Banking Forward: Themes and Trends That Define 2026

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Intro: This is Believe in Banking, a podcast series for decision makers, influencers, and leaders, featuring experts taking on the financial industry’s most pressing issues with insight and empathy. The podcast features information and conversations designed to enlighten and empower.

Gina Bleedorn (00:17): Welcome to our Believe in Banking podcast. I’m Gina Bleedorn, President and CEO of Adrenaline.

Juliet D’Ambrosio (00:25): And I’m Juliet D’Ambrosio, Chief Experience Officer at Adrenaline.

It’s 2026. Happy New Year, everyone. It probably won’t surprise you to know that our podcast, just like all the other ones that you’ll be listening to over the next month, is going to be focused on looking ahead to the trends and forces that will be shaping us and shaping the future of the banking industry. We always like to joke about the idea of whether or not we are futurists. And while neither Gina nor I claim that title, what we can claim is that we spend an inordinate amount of time keeping our eyes on and our fingers on the pulse of the trends that are happening with our industry. And we do that looking at research and also by talking to our clients and our partners around the industry to understand what they’re facing, what’s on their mind and what the big opportunities are.

What we know looking at 2026 is that this is going to be a year of focus. So we’re looking less at the big macro trends, but in doing the right things exceedingly well, sticking the landing across all of the efforts. And the way McKinsey says it, “It is that precision is the decisive differentiator, separating leading banks from slow movers and reshaping the industry’s performance curve.” And we see that happening all over as banks and credit unions deal with not mutually exclusive, but mutual pressures like profitability, ROI, changing customer expectations. Of course, we’re going to mention AI. All of these integration priorities are strategic levers. And I think a lot of them come together and congregate in M&A.

And we know looking back at 2025, we came in very hot thinking M&A was going to, after a pause, to come in with a lot of momentum behind it. There was a cooling off period for the first quarter of M&A moving into the second quarter where deal activity was a lot lower than had been expected. But certainly starting Q3, we saw lots and lots of deals happening and being announced. So, the activity was accelerated. The momentum was improving. And there’s this idea that when there is a hyper competitive environment, when these deals become increasingly tied to scale, tied to technology cost realities, that all boats eventually rise. The entire industry moves ahead, but there is a connection between that momentum and between precision and getting it right.

And Gina, I would love for you to talk a little bit about what you’re seeing with the industry in terms of M&A, in terms of consolidation, and how deals are getting done.

Gina Bleedorn (03:34): Yeah. I think there’s an inherent challenge particularly in the trend that McKinsey’s highlighting around precision. And really, I think what they mean is like execution enablement around precision being the big differentiator between winners and losers. I think that’s hard because when it comes to M&A, precision is not exactly the name of the game execution-wise, at least historically, which is why M&A tends to have more of a losing record across all industries than a winning record. And I think that that’s making the financial services industry become at a bit of an inflection point in a way it’s not been before because of this sharp rise in M&A. So, the scale economics are what is driving it. And that is creating an environment where if you’re not scaling up, you’re preparing to die in some ways for many, particularly with smaller size institutions, but even across the board.

As these deals are happening in this competitive landscape and the pressure for getting deals done that is creating pressure for the economics of integration budgets. And that then can become a real problem because it’s conversely reducing your propensity to stick the landing, as you said, Juliet, reducing the success rate and increasing the risk that the landing will not be stuck. And so that’s hard. Some of the things to think about here as you’re facing M&A or not is what really matters to moving the needle forward. Particularly when it comes to the thing we often talk about here on this podcast, branches and branding, those two big pillars, those are real considerations to make. The capital investment heavier one is on the branch side. Starting with that, think about as you are managing your conversion budgets, and you may have no choice because the choice may be being made at the deal-making level.

But when you are having to make sense of that at the branch budget decisioning level, if the budgets are so slim that you can only do the bare minimum in relation to signage and like-for-like swap outs and not be considering true integration of teams and even branch behaviors and overall experience of what the branch experience is like, think about what the go- back plan is going to be. Something else to consider is that when you are touching these branches with integration, it is an ideal time to touch them more optimally. So, when there is wiggle room, even if it’s in just the top tier, again, think about the branches that are going to move the needle. In those needle moving branches, the high performance ones and/or high potential ones, inclusive of the ones that may not have, they have the biggest performance gaps, those are your difference makers.

Think about how can I really maximize spend and leverage in what I’m doing here? Am I making the most of the budgets that I have, number one? And if I can’t with the budgets I have, what else can I do with budgets and moves to strategically maximize my channel, specifically my capital intensive ones of the branch to its biggest advantage?

Juliet D’Ambrosio (07:04): Speaking of capital intensive channels, Gina, it’s 2026. Why are we still talking about branches? I am asking this obviously hypothetically speaking, but it seemed even a few years ago, branch closures were on the rise. There was a move away from the investment generally. We know that digital and neobanks continue to gain incremental market share. Why branching still? And I know we have some big names that we could point to, but I’d love to hear you talk about what we see happening even at the community banking level with the investment in branch and why.

