In this episode of the Believe in Banking podcast, Gina and Juliet explore what innovation really means in financial services today. While often equated with technology, innovation in banking is more about impact – solving problems creatively, modernizing the member or customer experience, and building stronger community connections. Their conversation highlights standout examples of innovation in action, including Valley Bank’s eye-catching flagship branch in Manhattan that uses digital signage brought to life with GenAI and Civic Credit Union’s rapid branch expansion of flexible, community-focused locations across North Carolina. They also address the shift from omnichannel interaction toward optichannel engagement, innovative staffing strategies to support human-centered delivery, and the thoughtful adoption of AI in banking. Altogether, these efforts illustrate how forward-thinking institutions are leveraging innovation for purposeful progress, not just technological transformation.
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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 (00:18): Welcome to our Believe in Banking podcast. I’m Gina Bleedorn, President and CEO of Adrenaline.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (00:24): And I’m Juliet D’Ambrosio, Chief Experience Officer at Adrenaline.
So Gina, today we are here to talk about a topic that both means everything and in some ways because it means everything means different things depending on the audience and what you’re talking about –and that is innovation in banking. I was thinking back 5- 10 years ago, even to my past working outside of banking, that innovation had become such a buzzword that people stopped even paying attention to it. Innovation just became an assumed part of a business strategy and a mix and mindset for people to embrace. And so I think that there has been quite an evolution since that time.
There was a time when innovation became proxy for technology, for example, that to be innovative meant to be tech enabled or tech forward. And what we’ve seen in terms of that evolution is that it’s not really about technology. Technology is a part of it, but innovation in banking is all about making transactions easier, speedier, online, but really backing up to creating a more modern personal customer or member experience. And I love that bigger definition of innovation in banking.
Gina Bleedorn (01:59): I think we should globally bring back innovation. Bring back the word. Bring it back in a way that we can redefine it with relevance and in exactly the way you just said, Juliet. Particularly because I think in banking right now, it’s needed. All of the technological options, of course, everything emerging with AI is a bit head spinning and overwhelming. But if your North Star is just to make better the experience of the people you’re trying to serve, modernizing how they interact with and experience your brand on every touchpoint, then that’s what innovation can really be. And we wanted to spend today talking about examples of innovation that we are seeing across clients that we work with that yes, leverage technology, but the point isn’t the technology, the point is the impact.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (02:55): And I think that what’s really interesting to me is about how innovation has become not just, like you said, the point is the technology, but the point is to do something better and to think about problem-solving in original and novel ways. So, in that way innovation becomes very much a mindset. And you and I are very close into this conversation, as are a lot of our clients: which is how do we create and foster innovative mindsets across our own company? And I will shine a little bit of a light, pull back the curtain on Adrenaline ourselves. We’ve recently done some research into our own brand and how we are perceived by not only our clients but the marketplace at large and financial organizations around the country. And a big takeaway that we had is that Adrenaline’s brand is perceived, the number one association that we have is innovation.
I think both of us were sort of bowled over by that learning that or by that insight. And it wasn’t until when we dug in deeper into the research that we understood what innovation meant, how people were defining it. It was very much in that idea of the problem-solving mindset. How are we going to think in an agile, adaptive, responsive, original way around solving problems and how we can use that mindset to help our clients get ahead of whatever challenge we’re helping them solve. So, it’s upon us as Adrenaline. We know deep down some of the challenges that our clients are facing because we have to use that mindset, which is a less comfortable mindset than doing things we know how to do well already to help drive growth.
Gina Bleedorn (04:58): That exact anecdote about us reminds me of a story where the client themselves was being innovative, and I want to talk about what they did. We also had to be innovative to problem solve regarding some of the innovation and what they have done with it and continued to innovate has really been impactful. And that client is Valley Bank. They are based out of New Jersey, they’re in New York. They’re about over $60 billion [in assets] and over 200 branches. And they were opening up a flagship on Fifth Avenue in New York. So prime, ridiculously expensive real estate.
They had a design, and as part of that design, a giant, giant internally but externally facing architectural soffit. The soffit itself was a bit of a mosaic design. Architecturally, we were able to figure out how to keep some of that mosaic approach and have it all the way around to take advantage of both corners, because this is a great end cap location, but also have full content space in the middle on the curve where it comes together. And so that turned into a really beautifully successful deployment because ultimately it is a glowing living billboard for them day and night, night and day.
