It’s the most wonderful time of the year: the results from CSI’s 2025 Banking Priorities survey are available! In this episode of Banking on Community, our hosts are decking the halls with data and exploring key takeaways from CSI’s recently released 2025 Banking Priorities Executive Report, including bankers’ strategic priorities, top technology trends, industry issues and more.
Transcript
Saxon Prater (SP): Welcome to Banking on Community: A Podcast for Community Banks. This is where we talk about the trends, technologies and the issues affecting the community banking industry. And as you can tell by our outfits, this is our special holiday episode. We have our ugly Christmas sweaters, or at least most of us do…Tara.
Tara Schultz (TS): I do, I do. I was just waiting. I have a special little Christmas sweater for you. Brett, you are front and center.
Brett Glover (BG): Did you pay money for this?
TS: I did. I did pay money for this. I think it came from Australia.
BG: I see Linda Fischer on there.
TS: Yeah, Linda’s on my shoulder.
BG: Did you did you get her approval to do this beforehand?
TS: I did not, I did not. We have a little Jennifer Werner. Richard knew about this, he’s on there. This was a print mistake I’ll tell you about that. Brett, you’re on there twice. That one you look like Rudolph. I don’t know why the color’s off. There’s little Bob Ezell, a little Giovanni and David. And yeah, that’s it.
SP: I even saw my face on there.
TS: You’re on there. Wow. What do you think?
BG: Honestly, I don’t even know what to say. I’m dumbfounded. You have rendered me speechless. Congratulations.
TS: That doesn’t happen often. We both landed on there twice accidentally. Richard said, I shared the idea with him, and he said, you have to be on there, too. Cause I was going put more of the exec team than us on there. And I sent the picture of us from CX25, where you had the most insane pants on. And I was laughing in that photo. I was not meant to be on the printed shirt with that photo, but they were supposed to cut you out. No communication, no preview. They just shipped me the shirt. Cause I said, I have one week to get this. Can you get this to me in time? So, there you go. It’s my new favorite hoodie.
BG: I don’t even know what to say, Saxon, because we’re ready to call her out, and now we just look like bozos now.
SP: I retract my previous statement, yeah.
TS: Wow, wow. Did you guys go all the way to your closet for that?
SP: I’ll have you know that my wife did make this, so we’ve got little ornaments and stuff that used to light up, but I am too hard on clothes, I think.
TS: I love it. Well, Merry almost Christmas.
BG: Fantastic. You know, I think we should also talk just briefly… I know we have important stuff to talk about that the people want to hear Banking Priorities. But we’ve got to talk about Christmas memories. And so, one of my favorite ones as a kid…my mom did shift work. She was a nurse, and so she used to work, for a lot of those years like the afternoon to late at night, the 10 p.m. 11 p.m. shift. And on more than one occasion on Christmas eve, after hearing us ask too many times probably and just giving in, my dad would let us unwrap our presents, play with them all night, and then rewrap them before my mom got home. And then Christmas morning, we all had to pretend to do a great acting job. Like, oh my gosh, I had no idea, but I just played with this for six hours while you were working last night. So that probably is the sitting at the top of the list for me.
SP: I see where you got your mischievous streak.
BG: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.
SP: I had a mischievous streak growing up, too. My mother had this manger scene that she would set up and I would always just steal little pieces of it. So, it’s like, oh no, a cow’s missing. Whatever it happens to be. She would just find them like in her shoes or like, and of course the little baby Jesus would return on Christmas.
TS: I love that. I didn’t have a mischievous streak growing up.
BG: Don’t believe it.
TS: I didn’t have that. Gosh, I think one of my most prevalent memories is one of my, I’m one of four, so I have three older brothers and one of my brothers, the middle, he would always pretend to be the Christmas King and expect gifts. So, we just gather all sorts of stuff around the house and wrap it up and present to him. So, I don’t know how he got that role, but that was always a fun Christmas memory and Christmas game right around the holidays for us.
