How AI, CX, and Trust Must Coexist

Jim Marous (00:12):

Banking is no longer a competition with the branch down the street, it's competing with every digital experience your customers have before they even open your app or even open the door to your branch.

Jim Marous (00:27):

Expectations around speed, simplicity, and trust are being set by the big tech firms, fintechs, embedded finance, and even non-financial institutions. And for many banks, however, the gap is growing between what the digital experience is and the trust.

Jim Marous (00:48):

This is why today's conversation matters. I'm joined by Phil Thomlinson, Senior Vice President of global offerings at TaskUs, and Pragya Agarwal, the Vice President of Financial Crimes and Risk Operations. They're sitting down at the intersection of customer experience, advanced technology, and risk, where speed and trust have to coexist every day.

Jim Marous (01:12):

In this episode, we're going to unpack the next generation banking and what it looks like. Where AI is delivering real value, and how banks can move faster, innovate more responsibly, and still protect customers in an always-on, app-driven world. So, let's start from the beginning. Could you both introduce yourselves a little bit to our audience, and also tell us a little bit about TaskUs?

Phil Thomlinson (01:38):

Yeah. Thanks, Jim. Great to be here. Thank you for having us. I'm Phil. I am the Senior Vice President for Global Offerings at TaskUs. So, I lead all of our practice teams, our service line, our SME teams for all of the different services that we offer, whether that's our care offering, trust and safety, fraud, risk and compliance, our AI safety, our go-to-market services.

Phil Thomlinson (02:01):

So, all of the subject matter experts across those different services live in my world. TaskUs are a US-headquartered multinational business process outsourcing. We focus on tech-enabled services, primarily serving high-growth tech companies.

Phil Thomlinson (02:17):

Our client portfolio, I would say, is 90% social media, dating, gaming, fintechs, crypto, sort of new-age types of companies versus more traditional brick-and-mortar, big box retail, large financial institutions, large insurance.

Phil Thomlinson (02:36):

We have some of that, but our bag is more than new generation of companies that are emerging to fill a lot of the gaps that I think some of the more traditional institutions have left.

Pragya Agarwal (02:44):

I'm Pragya. I'm based out of New Delhi, India, and I work with Phil, and I lead the financial crimes and compliance team, the service line, or the practice here at TaskUs. So, everything that we do under anti-money laundering, identity verification, and of course, fraud.

Pragya Agarwal (03:02):

And with so much new age fraud, our plates are kind of full just dealing with clients' issues on account takeovers, chargebacks, disputes, and the likes. So, everything related to fraud and financial crime risk is what is handled by my team.

Jim Marous (03:18):

So, traditional banking models are built around branches, in-person services, and paper. That model is breaking down and changing, yet many institutions continue to build their digital platform as if it's still an in-person platform. How should established financial institutions really rethink the customer journey from onboarding through everyday transactions?

Pragya Agarwal (03:46):

Sure, I can take that. So, you're right. For over a century, I think the branch or the bank was kind of the psychological anchor of banking. So, if something went wrong, people had a physical place to go to. Now, as those buildings disappear, the brick-and-mortar banks don't exist or have gone down, I think banks need to realize that digital trust is built through empathy.

Pragya Agarwal (04:11):

They don't really need a very polished-looking app or a very good-looking app like a branch. But what they should make it feel like is the smartest person in the branch is in your pocket. Is helping you out.

Pragya Agarwal (04:27):

So, this means literally moving from onboarding as a one-time chore or a one-time activity to continuous identity verification or monitoring. So, in my view, in 2026, if you ask me to upload a PDF of a utility bill or a physical identity copy, then you've already lost me there.

Pragya Agarwal (04:50):

My bank should be able to identify me through … instead of having 50 different passwords for, say, a doctor, your rental car company, or your DMV, you should be able to use a bank-verified ID to prove who you are instantly as well as safely. So, the bank should become like my anchor for my digital identity, and not just for my money.

