LevelField Financial, a crypto-friendly “bank” without a bank charter, has obtained conditional state approval to acquire Burling Bank, a state-chartered Chicago community bank with $206 million in assets. Crypto-friendly and crypto-native banks are increasingly operating like traditional banks. That would be a mistake: As crypto firms acquire banks or receive bank charters—and as banks build crypto-related businesses—the lines will blur between legacy and decentralized financial systems. Banks must eventually be prepared to do it all.
FICO has partnered with Plaid to incorporate cash flow data from consumers’ checking, savings, and money-market accounts into its UltraFICO Score. The updated scoring model is designed to give lenders a more comprehensive view of a customer’s creditworthiness than legacy credit files indicate. Consumers who have credit products can access more, but those who don’t are less likely to be approved. Yet in a short time, scoring has evolved to better reflect consumers’ everyday financial behaviors and their willingness and ability to pay. This should get more credit products into more consumers’ hands.
CVS Health’s Aetna is adding conversational generative AI (genAI) to its insurance website and mobile app. Aetna’s move highlights how insurers can use genAI to become more attractive to employer benefit packages.
JPMorgan Chase signed updated contracts with Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar, and Akoya, accounting for more than 95% of open banking data requests to the bank’s systems. FIs that have made no effort to securely transmit consumer data are lagging technology-forward peers in customer experience and consumer privacy and security. Without a policy nudge, it’s easy for FIs to be tempted to put open banking on the back burner—alongside the digital transformation that should have come with it.
Bank of America (BofA) recently introduced 401(k) Pay for plan sponsors and participants. It handles recordkeeping, flexible deposit options, retirement income planning, and financial advice. retirement custodians have a particular opportunity to cater to Gen Zers, who often job hop, causing their retirement accounts to multiply. They also increasingly live frugally and save and invest aggressively. To attract Gen Zers, plan custodians should distribute both traditional and nontraditional savings and investment products and offer tools like automated investing and financial education.
Intuit signed a multiyear strategic partnership with OpenAI with over US $100 million per year to embed OpenAI’s models into Intuit’s software. The models will enable AI agents for Turbotax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp. Intuit’s OpenAI deal foreshadows a seismic transformation in how users experience applications— where generative interactions become the norm, AI agents handle tasks on users’ behalf, and copilots integrate seamlessly into daily workflows. In financial services, it introduces the capacity to quickly interact with complex data and take action.
Three major AI releases—Microsoft’s Agent 365, Google’s Gemini 3 Pro, and xAI’s Grok 4.1—could point the way to how businesses will deploy and govern AI. Following OpenA’s GPT 5.1, each new product update approaches intelligence from a different angle: Microsoft is offering operational control, Gemini is touting multimodal reasoning and search, and xAI is demonstrating emotional fluency. The brands that map these tools to specific workflows—governance with Microsoft, discovery and search with Google, and engagement with xAI—could see faster execution, sharper insights, more resilient customer experiences, and tangible ROI.
Lloyds Banking Group will acquire Curve, a London-based digital wallet. Acquiring Curve is a valuable first step toward embracing digital wallet payments solutions. However, Lloyds faces a challenge of incentivizing its users to choose Curve over competitors like PayPal and Klarna, which have established rewards systems. Embedding features and perks into Curve could help create a flywheel effect to trap more volume within its ecosystem.
Gen Zers are becoming increasingly financially independent. A Pathward and Mastercard study of Gen Zers found that 70% of post-college respondents are mostly or completely financially independent, up from 37% in college and 44% in a college alternative. According to our June 2025 report “Future-Proofing Banking Through Customer-Centric Journeys,” banks must pivot from a strategic model based on selling financial products and services to one in which the bank guides customers through solutions to their financial needs and different life stages.
