For 20 years, U.S. Bank has had a formal innovation practice. U.S. Bank was the bank that other banks pointed to when they talked about innovation. As the approach has matured, what’s striking is how U.S. Bank has turned this innovation practice into an actual discipline, not just a department, with its influence felt across…

Can a not-for-profit, member-owned credit union genuinely out-innovate a bank with a multi-billion-dollar AI budget by being more disciplined and mission-anchored? In this episode of Breaking Banks, Bev Anderson (President and CEO of BECU) and Nadim Homsany (SVP, Head of AI at BECU) join host Jason Henrichs to unpack the strategy behind the credit union’s…

Entrepreneurship is an odyssey with many unexpected stops on the journey. You could find yourself on a loading dock in East LA, freestyle rapping with a man known as DJ Trucker—yes, there is video proof. In this episode of our special series, Killing It, hosts Jason Henrichs and Alex Johnson talk with Max Farrell. Max…

In This Episode For years, Banking as a Service (BaaS) was sold as a silver bullet for community banks to solve their deposit problems and grow non-interest income. Through its evolution, the industry has learned that it is not enough for BaaS to simply be programmable. For innovation in banking to flourish, without sacrificing the…

In This Episode Financial institutions (FIs) are currently navigating a “perfect storm” of technological, market, and consumer shifts. They face a multi-front war: constant economic and regulatory pressure, soaring consumer expectations for 24/7 personalization, and the existential threat of megabanks with massive tech budgets. To survive and thrive, FIs must move beyond “pilot purgatory”—where 95%…

In This Episode Kiah Haslett walked into our Hot Takes session at the Alloy Labs annual member meeting with a thesis she’d been sitting on, and it’s a good one: in a lighter-touch regulatory environment, the prisoner’s dilemma rewards whoever moves first. The strategically correct move, she argues, might also be the morally bankrupt one….

In This Episode Have we reached the point where AI is beginning to matter in a commercial sense or are we still in the ‘figuring it out’ stage and it’s not driving outcomes yet? In this episode host Jason Henrichs is joined by Prashant Mehrotra, Chief AI Officer at U.S. Bank, and John Sun, Co-Founder…

In This Episode In this episode of Breaking Banks, industry leaders Jason Hass (First Electronic Bank), Mike Jorgensen (U.S. Bank), and Louis Mrachek, (Merrick Bank) connect with Jason Henrichs for a dynamic conversation centered on embedded finance. Embedded finance seamlessly integrates financial services into non-financial platforms. Some examples include BNPL, Lending: Business & Personal Loans,…

In This Episode We’ve recently seen growth in many areas, but a disconnect always seems to exist between economic growth, especially capital market growth, and what people on the ground are experiencing. In short, the macro story is strong; the reality is more fragile if you look at households. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,…

In This Episode Banks are evolving beyond traditional financial products to offer value-added services that deliver outcomes that matter in customers’ everyday lives. In this episode of Breaking Banks, we explore this shift through a very specific lens. Joining host Jason Henrichs are Marcy Allen, Head of Enterprise Financial Institutions at Carefull, a company focused…

In This Episode Which trends are genuinely reshaping and transforming banking? Is fintech hitting its “awkward adolescent phase”—past the hype but not yet fully mature? Today we sort through the signal and the noise. Which trends are actually changing how banks work and which are mostly theater. There are lots of pitches coming at banks,…

In This Episode The current regulatory regime in the US promised a lighter touch and more de novo charters. Sure enough, there has been a flurry of activity with a wide range of applications being submitted from long time payment providers like Paypal, neobanks looking to break free from their BaaS sponsors, and even silicon…