SP: That is very fun. I’ve got to figure out how to get the title of Christmas King. Sounds awesome. Well, as we’ve already talked about, this is our holiday episode. As our holiday treat for all of you, Banking Priorities, our yearly research report, came early this year. So, we have a lot of data to unpack a lot of interesting takeaways.
A little bit of context on what exactly this is, if you’re not already aware, so each year, CSI surveys more than 200 bankers across the country, primarily community banks. And we ask questions about what their strategic priorities are for the year, where they’re going to be spending, what they’re worried about, things like that. And we just published it and encourage you all to check it out. You can find it right now on csiweb.com. And it covers topics like bankers’ views on technology, cybersecurity, the regulatory landscape and a lot more.
And we’re going to dig into that in this episode, there’s a lot of interesting stuff to discuss, but before that, I’m going to kick it over to Brett and he can give us a little bit of a look into what Williamstown Community Bank is doing.
BG: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, sticking with the theme, right? Tis the season for giving back. This story was shared with me, and I absolutely love it. Williamstown has started in two locations and put in a cafe. And like not just, you know, hey, like here’s a Keurig machine. They’ve got some legit barista stuff going on in there with the nice whipped cream and designs and all that kind of stuff. But the Giving Cup is what it is going by. And folks can come in, they can order a beverage and not just a portion of, but all the proceeds, are then going back into local charities, nonprofits in their community. I mean, I just don’t know where you find that other than in a community bank, right? I mean, it’s absolutely fantastic giving back to local school districts and things that really do make a difference on where they live, work and serve. So absolutely kudos, well done, brilliant idea and love everything about it.
TS: I love that. Shout out to Sharon and her excellent leadership through all of this. So, such a fun thing to watch. Love that story, Brett.
SP: So, let’s kick it over to talking about Banking Priorities. We just launched this report. Like I mentioned, there’s a ton of really interesting information and takeaways. Let’s first talk about the top issues that bankers said that is going to affect the industry in 2025. So, looking at some of the data here, we have cybersecurity/data privacy, interest rates and regulatory change as the top three with 28%, 19%, and 14% of the responses, respectively. So, let’s talk about cybersecurity first. It’s always an important topic on the minds of bankers, but why do we think that might be number one this year?
TS: Yeah, I’ll jump in here. Obviously, sophistication has accelerated, and the risks everywhere are rising around banks and financial institutions, around cyber and data. I read somewhere that the average cost of a data breach now in the financial industry rose to over $6 million in 2024. So, what a dramatic increase. So, it’s top of mind, rightfully so, because most of them know that they will be spending here in the years ahead. And many don’t have the staff that they need on staff to prepare to handle, react and respond to all that’s really happening here with the rise in cybersecurity incidents. But more so reputation risk and the trust that they’ve built between the financial institutions and their customers, that’s really tough to gain and it can be quick to lose.
I’ll ask you guys the frequency of data breach letters, like I have one on my desk and I just filled out an identity prevention service about three weeks ago, I have yet another. We’re almost desensitized when it comes to the healthcare breaches and all of that. But when it comes to the trust you put in financial institutions and the reputation that they have to secure on the consumers and small businesses and the trust that they place, it’s a big task.
We’ll be at AOBA in January. And I know Steve Sanders has been asked to be on a panel about banking being a true risk mitigation game. So how to manage boards, how to manage regulators. So that’ll certainly be one to listen to if you’re at the bank director event in January.
BG: I couldn’t agree more with you, especially on a couple of the points that you hit that I will just kind of double down on, if you will, the sophistication, right? And what these folks are up against. It’s really hard to keep track and to keep pace. And the reputational risk is everything. And when you talked about like, you just got a letter, I got one last month, right? And got notified. And the desensitized is totally real. But when you really stop and pay attention is, if I were to get one from my bank, it’s like, oh okay, well, this just isn’t one card number or, you know, a limited situation here. And, and especially for a community bank that works so hard and puts effort in day in, day out to have an excellent customer experience, their reputation is everything. They are winning on trust and winning on relationships. And for those to be at risk, it does not surprise me that that this is so high on the list, and I think it’s very warranted. It needs to be there.
