Future Branches Austin 2026 Blog

In this Future Branches Austin 2025 keynote case study, Ben Maxim of MSUFCU explained why his team created an R&D function ahead of the innovation lab. He outlined how design thinking, rapid experimentation, and clear viability testing help financial institutions explore new ideas without disrupting the core business.

This Future Branches Austin 2025 session recap distills how BusinessNext's Andrew Piron and Foothill Credit Union's Jonah LaFollette are building teams and strategies that scale with technology. Learn why starting with vision, people, process, and data—before tools—helps credit unions and banks keep pace with member expectations and industry disruption.

At Future Branches Boston 2025, Howard Meller, President & CEO of People First Credit Union, explored how branches will evolve into AI-enabled relationship hubs by 2030. From omnichannel journeys and ethical data use to micro branches and advisory centers, he shared a practical roadmap for financial leaders preparing for shifting customer expectations.

At Future Branches Boston 2025, Reid Hinaga and Kelsey Young of Hawaii State Federal Credit Union shared how "aloha" can guide technology adoption in the branch. Their session highlighted the role of leadership, staff confidence, intentional engagement, and branch design in driving successful self-service adoption.

At Future Branches Boston 2025, Ami Iceman Haueter, Chief Experience Officer at MSUFCU, shared how her team balances service, strategy, and sustainability across a portfolio of 10 distinct brands. By right-sizing service models, using data to guide decisions, and empowering teams with clear roles, MSUFCU is building member experiences that are both scalable and sustainable.

At Future Branches Boston 2025, Marilyn Howe of Diebold Nixdorf shared how banks can use data and analytics to design more effective, customer-centric channel strategies. Drawing lessons from leading retailers and hospitality brands, she showed how access, rewards, personalization, and network optimization can drive loyalty and measurable business growth.

At Future Branches Boston 2025, Steve Nogalo of NCR Atleos outlined how AI is transforming self-service banking across customer experience, operations, design, and security. From natural language ATMs to agentic fraud detection, the session highlighted practical ways banks can use AI today while preparing for what comes next.

At Future Branches Boston 2025, Citizens Bank's Karen Swiatocha shared why leadership is the "uber lever" in a world of rapid change, AI acceleration, and shifting customer behaviors. Her keynote, "Leading Across the Seams: The Mindset and Behaviors Driving the Future of Service," highlighted how leaders can bridge digital and human channels, rebuild trust, and adapt with empathy and curiosity.

This session at Future Branches Boston 2025, moderated by Lisa Miller of cuCoach, brought together leaders from banks and credit unions to share real-world strategies for attracting and retaining talent. Panelists highlighted culture-centric hiring, differentiated benefits, leadership behaviors, and organization-wide accountability for employee experience as critical to staying competitive in today's banking landscape.

Future Branches Austin 2025 promises to be the most practical and implementation-focused retail banking conference yet. Set for November 18-20 at the JW Marriott Austin, this year's event goes far beyond theoretical discussions about branch transformation. It delivers actionable strategies from over 80 banking leaders who are actively reshaping how financial institutions serve customers through physical and digital channels.

Future Branches Austin 2025 brings together 400+ banking leaders to explore the future of branch strategy. From mastering transformation and fostering innovation to touring cutting-edge branches, navigating M&A, and solving staffing challenges, this event offers actionable insights and powerful networking for banks and credit unions of all sizes.

Future Branches Boston 2025 highlighted five key strategies for branch transformation and customer engagement. Banking leaders discussed data, technology, and employee development to drive change.

Financial institutions have a lot to offer customers beyond standard checking and savings accounts, and leading financial institutions are innovating to develop new products all the time.

If you did a quick poll of American consumers, you’d likely find that only half (or less) trust financial institutions. Trust in banks, credit unions, and other financial firms has fluctuated over the years, but trust is set to be an important competitive factor in the industry moving forward.

Self-service is becoming a critical component of the banking experience at the branch level and beyond. Many banks have already deployed intelligent teller machines, virtual banking, video consultations, and more. How you can determine what’s next in self-service at the branch level?

If your organization has been struggling with employee retention at the branch level, you’re not alone. According to one study, bank turnover at the nonofficer level reached 23.4% in 2022. Here are a few strategies that you can use to improve employee retention with coaching, career pathing, and other incentives.

It can be challenging to make banking exciting, but banks, credit unions, and other types of financial institutions must be able to engage people with authentic experiences on the channels they prefer, such as social media. US Bank launched an innovative social media campaign to do just that. Here, we’ll explore what US Bank did and what other institutions can learn from them.

This year, the Future Branches event series is proud to present the largest speaking faculty to date, featuring more than 100 speakers from leading banks and credit unions.

A total of 11 banking institutions have been fined by regulators to the tune of nearly $2 billion dollars after they used instant messaging apps such as iMessage and WhatsApp for business communications. It’s alleged that the financial institutions allowed and, in some cases, even encouraged the use of consumer-grade messaging apps, resulting in scores of record keeping violations.

Recognizing the need for more digital technology in schools, Affinity Federal Credit Union, has, for the past three years been holding annual tech drives where it asks communities to help children’s education prospects by donating their unwanted digital devices. 

Today it’s the turn of St. Louis based, Alltru Credit Union – formally known as 1st Financial Credit Union – and the way in which it’s helping its members become savvier to, and providing strategies to combat, the dangers of identity theft.

