Connect with the author: olivia.hamel@curinos.com
Excerpted from the author’s keynote address at FinovateSpring 2026 on May 7 in San Diego.
A fundamental shift in retail banking is underway: moving from siloed, product-centric decision-making to truly customer-centered engagement. Historically, banks optimized decisions independently across marketing, product, pricing and channels often without coordination—resulting in fragmented customer experiences and conflicting objectives. Marketing teams focused on acquisition costs, pricing teams optimized rate tiers and product teams triggered offers based on tenure.
This “old world” approach is no longer sufficient in an environment where customers expect highly personalized, contextual experiences similar to those delivered by leading digital platforms. The “new world” begins with the customer and dynamically determines the right product, offer, pricing action or engagement strategy in near-real time against a unified enterprise objective.
The Shift in Retail Banking Decision-Making Models
This shift requires banks to rethink how decisions are made across the organization. Rather than pushing siloed offers to customers, FIs need to orchestrate decisions holistically using customer context, behavioral signals and shared intelligence. The goal is not simply personalization for marketing’s sake—it’s coordinated engagement that improves acquisition, primacy, retention and long-term relationship value.
For retail banking executives, the implication is clear: future competitive advantage will come from unifying decision-making around the customer rather than around how the organization is organized.
