From the Curinos webinar, “Banking in 2026: Growing Profitably When the Market Won’t Sit Still,” presented on December 2, 2025, with Curinos CEO Sid Singh as moderator and featuring Chief Technology and AI Officer Olly Downs, Executive VP Brandon Larson and Managing Directors Peter Serene and Sarah Welch.
Our experts dove deep into what are likely to be the most consequential and influential factors on banking performance in 2026. Perhaps most significant is that banks will seriously begin to rewire the way they deliver value to their customers, and generate value for their shareholders, by integrating decision intelligence at the core of their customer relationships. Navigating this developing sea change will be an existential challenge given the complexity of an operating environment that includes uncertain market conditions, a proliferation of new competitors, a continuing wave of M&A and rapidly shifting customer behaviors and expectations. Our panelists unpacked these dynamics in a conversational format that offered their perspectives on what to expect and how to prepare. Here are a few of their insights:
1. 2026 will be the first AI-native year in banking.
For the banking industry, next year will be pivotal, as FIs move from experimenting with AI (cited by almost 60% of participants in our poll of where they are now) to truly rewiring their core operating capabilities around decision intelligence. The shift is being driven by volatile markets, rising competition from digitally native players and customer expectations that are being shaped by rapid technological change. Increasingly, providers will face existential pressure to use AI proactively to deliver value more efficiently. Winning will depend on embedding intelligence into every customer interaction rather than relying on traditional models of service and product distribution.
Source(s): Curinos Analysis | 2025 Curinos Multi-Channel Research (Q: Please rank the following resources based on how likely you would be to use them when doing your own financial research or making financial decisions) | Meta | Apple | Snapchat | TikTok | OpenAI | Pew Research | Chase | Bank of America | Wells Fargo | Citi
2. A tough deposit environment will yield no easy wins.
Deposit growth is at the foundation of banking profitability, but it will be hard to come by in 2026, mirroring the low single-digit trends of 2025. National banks seem to be able to dial their growth up and down at will, and direct banks and fintechs will continue to make inroads. For regional players that will translate into low single-digiti growth amid eroding share. At the same time, net–interest–margin expansion will be constrained by deposit repricing as customers churn to higher-yielding options, aided by advancements in AI that will make it easier for them to compare rates and move money. Banks should expect 2026 to be defined by hard-fought battles for primary relationships, requiring the sophisticated decision intelligence to acquire, retain and grow profitable customers.
YTD Deposit Growth by Bank Segment
Portfolio & Acquisition Rates by
Lines of Business
Sources: Curinos Deposit Analyzers, bank public reporting
* Includes on-balance-sheet deposits from banks primarily in the business of banking as a service. Does not include funds swept from those banks into deposit networks
3. M&A churn can be a high-stakes battleground.
This year has seen a surge in M&A among financial institutions, with more than 125 deals year to date, and even more are expected in 2026. This year’s transactions alone have placed more than $200 billion of deposits “in play” because, on average, 11% of customers churn within the first 90 days post-conversion. That’s because the machinations of a merger—an altered branch landscape, changes to account numbers, the need to reset ACH, etc.—can create significant friction. With only 7% of the population switching providers annually, any customer relationships lost to merger disruption can be painfully significant. That means banks involved in deals need to manage churn effectively through tailored products, strong value propositions and decision intelligence. For banks not involved, neighboring M&A can create opportunity, but only if they have the insights and tools to act quickly and surgically to identify and attract segments that are prone to churn.
US Bank M&A Deals Announced in 2025
Benchmark M&A Deposit Attrition
Consumer Banking
Note(s): Data includes deals announced between January 1, 2025 and November 26, 2025
Source(s): S&P Global | Curinos Analysis
4. Amid the rise of non-bank competitors, wallets are delaminating.
These days, it seems almost everyone is a “bank.” Non-bank competitors—from Chime and Cash App to SoFi, Robinhood, Brex and Mercury—continue to take share across consumer, mass affluent, wealth and small business segments. These purpose-built newcomers are now more “market powerhouses” than “neo-banks,” and they’re winning by delivering digitally native, high-speed and highly targeted financial experiences built on modern infrastructure. That’s created a delamination of the wallet: customers are increasingly comfortable splitting their financial relationships across multiple providers. Indeed, more than 50% of consumers surveyed say they have four or more FI relationships, up from 7% only since 2019. Traditional providers face hurdles, such as legacy systems, regulatory requirements and back books that inhibit aggressive repricing. They’ll need to respond by doing an end-around: using AI-fueled decision intelligence to improve targeting, deepen relationships with precision and overcome structural disadvantages.
5. Stablecoin: Even if the hype is overstated, better to be prepared.
Stablecoins are no longer hypothetical—they’re being used for real operating transactions, making them a board-level issue for banks. Institutions need to come to grips with how big stablecoin may be and break the potential down into use cases by the types of their segments that may adopt it. Already stablecoin is being used for cross-currency transactions, but the big question is how much of the stored-value deposit base it will disintermediate. Some estimates are in the trillions. And although the extent of long-term adoption remains uncertain, the complexity that stablecoin introduces will increase the importance of decision intelligence and customer understanding. Banks that begin disciplined scenario planning now will be better positioned to navigate a range of adoption outcomes tomorrow.
STABLECOIN OVERVIEW
Source: Curinos Analysis
6. AI-enabled decision intelligence is moving down the maturity curve more quickly than expected.
Banks have laid groundwork for Ai-enabled decision intelligence through years of analytics, early-stage machine learning and risk-management discipline. The industry is well-suited to quick adaptation, and the race is on. Leading institutions are running generative AI initiatives and exploring vendor solutions across KYC, workflow automation, customer service and marketing. But the next evolution will be to integrate these capabilities into unified decision intelligence systems. In an era in which more than half of customers would rather interact with a chatbot than a person—a stunningly rapid development—the most advanced organizations are moving toward adaptive learning platforms that connect data, decisions and customer actions across the lifecycle. This shift marks the difference between AI as a set of experiments and AI as core infrastructure. And that infrastructure needs to be native to the industry, built with the compliance guardrails and auditability that the financial services requires, rather than borrowed from other industries and bolted on.
Technology maturity for banks to optimize customer-level decision intelligence
Source: Curinos analysis
7. Decision intelligence is the engine of precision growth.
Curinos is integrating signals, market intelligence and a patented adaptive engine into a single platform to help banks optimize acquisition, onboarding, deepening and retention. It’s based on a detailed contextual understanding of customers, making sense of it, then acting intelligently across siloed workflows. Real-world results—including 200% lifts in targeting response rates, significant deposit growth without discounts, and 200–300% improvements in conversions to high-yield savings accounts—demonstrate the power of AI-driven lifecycle management to shorten or even eliminate the distance between insight and profitable action. It’s all about spending less but winning more by focusing on the customers who create real, sustained value. In a world in which customers rarely switch primary providers and the cost of acquisition has doubled in less than five years, precision growth, transparent guardrails and explainable decisioning will define which banks succeed in 2026 and beyond.
Acquiring High-Value
Customers through Targeting
Growing Deposits
through Experimentation
Source: Curinos initiatives & analysis