Gina Bleedorn (07:48): Yeah, good question. And to answer it, it is because they work, period. Whether it makes sense that they should work, that’s a different question. But Chase was the biggest name and innovator in leading branch, even branch leading investments pre- COVID, which they continued through COVID. Most of the rest of the industry waited until the COVID settled, if you will. And when it did, it was that all roads point back to, if you are not in market physically, you don’t have a shot at meaningful wallet share. And if you are not in markets physically at least a minimum threshold of presence and scale, you cannot get an outsized return on your investment in that market. So, in order to be there with outsize and scale, you need to not just be there, but you need to be in the optimal locations, you need to have the best billboard effect, and you need to have the best experience.

And all of these learnings have led to an increase in investment in branches period. And the big banks make the headlines, but it trickles down to everyone. So, what we are seeing is actually a bifurcated view, which is a smart one of where can I expand and how can I modernize and upgrade my existing at the same time? In the past, I would say particularly of community institutions over the past several years, we saw a lot more expansion efforts only where what we would do analytics for expansion, new prototypes, and new ground up flagships here and there. We’re still doing that, but also again, particularly with a rise in the increase in community institutions, community banks and credit unions, we’re seeing much more of now, “Wait a minute, am I maximizing my existing network? Is the investment in the right places? Have I closed all my underperformers?”

Many have done a decent job of that, which was accelerated with COVID. But now, “Is my square footage allocated as it should be? Should I have more spokes where I have a bunch of hubs? Do I have the right programming? Do I have the right physical infrastructure related to my share of retail versus wealth or high mass affluent capture versus small business or higher commercial capture? And is my experience consistent across locations? Do I have operational enablement of scalability as I create more locations to continue that consistency?” And on and on, this is the ripple effect of what’s happened as people realize, yes, branches matter, yes, the big guys are doing it. Now, yes, the small guys are doing it, and the competitive pace and a new threshold has risen for everyone. So, if you are not thinking about your approach, and it could be taking money out as much as putting money in, you are behind competitively speaking.

Juliet D’Ambrosio (11:00): I think a great example of that, Gina, is that PayPal is getting a banking charter. There is a reason why a digital channel or a digital platform is now looking at investment in brick and mortar, in person, and that’s because it pays off. They are actually taking a page from the playbook from the 19^th century of having actual places to go to bank and now in the 21st century, making that investment. So, the idea that you are competitively behind is going to continue to accelerate, and it’s that competition or the landscape looks so much different than it did five years ago even in what we could have expected – in that it has really shifted back into the fundamentals, personalization, service, having somewhere to go when you need to have the sensitive conversations for customers or for members around their financial life.

What I find so fascinating, and as you know, we are making both an academic look at Gen Z in terms of research and how the future of finance is impacted by this rising generation, but also an anecdotal one because I have Gen Z children. So, I get my own little control group where I can see these behaviors come to life. What is fascinating to me is that this generation, chronically online, they are absolute digital natives. But 65% of them prefer to open new accounts in person. I’m sure they might have a Chime, but if it comes down to their checking accounts, their savings accounts, 65% want to go into a branch to do that, 25% seek in- person advisors for key milestones. And remember, Gen Z is now 27, 28. They are going to be making those milestones like mortgage right around the corner. What’s even more fascinating is that we asked a question in our research, “How important is branch experience to attract and retain Gen Z customers?’ And the results were staggering. 40% of institutions said it was moderately important, 30% said it was extremely important, and about 28% said it was somewhat important.

And if we think about that and we think about the notion of physical, digital, and what the future looks like is that it’s not either/or, it is both/and. And the branch now we see begins to evolve into a physical extension of that digital experience. And so because of that, going back to the idea of sticking of landing, customers are going to expect that they are as frictionless as a digital experience, that the frontline staff become equipped with real time context and insights, that advisors begin to act as brand ambassadors. And so the investment in the branch isn’t to placate older generations, but really it’s a play for the future and for future-proofing the success of the institution.

Gina Bleedorn (14:24): Juliet, to your point about needing to have a more integrated view and really the expectation of seamless integration across channels all built around the consumer – which even younger generations expect today is the new norm – we bridge from the branch capital investment channel to the brand where there’s also a lot of associated capital that shows up really in every form, including your human capital. On the brand side of the house, that PayPal example you mentioned is an especially interesting one, given that PayPal as a brand literally was about literal transactions. What you say your brand, you don’t want it to be about they built a brand for that, and now they’re going to have probably quite an uphill…

Juliet D’Ambrosio (15:12): Huge uphill battle for them to build meaning into that, which is what we know brand is so powerful in doing, and where we know the community banking segments have the upper hand.

Gina Bleedorn (15:25): Yeah, exactly. And then we also think about the M&A we were talking about before, something else is we’ve talked about this a number of times before, because there’s pressure to get the deal done, the brand is often an afterthought. Now, there’s always at least some thinking and planning and needing for cultural and strategic alignment, but the actual brand-brand alignment is not considered enough. What we are seeing more of is that deals are actually getting a little bit stuck in certain cases because the brand may actually be a problem. Whose name am I going to take with the MOEs? Whose logo colors? Whose logo? Whose brand aspects? And then what we’re also seeing is that sometimes there is not enough consideration of integration when there is even MOEs sometimes, but also just straight up somebody’s acquiring somebody else.

