Ally Bank

Of the 11 women on our list, only one – Citi's Jane Fraser – leads one of the U.S.'s 50 largest banks.

The digital-only bank has adopted machine learning to process loans faster, more accurately and with better fraud detection than in the past.

Financial institutions like Ally Financial, Clinton Savings Bank and First National Bank of Omaha are recruiting personal finance experts, college students and local personalities to promote their products and services.

Executives from a half-dozen major financial institutions avoided detailed commercial lending forecasts and gave a mixed outlook on consumer credit at an industry conference. And they called on Washington to pass an aid package targeted at the most troubled business sectors as soon as it can.

The digital bank is on a larger mission to attract younger customers. It's inserting itself into the popular video game in the hope that game players will learn about its products and have fun at the same time.

Originations in the third quarter are on pace to double what the Detroit lender reported a quarter earlier, adding more high-yielding loans to the balance sheet.

Anand Talwar, deposits and consumer strategy executive at Ally Bank, and Jody Bhagat, president of the Americas for Personetics, explain how their technology collaboration has evolved from a virtual assistant to customized, real-time "insights" for customers.

Ally and other direct banks continue to report strong deposit growth even as they slash the rates they pay to depositors. The trend suggests that the online-only approach has more staying power than its detractors believed.

Diane Morais, the head of consumer and commercial banking for Ally Bank, is forthright about what went wrong after her institutions started offering mortgages in 2017 — and how the institution went about fixing the situation.

A year after it debuted, Bank of America's virtual assistant now counts some 150,000 users per week. It's one of the few large financial institutions pushing such technology.