Banking Reinvented

Backbase

In the weekly “Banking Reinvented” podcast, host Tim Rutten welcomes senior executive changemakers from around the globe, unpacking what works and what doesn’t. You’ll learn how banks can harness the power of AI to drive remarkable growth while setting themselves free from their legacy systems, clunky processes, and status-quo thinking. Tune in each week to get valuable insights into the future of banking. Explore more resources in the Banking Reinvented content hub: https://www.backbase.com/insight/podcasts?utm_source=Organic_Social&utm_medium=Spotify

  1. Jun 4

    Why simplicity wins in banking transformation: Dirty data, feature parity, and the wild west of AI with Aequilibrium’s Adrian Moise

    The credit union sector is consolidating quickly. In the United States alone, a sector that once counted over 20,000 institutions has shrunk to around 4,000. In Canada, the number has fallen below 300.  In this episode of Banking Reinvented, recorded at ENGAGE Americas in Nashville, host Tim Rutten sits down with Adrian Moise, Founder and CEO of digital transformation firm Aequilibrium, to explore what it takes to survive and thrive in this environment. Adrian challenges some of the most deeply held assumptions in the industry. Feature parity, widely treated as a non-negotiable during mergers and platform migrations, is in his view one of the most expensive decisions a credit union can make. He argues that it imports legacy baggage, stifles differentiation, and risks stripping away the very value proposition that made an acquired brand worth buying in the first place.  He also argues that even though the topic of AI dominates every conference agenda in financial services, most institutions remain stuck in pilots and limited sandboxes. More often than not, the obstacle is the data. Dirty, fragmented, and unintegrated, it does not get cleaner when you add an AI layer on top. Instead, it gets amplified. Tune in to also learn why in today’s market, the speed at which an organization learns is one of the most consequential advantages, and how the institutions best positioned to lead are running the cycles of iteration - shipping, learning from real users, and improving continuously.  Adrian Moise, Founder and CEO of Aequilibrium, on why feature parity is a trap, what AI governance really looks like in practice, and how credit unions can compete in a market consolidating faster than most leaders are willing to admit. Website excerpt

    24 min
  2. May 28

    High-touch, high-stakes: rethinking client relations in investment banking with Fatima Mansoor

    Season 2 Episode 2 of Banking Reinvented steps into a world where client bases are smaller, relationships run deeper, and every interaction carries more weight - investment banking. Host Amjad Ramahi sits down with Fatima Mansoor, Head of Client Relations at SICO, a leading regional asset manager and investment bank based in Bahrain. With nearly two decades at the firm - from broker to leading client relations - Fatima brings a practitioner's perspective on how client expectations have evolved and what it actually takes to bring AI into a high-touch, trust-driven business. Together, they explore how SICO is using AI to handle the admin and analysis so relationship managers can focus on high-value client engagement, why the hybrid model - digital tools and human advisory working as one - delivers a better experience than either alone, and what it takes to shift mindsets in an industry where people still see AI as a threat rather than an enabler. Tune in to hear how SICO is rethinking client relations, navigating cultural nuances across the Middle East's diverse client base, and putting the client at the center of every technology decision. Check out our content hub Timestamps(00:00) – Welcome to the "Banking Reinvented" podcast (00:46) – Introduction to Fatima Mansoor (02:03) – How client expectations have evolved over two decades (04:34) – Building trust through technology, not despite it (06:25) – The hybrid model: AI and human advisory working as one (08:26) – Understanding what clients actually expect (09:05) – AI in action: portfolio insights, self-service, and 360 client views (10:42) – Why human interaction still matters - and how AI makes it better (13:04) – Removing friction: faster decisions, better client outcomes (15:56) – Personalizing the investment experience at scale (17:23) – Building an agile ecosystem for the next 5-10 years (19:31) – The biggest barrier to AI adoption: mindset, not technology (21:49) – Proving value through real test cases, not roadmaps (25:04) – Why transformation has to be driven from leadership (29:23) – Advice for driving change from within (29:44) – Using AI to strengthen regional culture and identity (32:07) – Personalizing across a diverse, multicultural client base (34:22) – The biggest opportunity ahead: hybrid, personalized, ethical (34:58) – Final words: every decision starts and ends with the client

    38 min
  3. Apr 30

    Rethinking banking modernization: navigating complexity and unlocking growth, with Eugene Denny, Lila Canaj and Illia Dragan

