The Most Powerful Women in Banking, No. 4, Gunjan Kedia, U.S. Bank

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

Spoiler alert: Gunjan Kedia's 2024 performance as president of U.S. Bank was strong enough that she was granted the CEO title as well in early 2025, taking over in April from longtime leader Andrew Cecere. (American Banker's methodology requires that a woman be in her role for at least one year, so Kedia is ranked based on her performance as president of U.S. Bank and not her current position as president and CEO.)

The new CEO has said publicly that she does not plan to buy another bank, or sell her own Minneapolis-based company. Why not jump into the growing bank M&A boom? It's only been a few years since U.S. Bank bought MUFG's Union Bank unit, a deal that closed in December 2022. The integration was completed in June 2023, just as the banking crisis was roiling regional banks. Between that acquisition and its own growth, U.S. Bank is now the fifth-largest commercial bank in the country, Kedia said. 

Instead, she's leaning on partnerships like a tie-up with St. Louis-based brokerage firm Edward Jones, another Midwestern company with a similar physical footprint, which is slated to go live at the end of 2025. "Their culture is very similar to our culture," Kedia said. 

The 19,000 Edward Jones advisors will be able to give clients access to U.S. Bank's banking services, such as co-branded checking accounts and credit cards, through the Edward Jones app. The partnership builds on an existing relationship U.S. Bank has long had with insurer State Farm, as well as its Elan white-label credit card unit, which works with 1,200 banks. And there are more partnerships in the works, she said: "Organic growth opportunities are very real."

Kedia also has a $200 million annual budget for refurbishing branches and establishing new locations. Where once branches were expected to be within walking distance of customers' homes or offices, with the advent of apps, clients no longer need a branch to do daily banking tasks. "They've become more advice-based," she said, with private spaces for advisors focusing on wealth, small business, and mortgages. Although the bank has been closing branches, it's also opening new ones in Arizona, where U.S. bank will be replacing supermarket-based locations, as well as Charlotte, Nashville, Las Vegas, Reno, Salt Lake City, and Jackson Hole.

In 2024, the year Kedia became the bank's president, U.S. Bank saw its fee revenue rise 4.9% compared to the prior year. Fees now represent 41% of the bank's net revenue. Another recent milestone was the bank's asset management unit topping $500 billion in assets under management. 

Kedia grew up in India and did her undergraduate engineering degree there, later completing an MBA at Carnegie Mellon, where she is now on the board. She started her career at PWC and moved on to McKinsey, BNY and State Street before she joined U.S. Bank in 2016. The bank has grown steadily as she rose in the executive ranks. In the second quarter of 2025, commercial and industrial loans hit $139.6 billion, 7% higher than the same period the previous year, contributing to net income of $1.8 billion for the quarter.

Kedia notes that her bank, considered a regional, is already national: the payments and institutional divisions, which make up three-quarters of the bank, do business across the country. Even the consumer business has a mortgage and auto lending side in 44 states. 

Retail clients see the bank as friendly, she said.: "I hear all the time, 'You're both competent and decent,'" a reflection of the bank's "no sharp elbows" culture. She considers the bank "large enough to matter, small enough to care."

For Kedia, this reputation and the bank's heartland roots are an asset. "We have a name that is resonating better and better with people," she said. "American exceptionalism is in the air. It's a point of pride."