Immersive

More than 50 years since the passage of fair-lending laws, homeownership remains out of reach for many people of color.

The pandemic has decimated small businesses, and minority-owned firms have been hurt the most. How can banks and regulators jump-start the small-business economy?

After dropping for the past two years, reputation scores are once again rising, thanks largely to the goodwill banks have earned by helping customers and employees weather the coronavirus outbreak.

"To wake up one day and assume everyone in America is going to be above average at math and above average rational is crazy," says Ethan Bloch, whose app is designed to help people achieve financial health.

Werner Loots, the bank’s first head of transformation, is helping the bank redesign how work is done, then streamlining and digitizing as much as possible.

Population shifts and the explosion of e-commerce will upend commercial real estate lending while heightened demand for clean energy, not to mention pressure from investors, will diminish banks’ enthusiasm for fossil-fuel financing.

Digital banking will become less visible because it will be embedded in other daily activities with the help of AI, voice interfaces and other emerging technologies.

In trying to adapt and survive in an increasingly tech-dominated world, banks may unintentionally give up their most valuable commodity — their relationship with the consumer, and the data that comes with it.

Policymaking has moved at an agonizingly slow speed compared with the exponential growth of technology, leaving regulators and lawmakers facing a huge task over how to keep up.