Pragya Agarwal (05:16):

So, I should be able to use my bank-verified status to do any activity. It could be renting an apartment or signing a contract. So, in my view, that's how the whole banking scenario is changing. It's becoming like the key to my digital life, really, and not just a place where my money is to sit.

Jim Marous (05:35):

So, Phil, interestingly, what she just said is so logical, but we see (at least in the research we're doing) that financial institutions can talk it really well and understand what needs to be done, but they stumble at the starting gate.

Jim Marous (05:55):

You're at the front end of a lot of these offerings with both financial institutions and non-financial institutions. Where do financial institutions get hung up at the starting gate? What throws them off from the very beginning that makes it tough to really move from traditional banking to more of a digital model?

Phil Thomlinson (06:15):

It's such a great question, Jim, and I think most traditional banks these are the banks that have been brick and mortar, they've been around for a hundred years or 50 years. They're on the corners of the high streets of all the towns that we live in. They are, I think, failing by trying to recreate the traditional experience in a digital form.

Phil Thomlinson (06:34):

When you look at the neobanks, those that have launched in the last, let's say, five years, there's a huge sway of them in Europe, where I am, US as well. They have revolutionized that journey by reimagining it from the ground up. They're also realizing that younger people don't see banking as a destination or a transaction as a destination that you only have to arrive at a few times a week.

Phil Thomlinson (06:58):

They see it as an always-on. It's sort of electricity that's humming in the background. You are transacting with your bank dozens of times a day, whether you're tapping to pay for your coffee or you're buying some crypto, or you are transferring money from this currency to that currency, like I just did last week.

Phil Thomlinson (07:17):

I was in Egypt with my family, I had to buy Egyptian dollars. Much easier to do it on the Neobank app, I get better rates. It happens instantly, and whatever I don't spend, I just transfer back to my Euro account. And those neobanks, I think, realize that people want that always-on capacity. And they're not trying to build a traditional bank online, they've reimagined the whole flow.

Phil Thomlinson (07:37):

And that I think is a huge threat to traditional banks, who, as the older generations sort of mature and as our Gen Zs and our Gen Alphas become the economic powerhouses in the economy, they're going to need to find a way to keep up. And I think we're seeing that happening in our client base.

Phil Thomlinson (07:58):

There are traditional banks who are trying to relaunch themselves, reimagine themselves in the new era. And then you've got these newer banks who are being very aggressive in the market, who have really, I think, eaten the traditional bank's lunch in a lot of cases. So, it's a very interesting time to be in the market.

Jim Marous (08:15):

Pragya, it's interesting, financial institutions and the whole digital banking environment feels like we want to do every transaction seamlessly and faster, and with the speed of everything else that's going on.

Jim Marous (08:33):

But we sometimes lose the reality that financial institution services are embedded in every part of our life. From toll booths that immediately take money out of our account to pay for the tolls on the road to making payments. But often, consumers don't even think about this.

Jim Marous (08:50):

But you mentioned in the very first answer that really, we have to think about the fact that it's not just speed, and it's not just simplicity, because that can actually, in some cases, work against trust; it’s how do you make it empathetic and build engagement as opposed to simply running that transaction daily.

Jim Marous (09:10):

How do you work with your clients to make it so they understand what goes on beyond the simple speed of transaction to really digging deeper into the way to build trust, sometimes through a slower engagement?

Pragya Agarwal (09:27):

Yeah, absolutely. And that's like a great question. And I would say, I think the big lesson from neobanks and tech giants, I think is about being able to predict that empathy. In my view, traditional banks are more like historians. They tell you what you did last month, they look at your transaction history and patterns. But the neobanks, or new-age banks, really tell you what's going to happen.