But then most recently they had a big content update that we partnered together on, and we also used Generative AI as many branding and marketing agencies are doing right now and created the “Eyes of New York.” And Juliet, I’d love for you to speak to the “Eyes of New York” and what it was meant to do. And what we absolutely know it is doing is getting them noticed. And that’s really your main objective today from a branch perspective is to billboard, and this is a successful living billboard.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (06:57): It is a great living billboard. And the “Eyes of New York” is not at all creepy, even though I think that it could sound like that. The “Eyes of New York” is absolutely irresistible – what I mean by that is as you are passing, you cannot look away, because it activates our human need to see and be seen. So, there are gorgeous portraits of New Yorkers who live and inhabit the area of where Valley Bank is. Beautiful portraits of their faces that focus on the eyes, which are, as we know, I forget the philosopher who said it, ‘they are the windows to the soul.’ So, it’s pretty out there. We’re thinking this is a fairly innovative approach to a bank that focuses a lot on commercial banking that they’re featuring this very unique up-close look at lots of different faces and eyes that are staring out at you, but they are also inviting you in.
And by doing so, they’re making a statement that Valley Bank is a place that sees you. We are different than the big banks down the street or across the street in that your humanity is recognized, and we see each customer that we serve as individuals. So, it’s both telling a story about the bank – making a promise to prospects about what their service and delivery is like. And it’s just bad ass. You cannot pass by without taking note. So much so that this has actually made the front page of Valley Bank’s website, which is kind of stunning if you think about it, that essentially a digital display from a branch becomes newsworthy and noteworthy enough that it’s something the entire bank rallies behind and promotes. So, Gina, we mentioned that innovation and banking is not necessarily tied just to technology, and I think we have such a great story in Civic Credit Union. I’d love for you to shine a light there.
Gina Bleedorn (09:21): Yeah, this is a great one. And we just published on our website a case study about it. It goes back to 30 years ago. State Employees Credit Union, the very large credit union of 275 branches based in the state of North Carolina actually split out a subset that was named Local Government Federal Credit Union, (LGFCU). And they operated as really sister credit unions and all of LG members used SEC’s branches and many didn’t even necessarily know the difference between the two brands. Well, they made a decision then to separate. And so now LG’s 400,000 members were going to not have any branches. And there was a two year period leading up to this. So LG had spun out a few years ago a digital only brand called Civic, and they decided that as they built a new branch network from scratch, really they were going to use the Civic brand, and it’s a really cool brand.
And so we became their partner to embark on this really super-fast, lightning fast branching exercise where they went from zero to 11 branches in 12 months, which for a credit union of their size was really just phenomenal. And it required a very innovative, flexible approach to doing so. What they ended up with are 11 consistent, but also locally relevant branches that are now all over their major markets and areas where they have member concentration all over the state of North Carolina. But these branches are built for a more innovative purpose in that they want to not focus on transactions, they want to focus on member relationships and most notably community connection.
So one of the tenets of how we had to approach design of the space to move so quickly at scale and create the kind of experience they were wanting to make for the member of the future, each space has lots of flexibility. They are completely reconfigurable for everything from normal day-to-day branch stuff and having a big mixer to having a casual seminar and having a more formal training seminar, etc. And then the brand was brought to life in beautiful ways in that space, speaking to what they stand for –people, prosperity, and the planet – and having truly local connection, always local, always, etc. So it was really quite phenomenal what they were able to accomplish and the way they had to go about it. Now, they are set up for success and can grow from this point, and that’s what they’re planning to do.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (12:16): I’m so interested to hear about Civic and hear you talk about it from sort of the expert seat there. It occurs to me that those kind of innovative branches will also require a very innovative mindset from their own staffing, because they are not meant to be the same old same old branch experience, but rather the adaptation and the adaptability for what the branch can become requires similarly innovative perspectives from their staffing models and how they are adapting and training to help bring those branches and their brand to life in new ways. I’m curious about what we’ve seen in terms of innovative staffing models and how our clients or the industry are embracing that.
Gina Bleedorn (13:08): Yeah, it’s actually in some ways easier to staff a net new branch with a net new model because they went out and looked for people that were in retail; people that had connections in the local community; people that understood how to actually have community programming and community connection to their space; as well as of course, bankers with banking background. They had to be very future forward in how they were thinking about this kind of staffing when you were evolving from who you have [been], that gets a lot more complicated. But in general, we are seeing many of our clients look outside of banking to staff for banking spaces, because a lot of what may be needed for the future isn’t as much of what we needed in the past. Not so much counting money, but having conversations. So, that is a huge area I think for the whole industry from an adaptation standpoint. We’re not anywhere close to where we need to be. And that’s because people evolving your people, that’s really the hardest part. So, great question.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (14:18): Yeah. I’m also really interested in, and of course this would not be a podcast recorded in 2025 on innovation if we didn’t use the term AI. So, I’ll bring up the ‘A’ word, but I’m just interested in thinking about how our clients are beginning to embrace AI throughout their organizations to do a couple things: 1) Become more efficient and automate where they can, and 2) Help inspire and enable their people to create better customer experiences. And you and I had a whole podcast last year that was really focused on AI and its penetration within the industry. We looked at some of the use cases and now those use cases have become actual cases of how AI is being used. And there’s a bit of a build now. We went from thinking about predictive AI, then to generative ai, which was able to create net new recommendations that would support customer service functions mostly, and now the big buzz in banking, as we certainly know and learned from the Financial Brand Forum last month that we attended is Agentic AI. I think I’m pronouncing that right.