The closer in size you are to one another, the more integration really, theoretically, there should be regarding the brand and different aspects of the brand because those aspects have value. And if you acquire somebody and you just don’t use or integrate any of their brand into go forward, and you just slap your brand on their brand, you have lost some of the value you just bought. So further, when it comes to thinking about names and brands, if you are going to have a combined new face to the market, does your current name or brand or whichever one of the two you choose to use, is it conveying that new combined scale or is it associated with just one of the institutions where it may behoove you to consider a net new name or net new brand? And so those are all pretty massive implications that are often not at the table during deal making, but need to be dealt with after. And there could be reasons why a merger ultimately underperforms or overperforms.

Juliet D’Ambrosio (17:32): We published a piece looking at just this. I think the title says it all. It is: The Due Diligence You’re Not Doing when you’re at the deal table around M&A. And it is because brand cannot be an afterthought. And Gina, you and I have seen deals even from our position, not just stall, but tank because of a lack of planning ahead around brand. “What brand name are we going to take? What is the right strategy moving forward?” So, it’s really less of an afterthought and more as it’s a strategic lever that should be considered earlier in the deal process, really as early as possible.

One thing that I’m blown away by every year is, and I’m calling out a competitor, and I do that very intentionally here because I think it’s meaningful. Interbrand, they’re a big multinational brand consultancy and every year they publish their Top 100 Global Brands. It is a very rigorous and data-backed study of the role that brand plays in driving business performance and share price. And it’s full of very applicable thoughts, ideas, and observations around brand. In their latest report, looking at trends moving forward, they have called out the idea of brands indispensability, that brand becomes indispensable to business performance, more than ever. And if we think about the world that has changed around us, especially with the rise of AI, the real premium, the real capital is humanity and the need for humans to create connection and attach meaning to the way that we interact with the world, including to the institutions that we interact with like banking, like credit unions. And for us to be able to look at a brand and care about it and care about the choices that we make, there is an outsized degree to which that becomes a lever of growth for the institutions to begin to think about and position their brands in order to do that.

One thing, and this is where I don’t want to get too nerdy about it, but Interbrand published a chart that is kind of mind boggling when we look at what it means and what it says. And it has looked at performance over the past 26 years and has found that the role of brand, which is how powerfully brand impacts a consumer’s ability to choose it or not, the role of brand is one of only two indices whose increase is able to directly correlate with share price growth. And this is where it gets mind boggling. Every 1% increase in the role of brand delivers on average a 2.3% share price surge.

We see that the more brand is visible, tangible, consistent, and lived and breathed at the branch level, from the call center, from the digital experience, through all ways that the brand comes to life… The more that that happens, the better the institution, the better the organization, the business performs. And ultimately, the more value it delivers and is able to give back not only to shareholders, but to customers, communities, and to the world. There’s sort of nowhere to go but up, in terms of investment in brand and in marketing today. As we look at what are the ways that we can chart the path for the future and the levers of control that leaders of banking organizations have, and brand is a really big one.

Gina Bleedorn (21:28): The last bit of topic we must cover, at least briefly, is AI and a completely evolving landscape, an accelerating landscape, a fascinating landscape, a terrifying landscape, and affecting all of us in many ways every second of every day, whether we realize it or not. But a brief summation of some considerations around what AI means now, not so much from the operational aspect because there’s a number of backend systems right now for banking that AI is having actually a great effect on in the ability to modernize and be more effective and efficient, broad especially predictive analytics, but in and around the front end lens to the consumer with personalization. As AI just gets better and more businesses start embracing it, the expectation around personalization is just really accelerating. And so considering what that means in its manifestation in your branches, in your brand, and ultimately in your customer experience, that has to be a key consideration for 2026.

Juliet D’Ambrosio (22:41): As we think about AI and its impact, you mentioned it, Gina, it’s thrilling, it’s fascinating, and it’s also terrifying, which leads directly to thinking about the idea of change management and how the impact of AI, even as it is deployed for really better, smarter, more targeted marketing, thinking about it just from that lens, how do we talk about AI and roll it out internally from a cultural standpoint across many of our clients? We’re seeing them have those same kind of questions.

One thing that we have put into perspective with AI, and the way that we see it managed most successfully is that when it becomes a tool that empowers decision making rather than making its own decisions, taking the place of human beings to make those decisions. And I think leaders across the banking industry do well when they present it to their own teams and roll out AI initiatives internally as a way that all of these tools are here to make you smarter and able to do more of what a machine can never do, which is make those connections with our customers, our prospects, our community members that are going to make you truly indispensable.

And I would like to propose that word of indispensability as we think about 2026 moving forward, how our belief in banking can lead to indispensability of the industry to more employees, to more customers, to more of our own clients looking ahead.

Outro: You’ve been listening to Believe in Banking, a podcast series created to empower decision makers, influencers, and industry leaders in financial services.

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