Pragya Agarwal (09:55):

So, if my bank sees I'm spending more on groceries than usual, it should be able to send me not just a low balance alert. But it should say like, “Hey, you're on track to be like $100 short of rent this Friday.” Or maybe, “You're overspending on grocery. Do you want me to move funds from one account to the other?” Or “Do you want me to move balances between your savings accounts?”

Pragya Agarwal (10:19):

So, I think that shift from recording the past to advising the future is how you kind of win your clients as well. Like think about Uber, you don't have to pay for the ride anymore. The payment just happens. That really is a gold standard, I think, to be able to predict that empathy and to be able to advise.

Pragya Agarwal (10:39):

And then any financial task, I think that requires a customer to stop and think is, in my view, a failure. Where the customer doesn't have to stop and think, and you're able to tell the customer what to do and how to act within like seconds, I think that is the future, and that's how we really win the customer as well.

Jim Marous (10:59):

So, that's the future. And I refer to it as not any longer looking in the rearview mirror but looking at the GPS of financial services to, as you say, predict with empathy, “Hey, you may want to watch out for this.” However, knowing traditional banking, this is a risky proposition for many financial institution leaders.

Jim Marous (11:19):

They say, “Well, what if we get it wrong? What if we tell them that this may happen when it really is maybe a little bit of a misread?” How do you build trust in the engagement of predicting what needs to be done in the future in a way where it's really managing the risk as opposed to complete risk avoidance?

Phil Thomlinson (11:41):

Yeah, it's another good question, and I'm not sure there's a perfect answer. And when I think about the risk tolerance of the younger generation today and their fluency with algorithmically generated customer journeys, which they're so used to through social media or streaming apps …

Phil Thomlinson (12:05):

I think it's just a more natural place for younger people to be, where if they get an alert on the 28th day of the month saying, “Hey, your balances are below. Do you want to apply for a loan?” They're a little less shaken by that, than maybe someone who's used to a traditional bank where you initiate the contact, you initiate the requests.

Phil Thomlinson (12:25):

Putting the ethical questions aside about whether someone should be upselling you a loan in the app or not, that's for another day's work. I think younger people – when I think about the generation of 20, 30-year-olds who grew up in a digital native world, it feels more normal for them.

Phil Thomlinson (12:43):

The other area where we're seeing huge investment, not just in financial services and banking but across, I think all sectors, is in agentic AI support solutions, where instead of now contacting a human, you're calling into a call center or you're on an app with a chatbot that is not just conversational. It can actually take action on your account, or it can act as an agent for you.

Phil Thomlinson (13:09):

That introduces also, I think, some potential risk there for the platforms, for the banks, for the operators, where if one of these agentic solutions does something, exposes your personal data, makes a transaction that you didn't authorize, or worse, allows a bad adapter into your account and then compromises your whole balance or to multiple customers.

Phil Thomlinson (13:33):

But this is the tradeoff I think that all companies (not just banks) have to work with. People expect 24/7 always-on real-time service. They don't want to wait for the bank to open at 9:00 AM. They want to be able to make the changes, update their addresses, request whatever it is they need in terms of products, all times of day.

Phil Thomlinson (13:54):

So, you need to embed this layer of AI to do that. But you trade off then some of that human-based innate security that comes with a teller who's experienced or a bank operator who knows and can tell when something's not quite right with an application. So, again, there are just tradeoffs, and I think we're seeing our customers adopt different risk appetites when it comes to that.

Phil Thomlinson (14:19):

I think some are more keen on sticking with the traditional ways of doing things, which is, “We'll allow you to initiate a loan, but we're going to have a human risk department. Our underwriters are going to review it, and they're going to make a decision, and it's going to take two or three days before they issue you any funds.”

Phil Thomlinson (14:35):

But there are other players who are using automated systems, and they're having the funds in your account within 10 seconds of applying. So, we're seeing a spectrum.

Jim Marous (14:42):

Well, it's interesting too, because ChatGPT has actually enlightened us into the power of the question as opposed to simply the answer. We're seeing more and more of the follow-up questions in the major generative AI platforms.

