement capabilities and Treasury solutions.
The key is building personalization into these core jobs. Customers frequently ask us: “Should I be using Faster Payments or ACH?” That’s where AI can help, by serving as a product recommender that guides business owners to the right solution based on their specific needs.
High-growth companies like those involved in cutting-edge technologies face a wide range of challenges. Effective cash management is one of them. From the appearance of cash flow gaps between cash collection and realizing revenues to the necessity of making significant initial capital outlays for operations, infrastructure, and talent before revenues catch up, high-growth companies often have banking needs that many financial institutions struggle to respond to.
This week, our Streamly Series interview features Christopher Hollins, Global Head of Product Sales and Design at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a division of First Citizens Bank. Hollins outlines some of the tactics high-growth companies can rely on in order to better manage cash and make the most of technologies like automation. Hollins also explains how solutions like SVB Go offer these businesses essential insights and streamline cash forecasting and management.
“The challenge is that innovators, entrepreneurs want to do what makes them passionate. And for most people, just like in high school and college, accounting, cash management, managing finances … not exactly the oversubscribed classes. In all seriousness, what companies need to do as they are growing very fast, they’re very focused on revenue-generation, satisfying clients, etc. But in doing that, two other things are happening: cash is moving in and out, and some of that cash could be better used in a number of different circumstances, maybe it could be invested in a different way. There is a lot of ‘lack of discipline,’ but I wouldn’t say that’s because people are purposely trying to do that. They are focused on running their businesses.”
Silicon Valley Bank brings more than 40 years of experience as a financial partner for the innovation economy. The company serves innovation economy companies and investors with business banking, liquidity management, global business solutions, and fund banking. With deep sector expertise in enterprise software, frontier tech, cleantech and sustainability, as well as fintech, SVB counts 60% of all fintechs on the 2025 Forbes fintech list and 40% of the Forbes 2025 AI list among its clients.
Head of Global Product Sales and Delivery at Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank, Christopher Hollins has played a key role in transforming the platform’s solution delivery model to ensure that SVB’s Commercial Bank Innovation economy clients have access to the best partners and solutions to solve business challenges and have optimal banking relationships along their journey. Hollins has been a part of SVB since 2021.
What does it take for financial institutions interested in AI technology to move from the point of experimentation to actual execution?
In this Streamly Snapshot interview, conducted at FinovateSpring in San Diego, California earlier this year, Global Director of VASS Financial Services Javier Pérez García talks about what financial institutions need to know in order to make the most of their investments in AI and how VASS is leveraging AI to transform and enhance financial services. García also talks about the value of execution relative to experimentation and shares his thoughts on real-world AI technology deployment in fields such as fraud prevention and compliance.
“You only get to that space where you are jumping from experimentation to execution if you align three major skills: one, deep knowledge of the technology … the second is knowledge of financial services, something the financial entities already have covered. But they don’t have enough experience, this is the third skill, of deploying AI. Why is this important? You might decide the right use case, but maybe you don’t have enough data, maybe the expectations that have been generated inside the organization are too high … You need the experience of someone else to help you … to define and identify if that investment is going to come in the first weeks of the project.”
VASS is an international digital transformation company that helps people, organizations, and businesses around the world provide best-in-class digital solutions to customers in banking, insurance, telecommunications, retail, media, public administration, and more. Founded in 1999, the company is based in Madrid, Spain.
Javier Pérez García is Global Director at VASS Financial Services, a team of experienced professionals with track records in helping fintechs, banks, and insurers modernize and reach their technological transformation goals. García has deep expertise in financial services IT architecture, AI deployment, and compliance-driven digital transformation strategies. He leads global modernization programs for banks and fintechs, aligning complex tech initiatives with regulatory requirements and helping institutions scale AI from pilot to production.
Over the three days of FinovateSpring earlier this month, Finovate analysts and their partners hosted a number of off-stage interviews with CEOs of demoing companies, keynote speakers, event sponsors, and more. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll begin rolling out these conversations here on the Finovate blog as part of our Streamly Speaker Series interviews.
For now, here’s a quick preview of what we’ve got in store for you:
Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn in conversation with:
If financial crashes are inevitable, then is there any way to anticipate them and mitigate their negative impacts—to say nothing of preventing them from happening in the first place?
Answering this question is Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics at Oxford University and author of The Great Crashes: Lessons from Global Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them. In this interview, conducted earlier this year at FinovateEurope, Yueh provides a three-step framework for identifying and mitigating financial crises. She also discusses the relationship between Big Tech, decentralized finance, and traditional finance, and how competition between these forces will foster innovation and economic growth.
Every crisis starts with a bubble, and bubbles repeat themselves mostly because of FOMO, “fear of missing out” … (T)he real danger is if you pile in because of FOMO, and you do it with debt. Because then, when the bubble bursts, that’s the second phase, the resolution. And that’s really challenging because it depends on having credible policies and credible policymakers.
A fellow in Economics at the University of Oxford and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the London Business School, Linda Yueh is an economist, writer, and broadcaster. Her latest book, The Great Crashes: Lessons from Global Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them, was named to the Financial Times’ “The Best New Books in Economics” roster. Her previous book, The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today, was named one of The Times’s Best Business Books of the Year.
