BMO Financial names Brent Reston chief digital officer

By Traci Parks

Published August 21, 2026 3:30 PM

1 Min Read

In this week's banking news roundup:

Brent Reston will serve as BMO Financial Group's inaugural chief digital officer.
Susan Zaunbrecher is appointed to LCNB Corp.'s board.
HSBC and Standard Chartered complete a bank-to-bank tokenized deposit transaction on Swift's blockchain-based ledger, and more.
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Brent Reston

BMO

BMO names its first chief digital officer for US banking

BMO Financial Group hired Brent Reston to serve as its inaugural chief digital officer, the Toronto-based bank announced.

Reston started his new role on Aug. 17, a BMO spokesperson said. He is based in San Francisco and reports to Aron Levine, president of BMO's U.S. operations since 2025.

Reston will oversee BMO's U.S. digital banking strategy and work across U.S. banking, technology and operations, and North American digital platforms, the bank said.

Before joining BMO, Reston worked at Wells Fargo for more than five years, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, he worked at Bank of America and Merrill Lynch.

BMO has been trying to increase its profitability in the U.S., where it generates a large portion of its revenue. The bank has revamped its balance sheet and plans to open more than 130 branches in California over a five-year period. —Allissa Kline

Susan Zaunbrecher

LCNB National Bank

Former Fifth Third legal chief joins Ohio bank’s board

LCNB Corp., the holding company for LCNB National Bank in Lebanon, Ohio, has appointed Susan Zaunbrecher, one of Cincinnati's best-known attorneys and the former chief legal officer and corporate secretary at Fifth Third Bancorp, to its board.

At the $300.1 billion-asset, Cincinnati-based Fifth Third, where she worked from April 2018 to June 2025, Zaunbrecher led an in-house legal department employing nearly 100 professionals. Prior to that, Zaunbrecher spent 28 years at Dinsmore, Cincinnati's largest law firm, where she chaired the corporate department and served on the executive committee and board.

Zaunbrecher rejoined Dinsmore as director of special projects and strategic initiatives after retiring from Fifth Third.

"Her experience at one of the country's leading financial institutions, coupled with her extensive work advising businesses on complex transactions and strategic matters, will be highly valuable," Eric Meilstrup, the $2.2 billion-asset LCNB's CEO, said of Zaunbrecher Wednesday in a press release.

Lebanon is about 30 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

Zaunbrecher, who earned her J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law, said she was "honored" to join LCNB. —John Reosti

From left: Georges Elhedery, CEO of HSBC, and Mandy DeFilippo, CEO U.S., Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa at Standard Chartered Bank.

Bloomberg News

Standard Chartered and HSBC swap tokenized deposits on Swift

HSBC and Standard Chartered have successfully completed a bank-to-bank tokenized deposit transaction on Swift's blockchain-based ledger. It was the first since Swift's announcement last month that its ledger was ready for use, with 17 banks participating in the pilot.

The transaction is part of a broader industry effort to bring distributed ledger technology to payments. SquareFi co-founder Anton Lobintsev told American Banker that the hard part of tokenization is getting different banks' tokenized deposits to interoperate, which was tested with the Swift transaction.

"HSBC and Standard Chartered aren't running on the same ledger," he said. "That's the whole thesis of an orchestration layer – it becomes valuable once you have multiple banks issuing deposit tokens on different systems. One live transaction between two tier-1 banks is small in volume, but it's a meaningful proof point for the other 15 banks in the pilot as they move toward their own live transactions." —Melinda Lucy

Roundup slide on Banner's acquisition of Pacific Financial

Adobe Stock

Banner sets date to close its latest acquisition

Banner Corp. in Walla Walla, Washington, expects to finalize its acquisition of Pacific Financial on Sept. 1, now that it has received all of the necessary regulatory approvals.

The parent company of Banner Bank received no objection from the Federal Reserve Board regarding its $177 million, all-stock purchase of the Aberdeen, Washington-based Pacific Financial, it said in a press release. The deal, which was announced in April, previously received approval from the Federal Deposit of Insurance Corp. and the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions-Division of Banks, Banner said in recent securities filings.

Banner had $16.59 billion of assets as of June 30, according to its second-quarter earnings report. Post-acquisition, it expects to have approximately $18 billion of assets.