Jim Marous (14:58):

And I think that if financial institutions looked at what was going on and instead of just thinking they had to come up with, “Here's what you should do next,” maybe ask that one question that can more define what path that person's going. As you said, younger people are used to this every day.

Jim Marous (15:16):

They're used to it because they're using Uber so much. And Uber (as was referenced) really does this so well. It uses what they've done with you in the past to build the conversation going forward. But technology has really reshaped the overall financial services landscape. And banks now have more digital tools available than ever to give customers more visibility and control over their money in real time.

Jim Marous (15:42):

How has this impacted getting back to trust and authenticity and empathy? How do these digital tools really help the process of making consumers feel more customer comfortable with what their financial institution is doing?

Phil Thomlinson (16:01):

So, we don't think about technology, Jim, and what role it plays and what role a human then plays in that value chain, so to speak. Technology, AI is going to be great for low-complexity, high-repeatability automation. And if you think about it in terms of a fraud prevention system … and I'll talk about your question specifically in a moment when you're thinking more about the customer.

Phil Thomlinson (16:30):

But it's great for passing through millions and millions of records and finding anomalies and patterns and drawing insights and then recommending or at least pulling out a subset of those records for a human expert, a fraud expert, to review. Whose job it is to just look at the outliers or the anomalies and make a decision.

Phil Thomlinson (16:53):

And that's a tried and tested system where AI is doing top-of-funnel, high-volume, low-complexity work. Human is doing bottom of funnel, lower volume but higher complexity, more judgment required, perhaps some subjectivity required in the decision. When I think of our customer service and a bank customer or a neobank customer contacting the service line and saying, “Hey, I need some help with something.”

Phil Thomlinson (17:21):

I think you're right. Having an AI-powered system that is asking great, probing questions or offering very clear paths to a user about what they can do, and then either solving the issue end-to-end, depending on if it's a lower-complexity, more of a knowledge-based type query or a simple account update type query.

Phil Thomlinson (17:43):

But then recognizing that, “Oh, this person's asking something that's a little bit out of the norm. I need to then escalate this to a call center or to a banking agent or a human being who's going to be able to have a conversation with this person.”

Phil Thomlinson (17:53):

Whether that's because the issue has higher sensitivity or more security, or perhaps it's not clear what the customer wants, so I'm going to need someone to figure that out. So, again, the same principle applies.

Phil Thomlinson (18:06):

Top-of-funnel AI should be great for the triage. Further down the funnel, you are ultimately – there's never a world where you're not going to have a human being to escalate to, I think in both a care and a fraud example.

Jim Marous (18:19):

Behind the scenes, but forefront, fraud is obviously one of the biggest sources of fear and frustration for both consumers and for the financial institutions themselves. How can banks reduce that anxiety, build trust, and avoid unnecessary incident reporting or slow down the processes while still protecting customers? How are we doing that today?

Jim Marous (18:46):

Obviously, we have more tools available, but unfortunately the bad guys are moving as quickly as the good guys are. So, Pragya, how do you help reduce that frustration and anxiety?

Pragya Agarwal (18:59):

Yeah, absolutely. And it is a question that keeps most of our clients up at night today. It is the single biggest source of customer friction today. And the old and archaic ways of stopping it by sending those text codes that never arrive, I think that's really now out of the window. I think we've moved more towards what we call the invisible trust.

Pragya Agarwal (19:22):

We are looking at very unique things that we are seeing now is how do you predict how you're holding your phone or the rhythm of your typing? Or even the way you're scrolling. So, there are tools that can predict that, and that is truly what is unique to you as well.

Pragya Agarwal (19:41):

So, if a fraudster tries to use your account, the bank or the app can now predict and it knows instantly whether it's you or it's someone else. Because these things which are very unique to you, they can identify the rhythm if that is wrong, if the way you're typing or the things that you've been doing are very unique to you.

