When Tammy LoCascio wanted employees to embrace AI into their workflow in 2025, the COO of First Horizon didn't hand down a mandate. Instead, she started a contest.
More than 100 employees—from tellers to operations staff—submitted their own ideas for structuring AI into their workflow. The winning entry launched an automated documentation platform for CRE loan origination, eventually to cover the Memphis-based bank's entire commercial line of business.
"It was a way for us to get a little bit of pull from the organization rather than just everything being a push," said LoCascio. "It gave us a really good insight into a list of 100 initiatives that matter to our people."
Following unconventional means has mapped most of LoCascio's 36-year banking career, the last five as First Horizon's senior EVP and COO reporting to CEO Bryan Jordan. She's been at First Horizon 13 years, first leading consumer banking before the bank's 2019 merger of equals with IberiaBank, when she became chief human resources officer to merge the companies during the pandemic.
She took the COO role in 2021, overseeing technology, processes, and data operations for the $83.9 billion-asset bank and its 2,712 employees. Many of those transformative efforts had to be reconfigured following the
LoCascio's P&L set solid 2025 results despite tariff-driven volatility to the wholesale banking unit she also leads, encompassing commercial mortgage, franchise finance, correspondent banking and the fixed-income distribution business of the bank's FHN Financial subsidiary. Wholesale banking posted 15.6% year-over-year revenue growth to $589.5 million, while pretax, preprovision income jumped 35.6% to $169.4 million. The largest gain was in mortgage warehouse lending with a 35% increase in average loan balance and PTPP income of $93.9 million.
First Horizon's efficiency work netted savings in fraud expenses (down 50%) while tech spending came in 6% under budget.
"My company uses a term: We're people-led and technology-enabled," LoCascio says. "I'm a big believer that if you get the combination of those two things right, you can really differentiate and do great things."
The Florida native carries a deep passion for her adopted community, sitting on the executive committees of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis and the Memphis River Parks Partnership.
Her year with the chamber included a significant amount of time leading a search for a new CEO, noted Jay Keegan, a fellow Chamber member and First Horizon client. LoCascio "just has an ability to put her finger on situations using an analogy we can all relate to and take a complex issue and boil it down to simple for all of us to sink our teeth into."
