Though she's only worked there two years, Cathinka Wahlstrom knows Bank of New York Mellon inside and out. She's been the bank's client, its consultant and now one of its top executives. Today she's using all that experience to make BNY more efficient.
Wahlstrom joined BNY in 2023, becoming the $440 billion-asset firm's chief commercial officer and a member of its executive committee. A key part of her job, she says, is streamlining BNY's client services — identifying tasks that are done by several different departments and finding a way to "do it really well once" instead.
"When I came in, we did quite a bit of voice-of-client research," Wahlstrom told American Banker. "What we heard was that they really liked working with us, they liked our culture, but they didn't know everything we did. So that seemed to be a great opportunity for us, because we felt the same way — that we needed to connect the dots better across the entire enterprise."
The approach is informed by Wahlstrom's decades of experience advising other businesses. Before arriving at BNY, she worked for 27 years at the consulting firm Accenture, including as its director of client accounts for North America. And from 2021 to 2023, she was president of the IT and consulting company Alight Solutions.
At BNY, Wahlstrom arrived just as the bank was undergoing a broader transformation. Led by CEO Robin Vince, the company is reorganizing into what it calls a "platforms operating model," including by streamlining and unifying certain departments. The new model, Vince said on BNY's
In an interview, Wahlstrom talked to American Banker about how her work fits into that wider effort; how America's oldest bank, which was co-founded by Alexander Hamilton, is
The following is a transcript of the interview, edited for length and clarity.
American Banker: Can you tell me a little bit about your role at BNY? What exactly does a chief commercial officer do?
Cathinka Wahlstrom: It's a great question, because there are not that many chief commercial officers on Wall Street — although I would say, in the last two years, I've met with more of them.
So I joined about two years ago, almost exactly, and at a really exciting inflection point for the bank. Robin had come in, probably six months before I came in, as CEO. We were just starting on this multiyear transformation, and I really came in to help guide that from a commercial perspective.
I would say I am squarely focused on serving our clients to really make sure that we are all that we can be for our clients.
So that's been really exciting, and … a lot of what we call the platforms operating model is really about unifying different parts of our firm that kind of belong together, into one place.
AB: Can you explain that streamlining a little bit and why it's so important to the company?
CW: Yeah, so whether it is an internal process, it's a client solution, or it's a commercial activity, in the past that same activity might have been done in many different ways across our various lines of business — and not in a purposeful way. That was just how the lines of business had grown up over time.
And what we have done in a very focused and relentless way is saying, let's make sure we do it the best way, once, across all our different areas. And let's unify those different capabilities, solutions, processes where we can.
And it really is everything from saying: We have this many call centers; should we have one platform that delivers that? It can also be client-facing activities, so perhaps it's something like how we do account planning.
So I would say, of course, there will be productivity and efficiency gains from that, but the focus is primarily on making it easier for our clients to do more with us. That's what they want, that's what we want.
AB: Can you tell me a little bit about what you did before BNY and how you wound up at BNY?
CW: So I really spent most of my career in consulting and management consulting. I joined Accenture before it was Accenture, when we were a partnership, made partner there, and then we went public in '01.
And so I sometimes get asked this question: What's good about consulting versus banking? And I feel like I've had the best of both worlds, because the benefit of growing up in management consulting is that you learn how to be strategic, analytical; execution, get things done, and also dealing with a lot of different types of situations. It might be a merger, it might be a geographic growth opportunity. So you're called into all these different situations, so it's a great learning experience.
And in my case, I spent my entire career in financial services, so I have the privilege and opportunity to work across pretty much all the investment banks, the retail banks, exchanges, infrastructure insurance companies, and really tremendous experience getting to work with the best companies in the world, including BNY.
So I've been a consultant to BNY, I've been a client to BNY, I've been a partner, and now I'm part of the team. So I always knew that I liked the culture a lot, and certainly the client list. But I would say it's been even more fun and energizing than I could have imagined, because I would say the bank today is quite different from the bank five years ago. A lot has changed in the last few years in terms of speed and going to market and all those things that I like.
AB: I'm curious how those clients are reacting to the kind of tariff roller coaster that we're dealing with these days, and all of the uncertainty stemming from that.
CW: Yeah, so I'm sure we're all sort of looking at the same data. And as I reflect a bit on how we started the year — January, everyone's very optimistic about the year. I would say that, obviously, sentiments have reversed a bit to be more more cautious, a bit wait-and-see.
But if you look at the businesses that we do, our job is to be agile to all of those situations. So I wouldn't say that we've seen a big change. If anything, as you could see from our
Part of that is kind of leaning into where our clients are on their journeys. We always say that our strategy is client-led. So on the one hand, I would say some clients are actually making faster decisions. Perhaps they're a bit more focused, so those things that they knew they wanted to do and had to do, they just want to get on with that. We [also] see those who see opportunities for more competitive positioning, who like volatility, and they're sort of leaning into that. And then I would say there's another set of clients who are now, perhaps, more seriously looking at process efficiency.
AB: Switching gears a bit, I understand BNY is using AI in a lot of different ways to improve its business. Can you explain that a little bit?
CW: Yeah, so I would say we leaned in pretty early on AI, so we're starting to see dividends already.
In '23 we developed our own AI platform that we call
So I think that's been great. But then what we did was to set up our own AI hub, knowing that we are at our best when we pull our efforts together. … I was on a panel recently and they asked, are your employees afraid of AI? And I'd say we almost have the opposite. We have so many use cases that we have to constantly prioritize that, because people are really, really leaning in.
AB: If you could think of one overarching lesson from your career so far, what would it be?
CW: Well, I would have to bring it back to that client obsession. All my roles have been commercially client-facing. So that is sort of what drives me. But I've always found that if you lean into that, if you understand where a client needs to be, if you build that trust, then everything else kind of falls into place.