A J.D. Power customer satisfaction benchmark ranked Citi No. 1 for US mortgage origination, above Bank of America (BofA). The study suggests that lenders are changing their sales model from a focus on volume over service to one emphasizing consultation and advice to enhance customer trust and deepen relationships. Consumers should feel supported in the mortgage market. How borrowers feel about the origination experience, from awareness through closing, should strongly influence their choice of provider amid frequent negative headlines and interest rate uncertainty.
According to a PYMNTS study sponsored by Block, 42% of scam victims consider changing to a new bank, and 19% have done so. That may be nearly 10 percentage points higher than bank switching in the general population. The financial losses FIs face from compensating customers for fraud and chasing down lost funds may eclipse their loss of business from customers who have been scammed. FIs’ brand value may also fall when they fail to put in place the right protections.
In today’s episode, we explore whether MrBeast’s pivot from giving away money to managing it marks a natural evolution or a red flag and if we looking at the rise of a financial services super-app that competes with banks—or a NerdWallet-style affiliate play that sells Gen Z customers to other financial service providers? Join the discussion with host and Head of Business Development Rob Rubin, and Principal Analysts Tiffani Montez and Max Willens.
Robinhood has partnered with Gopuff to deliver cash that customers have withdrawn from their Robinhood bank accounts. Robinhood is building on its super-app strategy for Gen Zers and millennials to draw them in with entirely new financial products: It recently added trading for nontraditional assets as well as “event contracts” to trade bets with other users. The Gopuff cash delivery partnership blends premium banking services that younger consumers expect with the digital access and convenience they’re accustomed to.
Another data-access domino fell this week as Charles Schwab followed Fidelity’s move to restrict credential-based access for fintechs and other third parties. Open banking for bank accounts has thrived in the private sector as banks, vendors, and trade groups have partnered to enable a rich ecosystem of fintechs and other software providers. Data security and liability are only reasonable excuses for FIs to kick third-parties out of their systems when they don’t have the resources to build alternative access methods.
Block’s latest earnings report revealed strong performance from Cash App, in contrast to Square's disappointing results. Banks once feared that neobanks would usurp them, but it’s now clear that these fintechs primarily compete with each other. After consolidating industry niches, they’ve scaled rapidly—expanding their product offerings as they fight for the same consumers.
PNC said this week that it would open more than 300 new or renovated branches by 2030, nearly 100 more than it had planned as of last year. The expansion is broad-based and includes branch investments in Florida, Tennessee, and Illinois. Branches are a crucial marketing tool for banks, even when their customers have largely migrated to digital channels—like an online retailer that has “showroom” stores with a curated selection of products. It’s not just about how many branches and where they are, but also how they are designed.
Last week, Charles Schwab announced that it will acquire Forge Global for $660 million. Forge is a platform that lets retail investors buy and sell shares in private companies. Legacy financial services firms’ puts alternative assets on step closer to the mainstream. But the impact for retail investors remains to be seen. Companies that offer access to private shares have run into legal and financial trouble before, and the SEC has strict guidelines for who can invest in unregistered securities. Schwab is wise to tread carefully by limiting investments in private shares to the wealthiest investors to start.
This year, media and entertainment brands will spend nearly twice as much on linear TV ads (10.0%) as they will on over-the-top (OTT) streaming services (5.4%), according to MediaRadar data and an August 2025 EMARKETER forecast.
The US Senate is moving to end the government shutdown, but the compromise deal leaves out guarantees to extend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) healthcare tax credits. Without ACA subsidies, younger and healthier consumers will likely drop out of the insurance pool, leaving older and higher-risk enrollees behind. That would drive up premiums and further reduce plan enrollment, putting pressure on insurers and shrinking consumer choice.
In recent regulatory filings, JPMorgan and Bank of America (BofA) said they’re responding to government requests related to policies and processes around “providing, maintaining, or discontinuing financial products or services to certain clients or potential clients.” The fire politicians are stoking introduces reputational and business risks for banks among customers as well as the risk of regulatory action by agencies that have traditionally demanded rigorous screening of current and prospective customers.