Mobile banking

Banks will likely take a wait-and-see approach before connecting their apps to Siri, Apple's talking digital assistant. Such conservatism poses risks as consumers increasingly demand the latest digital features.

Instead of fighting to own customer data, banks need to embrace a new model: becoming personal data banks that help customers do more than manage money.

If banks don't weigh in on an appropriate privacy standard, they risk letting outside events spark onerous new regulations.

Visa's Digital Commerce App is allowing banks to develop their own mobile wallets. Many of its clients are larger community banks that may not otherwise have the resources to develop such a product internally.

Nonbanks now set the digital banking experience bar, but in less than a decade large banks will have swallowed them up and will have become digital financial superstores.

PNC Financial Services Group has been named the official bank of the University of Kentucky, its 50th such partnership with a college or university.

Throw Cathy Bessant of Bank of America a question about a hot tech topic, and she's got answers. Blockchain? She loves it but is still waiting for its use case. Patents? The law is making us be aggressive. Swift? A call to action. And that's just the start.

Without the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau setting specific debt collection guidelines — including what technology agencies can use — the industry will continue a practice that harms consumers: lawsuits.

Associated Banc-Corp in Green Bay, Wis., has promoted Brent R. Tischler to the newly created position of director of retail banking.

The bank, which operates in 12 states, is bringing customers in the door even as it cuts its retail square footage by half. The lure? The offer of a financial "checkup" that tens of thousands of people have accepted.

The engineers on Arjun Sirrah's team are on a first-name basis with customer service staff. Those relationships help Darien Rowayton Bank's student lending arm competes with fintech companies.

As its digital consumer executive, Carrie Sumlin is tasked with making sure Ally Bank offers its customers top-notch digital services since it doesn't have any branches.

By allowing commercial clients to authenticate via an eye scan, Wells Fargo is making a burdensome task simple. Secil Watson, head of wholesale Internet solutions, is pushing the bank to make digital banking easier for commercial clients.

Instant Apps could give banks a better option for transitioning customers from a quick and easy account opening to a more robust banking experience.

Well before the mobile payments explosion, incumbents were already focused on how to respond to nonbanks "piggybacking" on banks' payments infrastructure. As the consultant behind a 1994 banking industry report on the threat put it, "there is no time for delay."

Consumers, especially millennials, increasingly prefer to do everything on their mobile devices, including signing up for services. But as banks start to open accounts for people whom their employees have never met, there are plenty of questions about whether they can tell real customers and crooks apart.

Valley National Bank in Wayne, N.J., has appointed former PNC executive Robert Bardusch to be its chief information officer.

When it comes to earning consumer loyalty with user-friendly mobile banking tools, everyday interactions can matter more than momentous ones.

The San Francisco bank isn't interested in making splashy investments in technology. At an investor day event Tuesday, Wells executives said they would focus on taking incremental steps to reduce costs and improve customer experiences.

Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, Calif., has launched a program that lets new customers sign up for accounts using electronic signatures.