Pragya Agarwal (20:02):

So, there are no passwords required. For example, again, if a card gets a compromise, you don't have to wait like seven days now for a new card to arrive. Now, banks are sort of self-healing now. The moment a fraud is detected, a new digital card just arrives or is issued to your Apple or your Google wallet. At the banks, AI just automatically updates all your information.

Pragya Agarwal (20:28):

It could be on all your social media or streaming apps, your Netflix or Amazon, or all the subscriptions that you have so that you're not waiting and everything. So, your life just moves on as usual, and you're not really waiting. So, I think those unique features that you have, your app, or the banking app should be able to predict that in order to build their trust.

Jim Marous (20:52):

So, following up on that question, obviously financial services I mentioned in the introduction, has been embedded across all digital platforms, and becoming more so. What new challenges does this create for fraud prevention, for empathy, and for regulatory compliance?

Phil Thomlinson (21:11):

Yeah, it's a great question. You think about services like WeChat in China, which really began as a messaging platform, but it's become an everything app for payments, for rent, for identity verification, for communication, just for everything. And to your point, you no longer go to a financial service, or at some parts of the world, you're no longer going to just a financial services app and make your transaction.

Phil Thomlinson (21:38):

This is persisting and following you everywhere you go. And everything's being kind of bundled together in these all-in-one experience apps. I think China is probably the world leader there, but we've seen it in other markets.

Phil Thomlinson (21:51):

I mean, I don't know if you saw the news. There's a bank in, I think it was Brazil, they opened up in the last year. They have no branches, they have no app, they have no website. The entire end-to-end customer experience is via WhatsApp. It's just a WhatsApp chatbot, everything. And it's incredible.

Phil Thomlinson (22:11):

You think about the simplicity of it, but you also think about the risk, and you think about how do I verify someone's identity. How do I make sure that someone hasn’t stolen this person's phone? How do I ensure that there isn't a bad actor here who's compromised the account?

Phil Thomlinson (22:27):

And so, I think as the ease of access to banking becomes ubiquitous around the world, particularly in emerging markets, the bad actors are going to take advantage. And we see that. I think you mentioned it earlier, Jim. You said, well, the bad actors are operating as fast or faster than the good guys in this one.

Phil Thomlinson (22:49):

So, it's an adversarial game, and we're constantly having to one-up each other. And I think some days I feel like the bad guys are winning. Some days I feel like the good guys are winning, but it definitely is a journey. But I think these newer products, where you have these persistent, always-on digital products that aren't a financial services app, it's something else.

Phil Thomlinson (23:12):

Yes, it's definitely creating problems, and the fact that these are mostly taking traction in emerging markets where perhaps compliance levels are lower, enforcement levels are lower — yeah, it's definitely a challenge, and it's one that as a service provider to the banking industry and to fintechs like TaskUs, we're constantly trying to stay on top of trends.

Phil Thomlinson (23:36):

Pragya and her team are forever in conferences and summits and forums around the world trying to understand these new trends, and then trying to embed those practices into what we do and try to give our clients at least a little peek around the corner of what's happening.

Jim Marous (23:52):

It's interesting, getting back to Pragya's last response, there are so many more tools available to us to say what looks abnormal as opposed to what looks normal. So, you can say, “Geez, this embedded financial services,” usually, it's going to be in the same vicinity as the last transaction.

Jim Marous (24:12):

Usually, it's going to be doing things the way you've done it before, but it's looking for those aberrations to be behavior. Because people tend to behave in the same way they did the day before and the month before that.

Jim Marous (24:25):

In that the fact that all this digital data available to us, it's just a matter of making it all apply. But again, it gets back to how can you apply all this creating almost friction in the back office while not making it so the consumer even feels it's happening.

Jim Marous (24:43):

It's a balance between the experience, what you can do with AI, and again, the importance of risk and fraud and trust. When you're looking to buy now, pay later, which obviously is a major component of how financial services are being viewed today.

