10 Critical Lessons for Banking in 2026
Here’s what you need to know about the seismic shifts disrupting the banking landscape. As Jason Mikula noted, federal regulators are now “open for business”, issuing new bank licenses (after many years of NOT issuing almost any). This changes everything.
1. CHANGE is hard. Stable policy creates an implied promise. What happens when bank charters become abundant? NYC taxi medallions sold for $1.3 million in 2014. Then Uber was allowed to compete. Medallions sell for $100k now.
2. Incumbents have a HEAD START. The charter is not a single-taxi medallion. It’s a license to go after the whole market and be everywhere all at once. A bank can grow, evolve, do embedded finance & BaaS, launch digital asset business lines…
3. Charters SHOULD be available to new applicants. Business licenses are not supposed to be exclusive clubs for connected insiders, forever unavailable to the “have nots”. If you follow the rules and meet the standards, you should be able to get a charter.
4. Banking is HARD. There is a huge patchwork of regulations. Compliance, audits, and examinations tie up resources. Minor issues become massive headaches. Affiliated entities get pulled into regulatory oversight, capital & liquidity requirements, etc.
5. PARTNERSHIPS remain a great way to “have your cake and eat it too”. Non-banks often want banking products & capabilities integrated into their business plans… But getting a charter is like building a whole farm just to make a salad. Go to the store to buy veggies. Go to a bank to get deposit, payment and credit products.
6. Never underestimate the best TECH FIRMS. If there is a way to make de novo charters wildly successful… You know some combo of these guys would figure it out quickly: Bezos, Musk, Britt (Chime), Storonsky (Revolut), Siemiatkowski (Klarna), Collison (Stripe), Tenev (Robinhood), and Armstrong (Coinbase).
7. There’s a BIG WORLD out there. International competition is intense and innovative. USA is only ~4.5% of global population. American banks are largely unaware of what is already happening elsewhere. Even $2 trillion megabank Wells Fargo is 90% USA-focused. America must adapt or lose, in banking as well as other industries.
8. Always keep AI “top of mind”. The practical definition of a “bank” is getting disrupted. Agentic AI will intermediate on your behalf. Your agent will know where all your capital is, whether owned (deposits, investments) or borrowed. The agent will know all of the ways you use that capital (repayments, obligations, expenses) and where future capital will come from (wages, dividends, asset sales). You may lose awareness of all these details. You’ll get a “dashboard” of balances and cash flow forecasts, with scenario planning and recommendation engines. No more “logging in” to a bank app or website. No more entering payment details. No more ATM or branch visits. AI will be your personal banker. It may even choose your banks.
9. You are NOT an “AI Company”. You won’t impress anyone with an AI sales pitch unless you’re Nvidia, Xai, Google, OpenAi… They are “AI companies”. You run a company USING the AI. You’re not a spreadsheet company because you use Excel very well. You will impress people by “acting casual” about AI.
“Of course we use AI in most of our business processes. The meteor is coming for companies that don’t.” Figure out your business strategy, with valuable solutions to real problems for paying customers in meaningfully differentiated ways. Build your brand around your differentiated solutions. Build your business processes to keep those brand promises. Use AI to augment and amplify those business processes. Focus on the right KPI’s… Speed, cost, convenience, risk, compliance… Integration into customers’ lives and activities… Future-proofing your business model as agentic AI displaces foot traffic and SEO…
10. Birds are real. The comet is coming. Old business models are on borrowed time. Dinosaurs will not survive. Some bird-like dinos will endure and thrive. Find those factors that make the difference. Feathers, mobility… Whatever works… It has to be more than branches, an app, a website, and some commercial lending reps in your region.
Banks have the DNA to prosper in the next decade. It will take rapid evolution.
