Backbase

One employee using three screens is a painfully accurate picture of banking operations. On one end, there's a customer using an award-winning app. On the other, there is an ever growing number of manual hand-offs and exceptions that employees need to do to process a request. 60% of banking operations work happens in that coordination layer. It's also where AI has the most to offer, and where most banks are least ready to deploy it. The banks solving this are changing the operating model underneath so that one employee only needs one screen to open. Read our latest blog to learn more what that shift looks like in practice, and where to start. Link in comments.

Eid al-Adha Mubarak to all who are celebrating. 🌙 Wishing everyone in our community around the world a joyful and peaceful celebration with the people who matter most.

How is Lloyds - a 250-year-old bank with 28 million customers - moving faster than most fintechs? The answer: By breaking the monolith. Lloyds reorganized into cross-functional platforms - business, product, engineering, design, marketing, and compliance all working together with enduring funding and real autonomy. Teams own their outcomes end to end, and the mandate is simple: deliver for the customer and move fast enough to do it. The culture that came with it is just as important as the structure. Most large organizations treat failure personally - and that's exactly what slows them down. At Lloyds, the logic runs differently: get eight out of 10 things out the door, and if six of them create value, you're moving fast enough to bank the learnings and go again. The feedback loop ran at a completely different speed.  The results are showing up in the numbers: £50M in AI-driven benefit last year, with £100M targeted for this year.   Tune in to the latest Banking Reinvented episode to hear Suresh Balaji, Group CMO of Lloyds Banking Group, on what transformation at this pace looks like from the inside. 🎧 Link to the episode in the comments.

The banks that will win the conversational banking race are the ones that already hold something OpenAI can never replicate: years of full customer context, and the authority to act on it. OpenAI's personal finance launch last week connected ChatGPT to 12,000+ financial institutions via Plaid, giving 200 million users their first taste of conversational financial guidance. It is read-only, US-only, and currently limited to analysis. But it has permanently reset what customers expect from AI in banking. The opportunity for banks is significant. OpenAI can tell a customer they're overspending on subscriptions. A bank's conversational AI can tell them the same thing, then immediately propose a savings plan, adjust a standing order, and log the interaction against their financial health profile - all within a governed, auditable workflow. That gap between analysis and action is where banks win, and it is entirely achievable with the data and infrastructure banks already have. The prerequisite for banks to deliver this, however, is a unified operational layer that gives AI agents a shared, real-time view of the customer across every product, channel, and interaction. Without it, conversational banking AI stalls at the insight stage. With it, a natural language request becomes a fully orchestrated, auditable transaction. (Full read in the comments)

Backbase is a proud sponsor of Feedzai Fusion. AI, fraud, AML, and cybersecurity teams in the same room. Our own Marc Corbett, VP of Solution Engineering, will be on stage sharing how financial institutions can connect the dots between fraud prevention and a modern banking architecture. Link to register in the comments.

Tirana Bank has launched a full retail banking experience built on the Backbase AI-native Banking OS - becoming the first bank in Albania to offer end-to-end digital banking across mobile and web. The deployment, delivered in 12 months in partnership with Endava, covers credit card and consumer loan applications, multi-currency account management, card controls, bill payments, and real-time spending insights. Tirana Bank also launched Apple Pay as part of the rollout, among the first banks in the country to do so. Business banking is scheduled to follow before year-end. "This launch marks a significant step in our digital transformation journey - combining convenience with the trust and human connection that define our model." - Lila Canaj, Chief Retail Business Officer, Tirana Bank To read the full release, visit the link in the comments.

Last week, David M. Brear asked our CEO, Jouk Pleiter, if AI really changes the game that much (compared to previous technology waves). Jouk answered: "AI is the most transformative technology I've ever seen in my life." Not cloud, not mobile, not open banking. Mobile was impressive - but mobile is just a new form factor. You replaced the mouse with your finger. Compared to what's happening now, mobile is nothing. This is much, much bigger. And it's different for one reason. Every previous wave - cloud, mobile, open banking - you could add it to what you already had. Better app, new channel, faster onboarding. The core of how the bank operated stayed largely intact. This one doesn't work like that. AI exposes everything underneath. The fragmented systems, the manual coordination, the whitespace between processes where thousands of people are acting as human middleware. That's where the real cost is. And that's where the real opportunity is. AI is not something you can simply add. It demands a entirely new operating model. The full conversation is out now on 11:FS Fintech Insider. Link in the comments.

Backbase and Atos have signed a Master Collaboration Agreement to accelerate AI-native banking across Africa, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Portugal, Spain, Southeast Europe, Switzerland, and Turkey. Banks in these international markets are posting strong results, and the next important question is how to sustain them. AI is part of the answer, but deploying it at scale across these markets isn't straightforward because: - Data sovereignty requirements vary by country. - Regulatory frameworks are strict. - Integration with existing infrastructure is complex. That's why today's partnership matters to help banks in these markets accelerate AI-native transformation - with the governance, compliance, and sovereign cloud infrastructure the region requires. Atos brings cybersecurity depth, sovereign cloud capabilities, and regional delivery expertise across 54 countries. Backbase brings the AI-native Banking OS - coordinating customers, employees, and AI agents across one Unified Frontline. Strong results are the starting point. The architecture that sustains them is what this partnership aims to bring across these markets. [Full announcement at the link in comments].

ENGAGE Americas delivered on every level. Two days, hundreds of banking transformation leaders, and conversations that only happen when the right people are in the same room. ENGAGE Americas 2026 brought together the banks actively building for the era of agentic banking - moving AI out of pilots to production. We shared keynotes, success stories and workshopped ideas and challenges. We launched the AI-native Banking OS and celebrated the incredible achievement of being named a Leader and a Customer Favorite in The Forrester Wave™: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms. And, we had a great time doing it. This is what AI banking transformation looks like, and this is how you move towards a Unified Frontline. Watch the roundup below.