Canada’s Laurentian Bank agreed to break apart and sell itself after years of lackluster performance. National Bank of Canada will buy Laurentian’s consumer and small business banking portfolios at book value. Laurentian struggled to differentiate itself favorably. And its lack of scale means it hasn’t had the resources to modernize its infrastructure and operations or grow beyond its home market of Quebec. With the breakup of banks, the list of large financial institutions in Canada is shrinking, and the largest are only getting bigger.

PNC’s redesigned app, launching in H1 2026, will include “incremental functionality.” The bank hinted at digital direct deposit switching and instant debit card issuance. The new app is a culmination of several years’ worth of work replatforming digital banking. PNC’s aggressive strategy for branch banking includes deploying $2 billion on more than 300 new or renovated branches through 2030 and hiring 2,000 people to support them. When executed well, branch investments should pay off with increased brand awareness and more sales across channels.

From Q1 to Q2 2025, search share of voice (SOV) declined steeply for some banking sites. For example, Wells Fargo fell from 3.83% to 1.21% and NerdWallet from 3.66% to 1.68%. At the same time, StudentAid.gov entered the top five and ConsumerFinance.gov entered the top 10. Since FIs can’t control events that drive people’s need for information, they should be prepared to offer education and advice tailored to their customers’ needs and anticipate other resources to which they should direct customers. If an FI is only a place to buy and administer financial products and services, it can’t be positioned as a trusted advisor.

Green Dot’s fintech business and licensed bank are being separated and acquired—the former by a private equity firm and the latter by an $839 million commercial bank. The total value of the deal is estimated to be between $825 million and $1.1 billion. B2B services, including banking as a service, has been Green Dot’s growth engine. Carving off the noncore, lower-margin, declining part of the business will allow the company to focus on where it has the greatest growth opportunities. A bank can best leverage its expertise and infrastructure to operate the businesses that Green Dot has struggled with.

In 2025, 82% of US consumers did not increase their emergency savings, including 33% whose emergency savings decreased and 18% who had none to begin with. Financial institutions (FIs) are in a strong position to help consumers save. When they do so successfully, they can enhance customer loyalty and help them stay on firmer financial ground, making them high-quality customers for non-depository banking products and services.

Revolut sold shares that valued the company at $75 billion. The amount raised was unclear, but the buyers included several venture firms and asset management firms that commonly invest in private shares. Revolut’s global success has been remarkable. But it may just crowd the graveyard of foreign neobanks that have tested the US waters. N26 quit in 2022 after two years. When Bunq tried in 2023, it gave up after getting tied up in regulatory reviews. Monzo still operates in the US but gave up hope of getting a banking license. Incumbents have a lot to fear, but Revolut doesn’t have a slam dunk.

Canada published the draft of its Stablecoin Act as part of its Budget 2025 Implementation Act. It applies to stablecoins issued by entities that are not prudentially regulated. For Canadian banks and fintechs, the impending legislation signals that stablecoins are normalizing everywhere as a regulated alternative to cash as a store of value and for electronic payments. The use cases are particularly interesting for Canadian financial institutions and stablecoin issuers who will use stablecoins to move money across the US border.

SitusAMC—a vendor to banks including JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Morgan Stanley—had a data breach whose scope and severity it’s still investigating. The compromised data was related to residential mortgages and may include Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information. Even the best-prepared financial services companies need to be ready to respond to data breaches. Vague assurances before or after a breach suggest bankers aren’t paying attention to necessary details. They must be explicit and transparent about safeguards and breach remediation.

Scott Simpson, the president of America’s Credit Unions, called a recent ABA survey "deliberately deceptive" and said it casts credit unions unfairly. The study’s conclusions play a tiny part in an endless war over credit unions’ tax-exempt status and federal disclosure requirements. The ABA survey was designed to prove a point, but the threat to the banking industry is real: Credit unions may compete more effectively with banks because of a lower regulatory and tax burden than banks. The fight will intensify as credit unions get bigger.

Block plans to offer savings and investing products for children 6 to 12 alongside savings tools for parents of even younger children. It introduced a banking product in 2021 for teens. And this fall it announced a high-yield savings product for the same demographic. Chase and Capital One offer products for kids, but banks overall do not. Young consumers are smartphone- and app-native and see any interaction with a bank in that context. The hook for a financial services company is now an experience—not a product.

Wealthfront, a roboadvisory wealth tech, announced Wealthfront Home Lending, a mortgage platform for purchase loans and refinancing. It will offer fixed- and adjustable-rate conventional and jumbo loans up to $5 million. Wealthfront Home Lending will for now be an incremental revenue source. But it threatens banks’ mortgage business by accelerating growth in digital mortgage companies. Online lenders like Rocket Mortgage already compete in the space on customer convenience, digital experience, and mortgage rates. Banks will struggle to catch up.

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.

Banks are gradually improving speed, control, and transparency in mobile banking—but as expectations rise, incremental updates won’t cut it. Our ninth annual study reveals where real-time innovation can still set new leaders apart.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.