Banking change, explained from inside the industry.
American Banker Podcast brings banking technology, policy, and operations into direct conversation with the people building and testing them. Recent episodes move from moral AI frameworks and internal workflow automation to Ethereum, Solana, personal finance apps, and wildfire response.
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American Banker Podcast is a business interview show built around the practical choices facing banks, credit unions, fintechs, and financial technology leaders. It treats banking as infrastructure. Recent conversations return often to AI, but the angle is rarely abstract. One episode asks what a moral architecture for financial AI would require when models are trained on historical data shaped by old priorities. Another follows Grasshopper Bank’s move from AI as a “confident intern” toward more advanced internal workflow support. Clearview Federal Credit Union’s experience adds a human layer: employees need reasons to trust the tools, and leaders still have to answer for efficiency pressure. The show is also tracking distributed ledger adoption inside financial institutions. Solana is framed through bank custody, deposits, commercial paper issuance, and policy education. Ethereum is explained as the original smart contract blockchain in a conversation tied to tokenized deposits and stablecoin projects. Personal finance AI gets its own attention through Ethan Block’s work on Hero, where large language models meet financial data and the older promise of automated savings. The format is steady. Penny Crosman opens with the business context, identifies the tension, and then lets named guests explain how they reached their view. That makes the show useful for listeners who need more than headlines but do not want theater. The tone is clear, technical, and grounded in the concerns of regulated finance. Guests bring credentials from banks, credit unions, EY, blockchain organizations, and fintech startups. The questions often come back to adoption: what is feasible, what is trusted, what is valuable, and what boards or customers expect. Even episodes about new technology keep an eye on governance and accountability. The wildfire conversation with East West Bank widens the lens from innovation to resilience, showing how local events can become banking operations stories. American Banker Podcast is strongest when it makes fashionable technology sound like a set of concrete decisions. It is for people who care how financial services institutions move, hesitate, test, and respond.
Made for: For banking, fintech, credit union, and financial technology listeners who want concrete conversations about AI, distributed ledgers, regulation, operations, and institutional change.
What sets it apart: The show pairs trade-publication context with working practitioners, keeping new technology tied to adoption, risk, governance, and real banking workflows.
Thoughtful discussions about current topics, moderated by American Banker editors.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded fintech-founder conversation about AI personal finance, with the biggest product questions still unresolved.
Automated savings made Digit a familiar fintech name, and this American Banker episode uses founder Ethan Block's next move to ask where personal finance goes when large language models can work with financial data.
A credit union CIO argues for AI adoption that helps staff work better without outsourcing judgment.
The American Banker Podcast frames AI adoption as a management problem as much as a technology one. Penny Crosman speaks with Raymond George, CIO of Clearview Federal Credit Union, about how a 140,000-member institution serving 10 counties around Pittsburgh is trying to make AI…
Dominic Ng explains East West Bank's wildfire relief, mortgage exposure, and the long road to rebuilding.
Dominic Ng brings East West Bank's wildfire response down to ground level, speaking from Pasadena beside the fire station headquarters. The local connection matters here: he has lived in Pasadena for more than 21 years, and the bank moved its headquarters there exactly 20 years…
Practical strategy for modern banking decisions.
Odd questions, followed patiently down to the incentives.
Ian Mitchell discusses the need for a dedicated human crime officer in every bank to combat trafficking, exploitation, and financial scams.
Jim Perry, Senior Strategist at Markit, discusses how community banks can leverage technology to stay competitive despite limited budgets and staff.
Penny Crosman hosts Raymond George, CIO of Clearview Federal Credit Union, to discuss AI adoption in banking.
East West Bank CEO Dominic Ng discusses how the bank responded to recent Los Angeles wildfires from its Pasadena headquarters.
Sajit Chana, a former IBM senior leader and Beneficial State Bank technology committee chair, argues that banking AI needs a moral architecture grounded in finance as a social contract.
An interview with Miller Whitehouse Levine, CEO of the Solana Policy Institute, explaining what Solana is and why banks like SoFi and JPMorgan are using it.
Grasshopper Bank's CTO discusses how AI has evolved from a 'confident intern' to handling more advanced tasks, saving thousands of hours monthly without reducing headcount.
Clearview FCU's CIO discusses how he encourages employees to trust and use AI to improve efficiency.
Paul Brody explains what Ethereum is, its history, and why it's used by financial institutions for tokenized deposits and smart contracts.
Paul Achleitner discusses his leadership book “Accelerate Your Experience” and argues that “optimism is a moral duty” in uncertain times.
Ethan Bloch tells Penny Crosman how a 1998 bar mitzvah account, a telecom bust in 2001, and a later startup exit shaped his push into finance.
Gene Ludwig tells Penny Crosman that headline measures such as 4.4% unemployment, CPI, wages, and GDP present a rosier picture for middle- and low-income Americans.
Sarah Biller, co-founder of Fintech Sandbox and Vantage Ventures, discusses how banks and fintechs can serve financially stressed households while meeting KYC, AML, and BSA requirements.
Rachel Andrika, COO of Anchorage Digital Bank, explains how its 2021 OCC national trust charter supported stablecoin issuance, institutional partnerships, and compliance infrastructure.
Sid Khosla from EY discusses why 80% of banks' generative AI value will come from only 20% of use cases within two years.
East West Bank's CEO discusses the bank's history in Pasadena and his personal experience during the LA wildfires.
Caitlin Long discusses Custodia Bank's lawsuit against the Federal Reserve over denial of a master account.