American Banker Podcast

Environmental, social and governance issues have become more important to investors and customers. Kathryn Rock, a partner in financial services practice at the consulting firm Guidehouse, has advice on what banks can do to step up their efforts.

Talwar, who is leaving his job as chairman of Goldman's consumer bank this month, explains his philosophy on innovating within a large organization, making a digital-only unit work within a 150-year-old institution, and how he deals with skeptics.

CEO Christopher Maher explains how the New Jersey bank selected the 20 branches it plans to shut down by year-end and details the types of apps, video banking capabilities and "super branches" into which it will plow the cost savings.

Robert Le, an analyst at Pitchbook, explains where banks could get cut out of transactions and where they still could play a role.

Vast Bank in Oklahoma now has an app that allows customers to do their banking and buy and sell eight digital currencies. CEO Brad Scrivner explains his motivations, his comfort level with cryptocurrency volatility and what else the app can do.

The Los Angeles credit union started out by creating a self-service bot it named Royce. CEO David Tuyo discusses Royce's contributions and other ways artificial intelligence is improving efficiency.

Theo Lau and Brad Leimer, authors of "Beyond Good: How Technology Is Leading a Purpose-Driven Business Revolution," discuss financial companies like Sunrise Banks and Tabb Bank that are working toward dual aims of making a better world and turning a profit.

The Birmingham, Alabama, bank has developed artificial intelligence-based systems that can flag suspicious activity and guide customer service representatives. Amala Duggirala, the bank’s chief operations and technology officer, describes the AI work she and her team have been doing.

Pressure is mounting on banks to rein in overdraft fees. The behavioral psychologist Wei Ke says there are programs they can put in place that would be fairer to account holders and still generate income.

Distributed ledger projects in banking are few and far between — many have stalled and others remain experiments. Robert Townsend, who has worked with banks around the world and written a book about blockchain technology, explains some of the ways financial institutions could be using it, for instance in small-business lending and supply chain finance.