Reflections on Two Industry Conferences
I attended two industry conferences in the past three weeks: Alkami Co:lab and Finovate Spring. I came away with the same thought after each event:
Most community-bank executives and board members are not getting enough direct exposure to how rapidly banking technology is changing.
At Alkami, I saw AI agents that allowed customers to design, test, and deploy new digital banking applications in minutes. At Finovate, I saw fintech startups rethinking payments, onboarding, lending, analytics, customer engagement, and operations from the ground up.
But what struck me most wasn’t any single product demo or new use of technology.
It was the growing gap between the pace of innovation occurring across the industry, in contrast to the visibility that many traditional banking leaders have into those changes.
Too many institutions still operate inside bubbles of legacy assumptions, vendor roadmaps, peer comparisons, and internal operational concerns. Meanwhile, the underlying technology and competitive landscape are evolving rapidly.
The industry conversation inside many banks is still:
“How do we improve our current model?”
Meanwhile, outside those walls, others are thinking:
“How has the model itself been rewritten?”
That’s a very different conversation.
The banks that survive and thrive over the next decade may not be the largest banks. But they will almost certainly be the leadership teams most willing to:
- expose themselves to new ideas
- challenge legacy assumptions
- experiment early and often
- and rethink how banking actually gets delivered
You don’t have to adopt every new technology.
But if leadership never sees the emerging future firsthand, they risk defending a business model that is already being rewritten around them.
Conferences like these are no longer just networking events. They are strategic reconnaissance.