    This episode of Banking Reinvented captures a panel from a recent Backbase event. The conversation brought together three practitioners with very different points of view on what modernization looks like inside a bank today. Eugene Denny, Principal Industry Advisor at Endava, Lila Canaj, Chief Retail Officer at Tirana Bank, and Illia Dragan, CPO at Salt Edge covered the following questions: how do you decide what to modernize first? What does it take for AI to deliver beyond the pilot stage? And what separates banks that are genuinely transforming from those running expensive IT projects nobody outside notices? Tune in to listen to Lila share how Tirana Bank cut consumer lending from two days to 20 minutes, became the second bank in Albania to launch end-to-end digital onboarding, and what the shift to agile squads did to the relationship between business and IT. You’ll also listen to Eugene lay out the five building blocks banks need before AI can really run - and why most banks are reaching for the model before they've built the foundation. Illia makes the case that KYC remains one of the least reformed processes in banking, and that the next frontier of open finance is cross-entity ecosystems most banks haven't started thinking about yet. Curious to find out more about customer-centric banking?Step into the future of finance -> Check out our content hub

    40 min
  4. Apr 9

    From fragmented to unified: making AI work in wealth & private banking with Jules Bordat

    Private banks and wealth managers have been paying a fragmentation tax for over a decade. Relationship managers toggle across five systems just to prepare for a single client meeting. Annual reviews feel like initial intakes. Investment proposals go out as 60-page PDFs and die in inboxes.  While humans found ways to cope with this and bridge the gaps among fragmented systems, AI can't deliver reliable results under these same circumstances. In this episode of Banking Reinvented, Tim Rutten is joined by Jules Bordat, Principal Wealth Expert and Go-to-Market Lead at Backbase, to explore what happens to private banking and wealth management when AI enters an operation that was never designed to support it. Jules argues that the fragmentation problem most boardrooms thought they'd addressed five years ago looks completely different with AI in the picture - and the gap between institutions that act now and those that wait is about to widen fast.  The conversation gets into what’s required to close the gap, including:  Building a credible 2-3 year North Star while finding wins in 3-4 months when making a transformation Why bringing the client experience and rethinking the lifecycle is the next differentiator in wealth How AI-native signals encourages RMs and advisors to move client information from their notebooks to a unified intelligence layer The real opportunity, Jules argues, isn't cutting admin time, but restoring the human element of the relationship itself. Jules also shares his prediction on the role hyperscalers like Anthropic will play in wealth management - and why it looks less like disruption and more like infrastructure.

    35 min
  5. Mar 26

    Banks must redesign operations and jobs, not just deploy AI, with Wessel Oosthuizen from Deloitte

    Heidi Custers, Strategy and Transformation Director at Backbase, sits down with Wessel Oosthuizen, co-lead of the AWS AI and Data team for Deloitte Africa, to work through why bank AI programs stall - and what it actually takes to fix them. Their starting point is a Deloitte statistic from a recent report that frames the whole conversation: 84% of companies haven't redesigned a single job around AI. Wessel argues that banks are making real technology investments while leaving their people and operating models exactly where they found them. As a result, the tech moves, but the organization doesn't. Heidi pushes on the practical reality for regulated institutions - how to move fast without gutting compliance, why standalone AI pilots rarely stick, and how a front-to-back wedge approach lets business unit leaders reimagine their own processes without waiting for a top-down mandate. They also get into wealth management, regional AI maturity, and the limits of Western-trained models, arguing that the real constraint on AI in banking isn't the technology; it's whether the people, the processes, and the data behind it were built for the world the bank operates in today. Step into the future of banking -> Check out our content hub Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 01:12 The Deloitte 2026 State of AI report - what 84% tells us 04:49 Employees using AI in secret - the hidden adoption problem 06:24 Why standalone AI pilots fail to move the needle 09:12 Building a fast operating model inside a regulated bank 14:05 The wealth management use case - context graphs in practice 18:31Starting small - capturing advisor knowledge before scaling 20:00 Regional differences - innovation fatigue in Europe vs. Africa's leapfrog moment 25:38 Why AI models trained on Western data get Africa wrong 29:09 The next decade belongs to better operating models, not better channels

    46 min

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

In the weekly “Banking Reinvented” podcast, host Tim Rutten welcomes senior executive changemakers from around the globe, unpacking what works and what doesn’t. You’ll learn how banks can harness the power of AI to drive remarkable growth while setting themselves free from their legacy systems, clunky processes, and status-quo thinking. Tune in each week to get valuable insights into the future of banking. Explore more resources in the Banking Reinvented content hub: https://www.backbase.com/insight/podcasts?utm_source=Organic_Social&utm_medium=Spotify

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