SP: Yeah, I should say this question had some stiff competition. The question was what was going to be the most impactful issue for 2025. So that’s a pretty wide-ranging question. So, we have cybersecurity, which we’ve already talked about 28%, interest rates fell a little bit from last year to 19% which makes sense given some shifts in that space. 14% regulatory change. We had the 2024 election in here, recruiting and retaining employees, mergers and acquisitions and fraud. Based on these numbers and just kind of looking at them, Brett, is this consistent with what you’re hearing from bankers?
BG: Yeah, I think so. Very consistent. Probably some variances in some of the order of those, you know, as I have conversations daily with bankers, but I would say that it’s very consistent on the things that are top of mind and what folks are looking at strategically and have already been looking at, right? This is December, it’s not like they’re just going now, oh, what do we do next month? But have been thinking about and continue to put a lot of thought effort and really, how’s that affecting their budget moving forward with things that they want to address some of those concerns.
SP: Okay, that makes sense. So, let’s switch over to regulatory compliance because this was another one. Regulatory change, it nearly doubled from last year’s 8% and this year, 14% of the overall respondents. And by the way, people who responded to the survey were asked to choose one thing. So, it’s one thing over all of the other issues. So, 14% said regulatory change. Why are bankers taking note in that area?
TS: It affects everything they do, how efficient they can be. It affects everything from data gathering, third-party due diligence, deposit diversification strategies, BaaS, fintechs they select. But when you look at like a CFPB, they’ve had an absolute regulation party here at the end of 2024, causing even some industry stir and stealing the show at Money2020 with 1033. Just more recently, they’ve had 1034c changes in relation to how customers are supported and providing information from banks that they’ve requested during disputes. But how will this change in January? I think we all expect it to lessen with the new administration, but I think time will tell with the Trump Administration and what their approach is, but it’s likely that there will be some revisiting or modifications, but time will tell on how much and to what extent what major changes are made there.
BG: Yeah, I mean, much like, you know, our previous topic, I think Tara brings up some valid points and I agree, especially as I talk to bankers. I mean, there’s definitely, there’s always concern and wanting to stay on top of all things regulatory compliance, right? And exactly some of the points that she brings up, I can 100% validate that. It is such an important topic because it does affect everything that they do
And you also have to remember, you know, with smaller staffs and not a complete full team, you know, that handles some of that, it can put constraints on that, which can very much affect, you know, strategy and go forward approach. And so, without some real firm things in place and the idea that, you know, that things, some things may change after the first of the year and with the new administration, it does not surprise me at all that that’s at the top of, near the top of the list as well and one of the things that, the top thing that, that many of the recipients chose on their survey.
TS: Yeah, and I would say, you know, our biggest piece of advice too, I think we shared this on an earlier podcast is, be proactive with your regulators on the third-party risk management, the diversification strategies if you’re entering BaaS. It’s never going to work if you’re looking at it and saying, we’ll let them know when they’re here next year. It’s just not the right strategy anymore. Those that have tried have found out the hard way. And we’re seeing prime examples of even minor modifications in a BaaS program being communicated before the change is made. And it’s just so much more appreciated, embraced by the regulator side.
BG: Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more like a proactive approach 100% will save a lot of time and effort.
SP: So, when we move over to the key technology trends, this probably comes as a surprise to no one, but the top technology trend expected to influence the industry in 2025 was artificial intelligence. And we’ve talked about that a little bit already, but I want to do a little bit more of a deep dive. 33% said that was going to be the key technology trend to affect the industry. And this report also digs into a couple different ways that banks are planning to use it or interested in using it. But let’s talk about anything that we’re hearing, anything that we’ve discussed with bankers. How are they embracing AI?