Jim Marous (25:00):

Maybe not the product itself, but the speed in which it happens around everything that's going on is disrupted lending and payments.

Jim Marous (25:09):

What is the rise of buy now, pay later? Tell us about the future of how the consumer wants your experience to be handled, how they want engagement to be handled. Risk management and even real-time decisioning.

Pragya Agarwal (25:24):

Yeah. Absolutely, Jim, I think you're right. BNPL has completely disrupted the industry. Because I think it's made us realize that lending is a feature, it's not a product anymore. So, nobody, I think, wakes up really wanting a loan.

Pragya Agarwal (25:39):

It could be a personal loan or a home loan, but I think what people really want is new furniture or a new house or a flight back home. So, I think BNPL has really taught us that decision has to happen at the point of need.

Pragya Agarwal (25:55):

So, if you can't say yes or no to a credit request in, say, two, three seconds, a customer is at checkout, you've lost the transaction. So, I think these platforms, the new platforms that we have, they look at alternative data like your shopping habits, your return rates, the patterns of shopping or spend that you have.

Pragya Agarwal (26:17):

So, I think it's about moving away from your static credit score type of thing, to more real-time, so-called character score, which is more unique and individual to a person and based on how you’re actually living your life in the digital world as well.

Jim Marous (26:35):

So, looking ahead (and getting to the title of our podcast here), how should banks balance automation, customer experience, AI, human judgment, and risk to protect customers, but also to manage trust and build empathy? What's the way to make this happen as we look ahead? And what are you looking forward to as we look ahead?

Phil Thomlinson (27:05):

Yeah, I think if I were advising a traditional bank about how to do this, I would say, “Look at what the neobanks are doing. Look at what young people particularly in emerging markets like Brazil or Sub-Saharan Africa or Indonesia or all these places where there's all these really interesting innovations happening around unified banking and unified everything apps.”

Phil Thomlinson (27:35):

“Look at how young people are engaging with these and think about how you reimagine your own experience.” Now, I don't think there's ever a world where everything is automated, particularly in a banking setting.

Phil Thomlinson (27:50):

You always need underwriters and tier two, tier three support agents and fraud experts who are (if not looking at every transaction or looking at every application) doing quality control, who are doing programmatic and systematic kind of insight management from within the system.

Phil Thomlinson (28:10):

And ultimately, you want your back office, as you described it, you want it to be mostly automated, but enough human oversight to stop the really bad stuff happening. And I think that's always going to be the tradeoff.

Phil Thomlinson (28:21):

We want to make sure that it's a hybrid between automation, technology, and people that allows banks to meet not just their compliance and their cost savings goals, but also their customer experience and growth goals in the markets that they care about. So, it's always going to be a balance and a tradeoff.

Jim Marous (28:40):

Pragya, how about your thoughts on that too?

Pragya Agarwal (28:43):

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think we're moving more towards a human-in-the-loop model for complex transactions, complex credits. Where AI is handling the massive data crunching aspects, but humans provide the explainability and the empathy to ensure that customers just don't feel rejected by black box or just by algorithms.

Jim Marous (29:07):

Everyone has to start somewhere. And there are so many priorities that financial institutions have. I'd like to hear from both of you as to where do financial institutions start. And from both of you also, what can get in the way of starting?

Jim Marous (29:24):

Again, back to almost the first question about the starting line. And where should financial institutions start today, no matter where they are, and what do they have to almost in the back of their mind process to say, “We've got to avoid this getting in the way?”

Phil Thomlinson (29:39):

I'll echo something I said earlier. For the traditional banks, stop trying to create your traditional offering online. It's convoluted, it's arcane, and it doesn't work. And young people in particular have no time for it.

