2025 The Most Powerful Women in Banking Top Teams

September 17, 2025 9:50 AM

Each year, American Banker chooses five teams that embody the spirit of collaboration and illustrate how teamwork can have a substantial impact on a bank's top and bottom lines.

Banks are evaluated on a number of factors, including having a majority of women in a project, department, division, line of business or functional area and the performance of the women-led unit. This list is presented in alphabetical order.

The Top Teams honors in 2025 went to five institutions: Ally Bank, U.S. Bank, Hanmi Bank, Bank of America and Wilmington Trust for the outstanding performance of specific project teams or work groups.

Ally Bank's digital product and experience team undertook a multiyear project that overhauled the bank's online platforms. Wilmington Trust's wealth and institutional client services teamwork resulted in an over $2 billion increase in revenue. Hanmi Bank's SBA team is working to fully digitize the small business lending process. Bank of America relied on members in corporate banking, treasury services and HR to roll out a new employee and investing program for its institutional clients, and U.S. Bank's cross-functional payments team created a bundled suite of banking and payment services to make it as easy as possible for small business clients to bank with them.

Of special note this year: Ally becomes the first all-digital bank to be recognized in the Top Teams list, while Hanmi and Wilmington Trust make their debut on it. And Bank of America and U.S. Bank continue to show their strength in collaborative work, being named often as Top Teams.

Ally Bank

One Ally, Digital Product and Experience

The all-digital Ally Bank depends on its website and mobile app to bring in and retain its customers. Recently, in the culmination of a multiyear project known as One Ally, the bank's online platforms just got a major overhaul.

"The thematic push for One Ally was to bring our auto and banking platform experiences together from a consumer lens," Carrie Sumlin, Ally's executive director of Digital Product and Experience, told American Banker. "We used to have one for auto lending and one for banking. Now we have one for both."

Bank of America

Workplace, Employee and Family Banking

Building a successful team needs to start with people who have the right expertise and mindset, said Mary Hines Droesch, a member of Bank of America's regional banking team.

The best team members "can see possibilities and not get stuck on: 'Oh, we've tried that before,' or 'We'll never get the funding for it,' or all the why-we-shouldn't-do-somethings," said Droesch, who is BofA's head of product for consumer, business, wealth management banking and lending.

Learn more about how BofA team members created a new initiative for employee banking and investing for the bank's institutional clients.

Hanmi Bank

Community Lending Division

Team members think of Hanmi Financial Corp.'s Small Business Administration lending unit as small but mighty.

Led by executive vice president and chief SBA lending officer Anna Chung, the unit oversees Los Angeles-based Hanmi's Small Business Administration lending operation, a longstanding component of the $7.8 billion-asset company's business model. Hanmi began making 7(a) loans in 1988.

Hanmi's commitment to SBA lending has grown as the company has gotten bigger. Now, the bank's SBA program is poised to make its biggest leap yet, a nationwide expansion program that's gathering steam and appears set to further accelerate in 2026.

U.S. Bank

Cross-Functional Payments

U.S. Bank wants to make it as easy as possible for small businesses to bank with them, especially those that are just getting started.

That's the thinking behind the Minneapolis-based bank's Business Essentials, a bundled suite of banking and payment services it launched in April following more than a year of development by a cross-functional team from the bank's business banking, branch and small business banking, payments, sales and technology teams.

Wilmington Trust

Wealth and Institutional Client Services

Collaboration among the employees in both the institutional client services and wealth business at Wilmington Trust helped boost revenue during the past three years.

Led by Jennifer Warren, who serves as the head of Wilmington Trust, the teamwork resulted in over $2 billion in revenue expansion—71% more than in the three previous years— for the institutional client services division, which provides trust, custody and agency services, and investment plans.

The "transformative growth" is the result of Wilmington Trust's two core business segments, which are led by Abigail Mrozinski, head of global capital markets and Lisa Roberts, head of wealth, who are working side by side, Warren said.