BG: From my perspective, I think the majority of conversations I’m still involved in is an exploratory, right? And some further ideas are being developed and developed a little bit further. And we think we could use AI to help us with this or to help us gain an efficiency here or an automation here. And it’s still really in the exploratory phase at this point from everything that I can gather, like really solidified, like go-to-market strategies or even internal and how that can affect their operations on a day-to-day basis, as I would say still an unknown, but definitely a peaked interest and a lot of folks very much, you know, not on the sidelines, not sitting on the bench, like actively looking at having discussions committees, what have you, to figure out what the best approach for them is.
TS: Yeah, I agree. AI is definitely a lot of hype right now, as you well know and as Brett indicated, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some really solid use cases, solving some really great problems out there and allowing bankers to work smarter, not harder, with some of what they do.
I was recently chatting with Kate Drew over at CCG Catalyst and she’s got a report coming out early in the year on the hype life cycle of AI and some really great interviews around AI in the wild. And I connected her with one of our customers in Iowa, Citizens First, Heather Farwell, relatively small bank, but focusing on the most painful problems to solve for their FI, which is policy creation and procedures around that and management of those policies.
Overall, we’re just simply scratching the surface of the potential of AI, where it’s going to take us in the areas of real-time fraud, as well as personalization of the entire finance journey, whether you’re looking at it from a customer communication and support channel or personalized offers, product recommendations, all of that, we’re just getting started.
SP: Yeah, and here at CSI, we have our own AI task force that has been discussing this with bankers as well. And as it’s borne out exactly what you both say, that we’re in the kind of the conceptual planning looking ahead phase, but it seems that it’s pretty clear that this is going to be a thing. This is going to be a technology trend that we need to be proactive on. The response, 33% in artificial intelligence being the top issue. That’s consistent with last year, and it’s also consistent with operational efficiency being one of the highest points of focus. We’ll talk a little bit more about how they are planning to use it or how they’re exploring to use it later, but I think that’s all very, very helpful insight to be thinking about.
As far as the bank’s digital transformation journey, where are most banks on their digital transformation journey?
TS: I’ll start here. I really think this is 1000% an ongoing journey. And all financial institutions are obviously at varying stages of their own journeys. I think we’re to the point where most now acknowledge that’s their front and sometimes nearly their only door is over 70% of Americans consider digital banking really core to their preferences. So, it really must be a focus. But to what extent it’s their priority, I think that varies on several different areas, whether it’s talking to Celent or Javelin or the CSI Banking Priorities. While we may not see digital banking per se listed at a top priority in many reports this year, it doesn’t mean that that’s not the central experience. I think it’s the ancillary technology that’ll elevate the digital transformation journey like payments, like AI.
I think we’re definitely seeing banks take action, moving on digital wallets more so, and P2P adding FedNow, adding RTP, and all of those use cases will eventually rise. But they’re leveraging new products and ways to service customers, such as credit score and account origination. But where are banks is the question of knowing their customers as good as niche fintechs know their customers.
I mean, take Spotify, for example. Like, this one’s a fun one for me. They just launched their Wrapped 2024. And I don’t know, are you guys Spotify users
SP: Yes, they told me that in June of this year, I was in a Wild West swing phase, which was, I have never heard of that genre of music before. But it’s because of my nephew’s birthday party.
BG: Yeah, I’m going to need some examples.
TS: Yeah, me too. I’m going to have to see this wrapped playlist of yours, but mine, Saxon, was Pink Pilates Princess Western Pop Era.
BG: Whoa.
TS: Very, very specific yet broad. But they nailed it. Spotify knows the era you’re in. They know your tastes, and they build experiences around it with AI, with that whole rapid experience now. And it’s cool. And as you take this back to community financial institutions, they differentiate on service. They differentiate on relationships but how are they leveraging the data at their fingertips that the customer naturally has with them to show where they are in life?