Phil Thomlinson (29:56):

You think you're being slick and professional and modern and digital, but all you're doing is adding more technical debt to your system. Reimagine the experience from the ground up, listen to your customers, and build to meet them where they are.

Phil Thomlinson (30:15):

And in terms of what could get in the way of that, I think it's the classic stuff. How do you do all of that (which sounds fun and easy) but remain compliant, meet your internal goals, keep your shareholders happy, keep your board happy? That's the balance.

Phil Thomlinson (30:32):

And it's hard, but it's doable. And I think traditional financial institutions, should they wish to remain relevant for young people in 10 or 20 years’ time, have to go through this. They have to walk their tightrope.

Pragya Agarwal (30:45):

I agree. And in my view, in a world of deep fakes and AI-generated scams, I think the most valuable asset is being able to verify the truth. Whether it's verifying a person's identity or a job or the legitimacy of a merchant or a transaction. I think any financial institution or a bank must be that trusted intermediary.

Pragya Agarwal (31:10):

And I think it all starts from there. When you are verifying the person's identity. So, if you own that trust layer, I think you manage to stay relevant, even if the customer is using five different banks or five different apps to manage their money.

Pragya Agarwal (31:23):

So, I think it should be your banking services. Like Phil said, it should be very new age, so to say, where you should be able to just plug into a car or a refrigerator, a retail app, just anywhere. You shouldn't care where the customer is really interacting with you, as long as it's the right person, and you have the trust behind it.

Jim Marous (31:43):

It's very interesting, to both your points, the financial institution should be at the center of that whole trust ecosystem because payments and the flow of money is going to be a center part of everything that goes on.

Jim Marous (31:59):

It's going to be a question as to which financial institution in my 5, 6, 8 organizations I work with is going to own that. Because someone is going to do it better than everybody else. And Phil, you keep on referring to the young consumer; look at the young consumer.

Jim Marous (32:14):

I'm not a young consumer by far, but the reality is I'm doing as much digital banking, digital engagement as my 28-year-old son is doing. And that's not an aberration. Everyone is learning; through COVID and everything else, we've learned that the tap and pay is more important than the pulling out the card or pulling out the cash.

Jim Marous (32:37):

We're finding out, more importantly, as you travel, you don't need to convert money anymore. You don't need to worry about if the cards can be acceptable. The reality is, everything everywhere is tap and pay.

Jim Marous (32:53):

And if you look at organizations outside of financial and look at those organizations that have been built digitally or have done a great job converting digital (which is a whole lot fewer), you'll see where the future is.

Jim Marous (33:07):

And again, it gets down to I don't have to be the only one that owns the identity, owns the trust, but I want to be the one among all the finance institutions that own it, because that will be the center. It won't be Amazon, it won't be Google, if I do what we do best, best.

[Music playing]

Jim Marous (33:28):

And again, we have more resources towards than any other entity in the world as the financial institution, in many cases, the traditional financial institution.

Jim Marous (33:37):

So, while you're dipping your toe in the water, don't necessarily take your foot off the beach of what you've done in the past. Rely on what you've done well, but you can't just stand there. You've got to jump in, and I really appreciate the time you've spent.

Jim Marous (33:55):

I recommend everybody, also, there's a lot of discussions we've had on this podcast about really combining AI, customer experience, data, and trust together to make it so the experience is better, the engagement is better.

Jim Marous (34:11):

It really is not giving up one for the other, but to actually meld them together and have them coexist. And we have a lot of podcasts we're going to be referring to it after this, but I appreciate your insights because it's important now more than ever.

Phil Thomlinson (34:26):

Thank you, Jim. Thanks for having us.

Pragya Agarwal (34:27):

Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having us.

Jim Marous (34:30):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. If you enjoy what we're doing, we would really enjoy a positive review. Also, check out my recent articles in The Financial Brand, the research we're doing for the Digital Banking Report.

Jim Marous (34:45):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage; audio engineer, Chris Fafalios, and video producer, Will Pritts.