The Most Powerful Women in Banking NEXT, #3, Emily Gessner, KeyBank

Regional banks exist in a sort of glass-half-full, glass-half-empty situation. Not big enough to be out front in tech innovation, they sit back and see what works and what doesn't. And then, they're small enough to take risks with how they deploy proven technology.

One comes away with these thoughts if you spend time speaking with Emily Gessner, head of consumer digital at KeyBank. Gessner demands discipline from herself and her part of KeyBank's business, but she also seems raring to do something new. 

"We're never going to have the tech budget that the trillionaire banks have," Gessner said in an interview. "The rigor around how we spend our tech dollars is heightened for all the right reasons. We want to be a differentiator. We want to be first to market. I think we have grown in that area, and I think we'll continue to grow." 

Gessner is also applying discipline in the back-office for consumer and commercial accounts. In 2025 she scrapped four redundant "consumer originations platforms" and oversaw a "50% year-over-year increase in tech funding," according to the bank. The time to open an account on her watch has fallen to 15 minutes from 45. 

She recently moved from the consumers account side to commercial, but said not much is going to be different about her approach.

"What's important is those business users expect the same amount of high tech, high touch, seamless experiences that they would for their own personal accounts," Gessner said. 

Seemingly small things, too, can lead to large savings. KeyBank partnered last year with Personetics, which calls itself a "cognitive banking company" and is driven by AI. Its Enrich product is being used by KeyBank to add logos, addresses and other information to customer transaction records to help customers remember who they paid. Queries about unknown transactions were the number one reason for customer calls, Gessner said. 

So far, it's "starting to drive down contact center calls, which are obviously a very large expense for the bank," Gessner said.

The rigor put into getting tech spending and governance in line at KeyBank has set them up to take big swings if the right opportunity comes along. 

"Who does Key want to be?" Gessner said. "When we have that clarity from the top down, it makes it easier for us to say, okay, this and this is an area we haven't seen anybody go, and we're willing to make a bet, and we want to differentiate and be an industry leader here." She added, "I would hope coming into the commercial role we start to take more of those bets. That would be my goal."