Like, does my bank know that I abandoned an application online? Does my bank know that I already own a home or are they splashing ads that simply don’t apply to where I’m at in my life? So, I think that entire digital transformation journey slips back to data and technology, of course, but get the data right. Know your customers that you’re serving, and you’re adamantly focused on serving, because it’s really shifting from the do-it-yourself journey to help me do it better with the better financial advice, with the better tools like AI, to drive a better advice-driven digital experience. What do you guys think?
BG: Well, my first thought is I also want to know if you got a customized AI-generated podcast specific to your Spotify Wrapped.
TS: You do. Yeah. Right.
BG: Okay, I’m also going to need to hear that. I know you’re serious, I know this is a thing like it’s trending on TikTok. I’m not a Spotify user. My kids are. However, Apple does something very similar. My problem is that I sleep to sleep sounds every single night.
SP: Your favorite song is White Noise.
BG: Seriously, so every year I just ignore, yeah, I ignore what it presents me back because it’s filled with sleep sound music. It’s completely, completely pointless. Anyway. Okay, what were we talking about?
TS: So, my Alexa brings the white noise. I keep that off my Spotify.
BG: No, mine’s not, it’s not white noise to be clear. It is very, very cool, like soothing sounds, storms. Sometimes I’m listening, anyway, we don’t need to keep going, but it helps me fall asleep really, really fast. Digital transformation journey, I think, will continue to be on a bank-by-bank basis.
And we have to remember too, and our customers know and trust that they know what their customers need. Right. And so, you know, each bank’s needs and how fast they adapt, you know, digital first technologies and a digital first approach is going to look different based on, you know, what market they’re in. Are they more urban or more rural? All of those things. But across the board, I think every single bank continues to look at what are tools that I can utilize and add into our current strategy that makes sense for where we’re at and where we want to go? And that’s probably the simplest that I could put that. I completely agree with Tara about data though. And the data that you sit on and using that to make informed, intelligent decisions and how that can inform your strategy and how that can make your relationship with your customer even stronger.
SP: Well, and that probably segues perfectly to open banking and having all these any technologies make sure that they are speaking to each other. So, you really do have a kind of holistic view of the customer, right? And as far as key technology trends, we had banking as a service with 17% of the overall vote and then APIs and open banking at 11%. So, let’s talk about that. Let’s transition to talking about how banks are exploring open banking as well as BaaS, where they stand.
TS: Yeah, I think it’s really important to separate the two because APIs can power so many things, not just banking as a service and not just fintech integrations but using APIs to power better workflows. That’s a key opportunity as well. And I think with operational efficiencies, I think what’s actually in that landing in the top three strategic priorities. So, take lending and document workflow processes, you’re entering data, you’re reentering data, you’re taking a document to scan it, you’re copying it, you’re moving it. Look at all those processes and some of those earlier use cases of APIs for banks that are not in the game yet to really leverage the technology to more streamline. And then as you look at banking as a service, obviously, it’s still on the rise. It doesn’t match the narrative of what’s being shared out there.
It’s not matching the data. So, I think more and more are seeing the future opportunity, not just looking at the straight regulatory noise and risk and looking at how they can do that right. But I was looking at some data around BaaS just recently and the CAGR is 16.2 from 2022 to 2030. So, with the rising demand for financial services, I mean, what began as more popular for payments, that’s expanding. Your API availability is expanding. Your niche market needs, those are expanding. So, whether that’s things like construction or healthcare reimbursements or, you know, straight commercial payments for local SMBs, that is a key part of the future of financial services.
BG: Yeah, and I love the differentiator between APIs, open banking, and those are not just like BaaS specific, which I think some tend to think, how they become so helpful in a BaaS program or a BaaS strategy is the ability to scale, right? And we’ve seen that, and we’ve got some customers doing that and being very successful with an API-first strategy that we’ve helped enable that allow them to perform those functions and that strategy at scale very quickly, and then have all the tools that they need around that to support that, whether that be from reporting or from a regulatory perspective and what they provide and the partners that they work with, right? Very important, but it’s not as if you have to have a bad strategy to leverage APIs.