Agentic AI, meaning that it becomes an agent that’s used by consumer brands, and it becomes advanced generative AI, building on those capabilities. Because it can reason and identify what actions to take next, being able to always serve under human oversight, it helps create a pathway that banking brands can offer to their customers individualized, personalized financial guidance at scale. And there’s one example that I know this is not a client that we work with, but Morgan Stanley has really taken the lead in their adoption of AI. They have, I hesitate to call it a product, but they have a program called literally the Next Best Action. It is a agentic AI fuel that allows a customer to work with Morgan Stanley to understand what their next best action would be in their investment journey. I’m going to be so interested to see how that level of really advanced use of artificial intelligence is able to be adopted and rolled out at scale across the community banking sector.
Gina Bleedorn (17:11): I too am interested and to answer your earlier questions, Juliet, about what we’re seeing from the industry and a lot of our clients in AI adoption, I would say not much. It’s really an industry hindered by a lot of potential risks surrounding AI in many ways. In a risk adverse, highly regulated industry in general, I believe has certainly created a lack of rapid adoption in different ways.
And there are a lot of questions that we don’t have answers for from a regulatory perspective. If you’ve got an AI assisted chat and they say something or do something that the bank could be held liable for. That’s why many banks and credit unions are a bit scared right now, and that’s good. That’s better than being irresponsible. But at the same time, understanding how AI can plug into different areas of the business has to be an imperative. And I know many are working on it, but as far as tangible outputs today of deployments, I don’t think we have that many.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (18:24): Yeah, I would agree. One place that I would give the industry more of a gold star in adopting so far is this idea, again, I’m going to use the O word here, I’ll bring it up: omnichannel. But the idea that omnichannel experiences are better thought of as optichannel. Omnichannel of course, was all about the experience as integrated across customer touchpoints. So, whether you’re calling the bank or you’re visiting the bank online, you’re doing it on your mobile device, you go to an ATM, you go into the branch from a customer point of view – it should all be the same experience. They don’t look at it as different touchpoints. They look at it as integrated.
Now we are seeing our banking clients taking it a step further into optichannel. So it’s not just about how we’re integrating the touch points, but it’s about using data to determine the most effective channel for each interaction that are based on things like customer or member behavior, their preferences, their intention, etc. So it actually does use some AI, it uses data analytics, it uses behavioral insights that are able to serve up these optichannel approaches.
One way that we’re involved in delivering this and working with our clients and delivering is in the discipline of branch marketing, where we think about optichannel approaches, as it’s simple. It’s not rocket science. It is unlocking the value of branches from a marketing perspective by thinking about the customer journey and serving up at the right place, the right message, and right delivery. So by thinking about branch marketing in that very optichannel way, we’re seeing both from large scale national clients down to community banking clients, and put emphasis on unlocking the possibility around these optichannel approaches.
Gina Bleedorn (20:42): Juliet, that leads me to the big question of how can banks and credit unions amplify their innovation without having to become a fintech to do it, acquire a fintech or even partner with a fintech. And there certainly are some partnerships there definitely happening. We’ve seen some success. I know we’ve also seen some not success, and that’s largely because the way that a traditional financial institution and the way that a fintech came to be make them culturally and organizationally almost complete opposites. And sometimes it’s hard to merge those things.
But I think the point of really everything we’re trying to say on this particular podcast, not that tech tools are bad, they’re good and we need them, but that’s not the only way to be innovative. And even what Juliet just described, it’s not rocket science, it’s just thinking about things in a little bit smarter way and bringing an innovative mindset to those things. I think, in particular, branch marketing is such a great example of that where there’s so much so innovation that has occurred in marketing, particularly digital marketing. But so little of that has traversed to the branch channel because of the nature of it being physical.
I think the branch channel itself is a very interesting convergence, high tech-high touch, technology and even humanity. And that’s a lot of the fintechs have struggled because they don’t have that aspect of humanity or being real, and that leads to not being trusted, and that’s why fintechs are trying to acquire banks. So, I think the macro point here is that celebrating what you are, leveraging technology to perpetuate that, but ultimately having that innovative mindset in thinking differently and then figuring out what tools can we use to bolster the objectives here – that’s what real innovation can look like even in the immediate term.
Outro: You’ve been listening to Believe in Banking, a podcast series created to empower decision makers, influencers, and industry leaders in financial services. Be sure to also join us on our flagship site. believeinbanking.com.