The $1.26 billion-asset Pacific Financial is the parent company of Bank of the Pacific, which operates 18 branches in Washington and Oregon. The bank's shareholders signed off on the deal on Aug. 12. —Allissa Kline

United Community headquarters

United Community

United Community hires its next finance chief

United Community Banks in Greenville, South Carolina, has recruited its next chief financial officer from one of its larger rivals in the Southeast, Regions Financial in Alabama.

Tom Speir, head of investor relations, strategy and corporate development at Regions, will join the $29.5 billion-asset United Community on Sept. 8, United Community said this week. Speir, 44, will succeed Jefferson Harralson, who announced earlier this year that he intended to retire. Harralson will be employed by the bank through Dec. 31 to ensure a smooth transition.

He will report to United Community President and CEO Lynn Harton, a bank spokesperson said.

Speir joined Regions in 2009 and was named head of investor relations in April. He was named head of strategy and corporate development in 2022.

United Community completed its acquisition of Gainesville, Georgia-based Peach State Bancshares on Aug. 1. The $100.8 million cash-and-stock deal was announced in April. —Allissa Kline

Jeff Lee

First Interstate fills vacant COO seat

First Interstate BancSystem in Billings, Montana, has recruited a former Seacoast Banking Corp. executive to serve as its next chief operations officer.

Jeff Lee will join the $25.9 billion-asset First Interstate on Sept. 14, First Interstate said in a securities filing. Lee, 57, worked at Seacoast for 11-plus years, including six years as chief marketing officer and two years as chief digital officer, according to the filing. He was Seacoast's chief operations and technology officer when he left in 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile.

At First Interstate, Lee will report directly to CEO Jim Reuter, a bank spokesperson said. Reuter, who came out of retirement to revamp the bank, has been handling COO duties since May, when former COO Kristina Robbins was terminated, without cause, and transitioned into an executive advisory role supporting Reuter, according to a separate securities filing. Robbins' role as an executive advisor was scheduled to end on Aug. 1, the filing said. —Allissa Kline

Roundup slide on BofA and BNY responding to Epstein lawsuits

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

BofA continues to boost tech banking ranks with new hires

Bank of America has hired two more managing directors as it builds out its technology practice, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg News.

Asad Mahmood, previously a managing director at Barclays, starts in the fall and will focus on semiconductor and quantum computing coverage. He'll be based in Palo Alto, California, according to the memo from Karim Assef and Faiz Ahmad, the chair and the head of global investment banking, respectively.

Gregory Reider is joining the Brazil technology investment banking team this week, covering Latin America tech and fintech. Reider was previously at Latin America-focused venture capital firm Volpe Capital, where he was co-founder and managing partner, according to the memo.

A spokesperson for Bank of America confirmed the contents of the memo.

Mahmood and Reider will join more than 40 other managing directors in the global corporate and investment banking unit who have been hired this year by the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank. –Matt Monks, Bloomberg News

Bloomberg

Flagstar Bank consolidates its core through Fiserv

Flagstar Bank has selected Fiserv's Finxact core banking platform as its new single core as it continues to consolidate from multiple M&A deals.

After New York Community Bank acquired both Flagstar Bank and the failed Signature Bank back-to-back a few years ago, the deals included separate cores for each of the three banks. After rebranding under the name Flagstar, the bank launched an initiative to rebuild its technology infrastructure, including consolidating its data center usage from six locations to two.

According to chief information and operations officer Chris Higgins, the bank's existing systems are with Fiserv's DNA core and FIS. As the bank moves to a single core for its system of record, it will implement planned conversions in a phased approach to support the transition. The move comes as Fiserv underperformed in its recent quarterly earnings and faces pressure to sell off parts of its business. —Melinda Lucy

Morgan Stanley said to hire Barclays tech dealmaker Tim Luke

Morgan Stanley is hiring technology dealmaker Tim Luke from Barclays according to people familiar with the matter.

Luke will join as a vice chairman in the technology investment banking group, focusing on semiconductors and hardware, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information isn't public.

Representatives for Barclays and Morgan Stanley declined to comment. Luke also declined to comment.

Luke has mainly worked at Lehman Brothers and Barclays, which acquired the firm's North America operations in 2008. Based in New York, he was most recently a vice chairman in Barclays' global technology investment banking group, having earlier been an equity research analyst covering semiconductors, data networking and wireless equipment, the bank's website shows.

Luke also served as a senior advisor on business and trade to former U.K. prime minister David Cameron. He rejoined Barclays in 2014, working on deals including Arm Holdings's $4.9 billion initial public offering in 2023. —Ryan Gould, Bloomberg News