As the world slowly and tentatively returns to some semblance of normality following the COVID-19 crisis, there is an opportunity for banking brands to reevaluate their offering and seek better ways to meet the needs of customers.

It might be a concept which is rapidly fading from public consciousness, but many of you will remember a time when the local bank was a focal point for entire communities and the manager of said institution would been a pillar figure within them.

We are discussing the concept of platformification and the potential it presents to severely disrupt, not only the future of the physical bank branch, but the entire direction of the industry. However, we are always ones to find opportunity in challenge, so let's dive in and see what we can learn from the onset of platformification.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, of course, also driven us further into the arms of digital banking. However, there is still a place for physical branches in the world and many brands are now turning their formally sprawling locations into micro-branches.

Banking was already in a transitory phase before anyone even heard the term COVID-19, so now would seem a prudent time to take stock and see if the pandemic has altered that trajectory or accelerated it.

As people who work and innovate in the physical branch space, we constantly find ourselves being assailed by the digital world. For some time now, doomsaying pundits have been calling time on the brick-and-mortar bank and counting down the days to ultimate dissolution.

Bank branches are still valuable to consumers, even those who use digital channels. As consumers increasingly seek out a ‘human touch’ for specific financial use cases, branches remain the dominant channel for consumers of all ages when opening new accounts and purchasing complex products.

With the advent of a mobile-centric world, the role of brick-and-mortar is under pressure to adapt. Fortunately, the same tools that are changing where the branch fits in to overall strategies are enabling their new roles.

Smaller businesses can often be the most innovative. They may not have the huge budgets or dedicated innovation labs of their bigger competitors, but they are often filled with eager and hungry minds which feel a greater bond to the brand they represent and a desire to give it their greatest effort.

The situation will likely soon arise where the cost of maintaining a cash-based system will outweigh its value, and this is the point at which we may see cash becoming a thing of the past.

WBR’s Future Branches Austin conference is the leading event for forward-thinking banks and credit unions. Here’s how event sponsorship can open doors for your organization.

People generally don't engage with banks for fun and many find the world of finance confusing and frustrating. That's why it's important to craft financial literacy content to provide the necessary information in an easy-to-understand and accessible fashion.

Many financial institutions already use AI to some degree. Examples include using voice analytics in telephone banking as a security measure and utilizing AI to perform risk assessments on customers applying for loans.

Banks have been targeting personas and microsegments for many years now. Until recently, these low-level personalization efforts have been sufficient to act as a brand differentiator. However, in recent years, the more advanced data-driven personalization being pushed forward by big brand retailers

The future of the humble ATM is constantly debated. Many experts question its value as a self-service channel in a digital world where online and mobile banking, cashless transactions, and even cryptocurrencies are gaining prominence - particularly amongst younger consumers who have only known digital-first experiences.

Amazon can use its platform to connect customers who are looking to open checking accounts to those same banks and provide the technology and marketing services required to both open and manage them.

The inexorable onslaught of digital technology and online connectivity is offering both challenge and opportunity to industries all over the world. However, the banking industry is arguably finding digital transformation more challenging than most - the future of the physical branch seems unclear at best.

Millennials are now in their twenties and thirties and have been disrupting the banking world for some time. But now a new generation is starting to mature, and they bring a host of new experiences with them. GenZers are often referred to as digital natives, which means they have never lived in a world without tech.

Bank branches are closing at an alarming rate globally. However, amidst all the closures, Lloyds is going against the grain, having just spent several million pounds opening a huge new Halifax branch near Oxford Street in central London - and it's a far cry from the traditional image of a British bank.

With over 1,100 branches in operation, Citizens is now in year two of a ten-year plan not to reduce its overall number of branches, but to reduce the square footage of each branch to do more with less space.

When is a branch not a branch? When it's a bowling alley, of course. It might sound too extraordinary to be true, but the UK's Virgin Money has totally reinvented the branch concept, turning its Virgin Money Lounges into community locations where customers can go to relax, unwind, and even work on their arm swing.

China Construction Bank (CCB) has opened a branch in Shanghai staffed almost entirely by robots brimming with artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and facial recognition (FR) technology.

Agile, innovative, and capitalizing on consumer distrust for traditional financial services in the wake of The Great Recession, FinTech innovators emerged by the dozen, armed with exciting and consumer-friendly tech that promised to improve customer experience and change the way people manage their money.

With so much of the financial industry being taken online these days, it's easy to think that the days of brick and mortar banking sector are numbered. However, Regions Bank isn't ready to give up yet with its bold new branch design.

Most financial institutions are incorporating technology into their operations in one way or another. However, UnionBank is going one step further with its first 100% digital branch.

Since the new tax reform bill, JP has announced a five-year investment plan totaling $20 billion, designed to help its employees, and support job and local economic growth.

The US’s second-biggest bank by assets has started to experiment with the concept of unmanned branches. No greeters. No tellers. Just machines.

Near-field communication (NFC) has many practical applications in several industries - from healthcare to retail - and now Wells Fargo is employing the technology in its ATMs.

If Amazon is able to muscle its way into grocery – what’s to stop it coming for the banking industry next?

Umpqua is reimagining the branch as a community center, where people are invited to hang out, use the meeting rooms for their own business projects, or even for yoga classes.

First launched as a digital-only bank, Capital One has decided to do the opposite – going to the expense of building branches, when most others are closing them down.