Backbase

The banks that will win the conversational banking race are the ones that already hold something OpenAI can never replicate: years of full customer context, and the authority to act on it. OpenAI's personal finance launch last week connected ChatGPT to 12,000+ financial institutions via Plaid, giving 200 million users their first taste of conversational financial guidance. It is read-only, US-only, and currently limited to analysis. But it has permanently reset what customers expect from AI in banking. The opportunity for banks is significant. OpenAI can tell a customer they're overspending on subscriptions. A bank's conversational AI can tell them the same thing, then immediately propose a savings plan, adjust a standing order, and log the interaction against their financial health profile - all within a governed, auditable workflow. That gap between analysis and action is where banks win, and it is entirely achievable with the data and infrastructure banks already have. The prerequisite for banks to deliver this, however, is a unified operational layer that gives AI agents a shared, real-time view of the customer across every product, channel, and interaction. Without it, conversational banking AI stalls at the insight stage. With it, a natural language request becomes a fully orchestrated, auditable transaction. (Full read in the comments)

Backbase is a proud sponsor of Feedzai Fusion. AI, fraud, AML, and cybersecurity teams in the same room. Our own Marc Corbett, VP of Solution Engineering, will be on stage sharing how financial institutions can connect the dots between fraud prevention and a modern banking architecture. Link to register in the comments.

Tirana Bank has launched a full retail banking experience built on the Backbase AI-native Banking OS - becoming the first bank in Albania to offer end-to-end digital banking across mobile and web. The deployment, delivered in 12 months in partnership with Endava, covers credit card and consumer loan applications, multi-currency account management, card controls, bill payments, and real-time spending insights. Tirana Bank also launched Apple Pay as part of the rollout, among the first banks in the country to do so. Business banking is scheduled to follow before year-end. "This launch marks a significant step in our digital transformation journey - combining convenience with the trust and human connection that define our model." - Lila Canaj, Chief Retail Business Officer, Tirana Bank To read the full release, visit the link in the comments.

Last week, David M. Brear asked our CEO, Jouk Pleiter, if AI really changes the game that much (compared to previous technology waves). Jouk answered: "AI is the most transformative technology I've ever seen in my life." Not cloud, not mobile, not open banking. Mobile was impressive - but mobile is just a new form factor. You replaced the mouse with your finger. Compared to what's happening now, mobile is nothing. This is much, much bigger. And it's different for one reason. Every previous wave - cloud, mobile, open banking - you could add it to what you already had. Better app, new channel, faster onboarding. The core of how the bank operated stayed largely intact. This one doesn't work like that. AI exposes everything underneath. The fragmented systems, the manual coordination, the whitespace between processes where thousands of people are acting as human middleware. That's where the real cost is. And that's where the real opportunity is. AI is not something you can simply add. It demands a entirely new operating model. The full conversation is out now on 11:FS Fintech Insider. Link in the comments.

Backbase and Atos have signed a Master Collaboration Agreement to accelerate AI-native banking across Africa, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Portugal, Spain, Southeast Europe, Switzerland, and Turkey. Banks in these international markets are posting strong results, and the next important question is how to sustain them. AI is part of the answer, but deploying it at scale across these markets isn't straightforward because: - Data sovereignty requirements vary by country. - Regulatory frameworks are strict. - Integration with existing infrastructure is complex. That's why today's partnership matters to help banks in these markets accelerate AI-native transformation - with the governance, compliance, and sovereign cloud infrastructure the region requires. Atos brings cybersecurity depth, sovereign cloud capabilities, and regional delivery expertise across 54 countries. Backbase brings the AI-native Banking OS - coordinating customers, employees, and AI agents across one Unified Frontline. Strong results are the starting point. The architecture that sustains them is what this partnership aims to bring across these markets. [Full announcement at the link in comments].

ENGAGE Americas delivered on every level. Two days, hundreds of banking transformation leaders, and conversations that only happen when the right people are in the same room. ENGAGE Americas 2026 brought together the banks actively building for the era of agentic banking - moving AI out of pilots to production. We shared keynotes, success stories and workshopped ideas and challenges. We launched the AI-native Banking OS and celebrated the incredible achievement of being named a Leader and a Customer Favorite in The Forrester Wave™: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms. And, we had a great time doing it. This is what AI banking transformation looks like, and this is how you move towards a Unified Frontline. Watch the roundup below.

We asked senior advisors from 3 of the world's most influential consulting and tech firms to separate AI hype from reality in 2026, and they gave us a read on where AI in banking stands today. Marcus Vinicius Martinez (Microsoft), Kanishka Bhattacharya (Bain & Company), and Dave Murphy (Publicis Sapient) all pointed to the same pattern: The impact of AI in banking is real, but only where banks have first addressed the data foundations, leadership gaps, and organizational change that AI actually depends on. Here are the main takeaways: 1️⃣ The blockers aren't the models. They're weak data foundations, shortage of leadership that has genuinely built AI systems rather than theorized about them, and the organizational inability to own change end to end. 2️⃣ The use cases gaining the most traction right now are compliance monitoring, trade finance, and legacy code comprehension — anywhere banks have been buried in documents and manual review. 3️⃣ Customer-facing deployment is moving more slowly, and for good reason: regulatory frameworks around non-deterministic agent behavior are still catching up. The full conversation covers what's actually in production, what's still stalling, and where the industry goes once agents start making decisions autonomously. Link in the comments.

Most commercial banks have not yet delivered revenue growth or efficiency gains at scale from AI despite the generous budgets. Four barriers explain why AI stalls before it scales: - Data accessibility: 90% of banking data users say the data they need is unavailable or takes too long to retrieve - AI literacy: 89% of organizations say their workforce needs better AI skills, but only 6% have started up-skilling in any meaningful way - Risk and governance: 60% of companies are moving toward agentic AI, yet over half haven't done any form of risk assessment - Over-reliance on AI and skill atrophy: RMs who defer to AI outputs without stress-testing them gradually lose the instinct to challenge Overcoming those barriers requires an architecture built for AI from the start to unify data, govern decisions, and keep human expertise at the center of every client relationship. The blog in the comments breaks down each barrier and how leading banks are working through them.

Introducing the AI-native Banking OS - Keynote Backbase ENGAGE Americas by Jouk Pleiter.

We are proud to announce that Backbase has been named a Leader and a Customer Favourite in The Forrester Wave™: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms, Q2 2026. The evaluation assessed 11 vendors across strategy, current offering, and customer feedback. Backbase emerged as a Leader. The report cited Backbase’s vision of unification and shared truth across banking systems, the specialized platform layers, and superior agentic AI capabilities. It specifically identified our new Semantic Layer - Nexus - as a competitive advantage, and noted one of the highest R&D-to-revenue ratios. Thank you to our team, our partners and all our customers. This is an incredible achievement for us all at Backbase. One that lays the foundation for what's to come, as we set out to define a new category for the era of agentic banking: The Unified Frontline, running on the AI-native Banking OS. Read the report: https://lnkd.in/es2Kbe9C