We have a lot of customers that already have or are looking into leveraging APIs for partners and vendors that they work with that are outside of our ecosystem that they want to bring in a more integrated fashion. And we’re doing that on the daily as well as the partners that we work with on the regular that are leveraging APIs to bring that functionality together into the core for a better user experience. So that only continues to get stronger and I mean, it’s not going away anytime soon, right?
TS: Yeah, and really if the market’s telling us anything on the importance of all this and just how valuable this is from, you know, APIs and open banking, see the recent Moneyline acquisition. It’s powered by APIs, it’s banking as a service, run through a sponsor bank, leveraging AI to serve a very focused consumer market, reaching 18 million consumers and just sold for a billion. One billion. Wow. Wow. This is the future.
BG: Yeah. I think operational efficiencies is an important one. I don’t know any bank that’s not looking at that right now, especially any community bank because what they’re realizing is like, hey, sometimes we have our people who are really, really good relationship builders that are sometimes getting involved in or bogged down still in some of the day-to-day backroom tasks, right? And it’s like, how do we free up that person and bring more automation into our day-to-day so that we can free up our people to do what they’re best at, which is serve customers. And so that’s only going to increase and customers are getting really good. I think bankers are getting really good at figuring out what that means to their specific bank. And that’s a really important thing to call out because what we can do to help or what one community bank figures out that really helps them to automate and gain some efficiency may look completely different than what somebody else needs or is looking for.
SP: So, when I see deposit growth, obviously that can be capturing new accounts, but, you know, it could also be strengthening existing accounts so that there are more deposits in those individual accounts. Even lower depositing consumers, it seems to me are important because they bring fee income when you attain the primary financial institution relationship through a transaction account. You also effectively get the right of first refusal on many other financial products and services. And then you also get a lot of data that can be used for various purposes. So, it makes sense to me that this would be up here on as such a high priority.
TS: Yeah, I think one other areas accent of focus is roughly one third of accounts at most financial institutions, they’re not active. So, they have no regular deposits. They have low balances, you’ve spent all that money as a financial institution to attract, but you forgot to activate, and you forgot to retain it. Whoops. I think it’s important to basically reacquire those customers that you already have on board. That can be done through targeted offers to incentivize transacting more per month, to move the direct deposit back to your institution or gain the top of wallet spot on payments and subscriptions. So, I think the onboarding and engagement strategy, that’s just as important as the origination strategy and the tool and the processes you place at the front end for your customers.
SP: One other thing that I wanted to just point out, I just found interesting in these strategic priorities. We have a cluster opening new branches at 31%, market expansion at 30%, mergers and acquisitions at 30%. So, all of those are different ways that banks are growing. The mergers and acquisitions one, I want to just put a little flag there just for a minute. There have been a lot of articles in the industry recently about suggesting that there could be an increase in M&A activity in 2025. If we look back at the past four years, there’s been a lot lower activity in the M&A space, fewer deals and the ones that do exist are taking longer for approval. But we have 30% of bankers stating it’s a strategic priority in 2025. So, to me, that means something to at least keep an eye out for.
TS: Yeah, for sure.
BG: For sure, I agree with you, and I think you will see activity pick up in 2025. Even here in the latter part of 2024, I can confirm even just receiving inquiries about, hey, what does that look like or how do you guys approach that? I think executive management teams are having conversations about what that looks like for them. If not the fact that they have already identified a target that they’re actively talking to. Obviously, that’s going to vary by state, right? Because a lot of states are more saturated with community financial institutions, that it may be the right time to consider that. But I definitely see activity starting to pick up around M&A for sure.
TS: Yeah, I do think we’ll see an increase here in the coming years ahead, particularly probably in the early part of the year, larger deals ready to take buying banks to take them to the next tier. You look at the one that just went through last week, Independent Bank in Massachusetts, they bought Enterprise, so $20 billion, bought a $4.7 billion. I think we’ll see a lot of that turn up activity that’s been waiting for the right time, right values, right prices, etc., happened in the early stage of 2024. But yeah, like as they indicated, rate changes and faster approvals, that’ll likely feed that fire a bit as well. But hopefully there’s a bit of relief coming from a regulatory perspective that some of the smaller potential sellers, they’ll feel less forced to sell. They may sell for other reasons, for succession or other reasons that they may have, but their regulatory impact, it was making it somewhat hard for some to diversify or innovate, and I hope we’ll see some relief there. But overall, there’s a lot of truth to the fact that if you’re not innovating at all, and if you’re not leveraging and expanding into new product sets to serve your customers and compete, the future is bleak and no matter what size, you’ll see a lot more consolidation in those scenarios.
SP: And when we talk about growth in general, obviously all of these different things, at least it seems to me, they’re all interrelated ways that banks are, as you say, Tara, competing, growing, finding new markets, making sure they meet their customers. They have a lot on their plate.
So, last but unfortunately not least, we need to talk about one thing that’s been on bankers’ minds for several years now. It’s fraud. 17% of bankers chose real-time fraud detection as a top tech trend, and check and card fraud both emerged as common types of fraud. Tara, what are your takeaways in this area?
TS: Yeah, I’m surprised the number wasn’t higher, to be honest. It’s in every conversation today, and certainly at the top of CSI’s priority list to solve that problem for community FIs. And as we play a big part in that, scammers have gotten more sophisticated. So does the technology that they utilize for those efforts and their ability to do more damage with the stolen dark web data or leveraging the ease of mail theft in the scenario of check fraud as well as some of the provisional credit scenarios where they can cash it and pull it and move it and get out. But checks against our wishes, what we said 10 years ago, checks would be gone. They’re not. They’re declining at a rate of about 25% over the years, but fraud has doubled there since 2021.
So, the rise in numbers, it’s alarming, but there’s a lot happening in that space. And I saw another stat, it indicated 85% of check images that were stolen, the reposts, indicating that they’re shared and they’re advertised across multiple sources. So, clearly we’re well beyond a people process problem to curb that reality. It’s going to come down to the right tech.
BG: Ditto, can I just say ditto? Yeah, it’s really similar to the cybersecurity subject that we opened up with, right? Fraudsters are getting more and more advanced. AI is not helping that by the way. It is only allowing that to grow at a more rapid rate. And so, yeah, I’m a little surprised that it’s not higher than 17%.
But given all that’s going on, it is what it is. But yeah, there is definitely, I do not have a conversation in a meeting with a customer at this point in time where that is not discussed. What their strategy is, what they’ve currently already employed through tools that have been around and continue to get better, but also what new technologies are coming their way that they can employ and quickly to help address that.
TS: All I want for Christmas, Brett, is just fraud to go away.
BG: That’s it.
SP: Hey, that makes three of us.
TS: Yeah. And any country concert tickets. I’m a size floor.
SP: Well on that Christmas wish, we’re going to have to leave it. We’re out of time, but there’s a lot more to learn and a lot more to dig into in the report itself. And also, if you’re a data nerd like me, you can also learn more about the survey methodology, the demographic breakdown and all of that good stuff.
Thank you, Tara and Brett. And also, thank you all for listening and joining us for this discussion on Banking Priorities. We’ll be following this up in our next episode, so be sure to tune in. In the meantime, you can look at all that data yourself and see the complete report on csiweb.com. You can also subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts or see us in video on YouTube.
And then finally, as a reminder, you can submit questions using #BankingonCommunityPod or send your questions to @CSISolutions on X or CSI on LinkedIn. So happy holidays everybody, and thanks for listening.
TS: Happy holidays!
BG: Happy holidays. Let your kids open their presents early.