Top Five Takeaways from CBA LIVE 2026
More than 1,800 bankers, policymakers, and industry leaders gathered in San Diego for retail banking’s premier event – CBA LIVE 2026 – the largest attendance in the event’s history.
As Consumer Bankers Association (CBA) President and CEO Lindsey Johnson outlined in her opening remarks, a confluence of events are changing the world of retail banking, and for consumers, “money is [becoming] more invisible, in the background and moves in an instant.” While these changes can reduce frictions for our consumers, it is imperative that banks chart the path in this new era to deliver on the promise of technologies, including AI, to help our consumers achieve their financial goals “all while offering the safety and security that banks give like no one else.”
While the policy and regulatory shifts in banking are happening with great haste, issues like combating fraud, digital assets, and consumer protection are also moving quickly in ways that will directly affect how banks operate, compete, and serve hardworking Americans – all in an ecosystem where banking, technology, and commerce are becoming increasingly blurred.
The incredible lineup of speakers during the general sessions touched on all these issues and more – and the forums and sessions did even deeper dives into these issues as well as other topics led by our bankers.
Here are five things you need to know from the CBA LIVE mainstage:
1. Amidst Great Change, Banks are Positioned to Chart the Path Forward for our Customers – And Are Competing to Do it Best.
CEOs and retail bank leaders were featured throughout the general sessions, highlighting the role that strong industry leadership means in this new era of banking. Atlantic Union Bank President and COO (and CBA Board Chair) Maria Tedesco highlighted the importance of ensuring our industry maintains trust as the foundation of banking.
In today’s environment, it must be continuously earned amid rising customer expectations, accelerating technology, and increasing threats. Leadership, therefore, is more complex and more critical than ever, extending beyond individual roles to three levels: leading your function, leading your institution, and leading the industry.
Now, more than ever, all banks are focused on how to compete to win their consumers’ business. While speaking on a general session panel, PNC Head of Retail banking Alex Overstrom highlighted three top priorities for the bank’s growth strategy:
- “First, we are focused on demand deposit accounts. We are in 26 of the top 30 U.S. markets” and are “building scale through those markets – so we are investing and building 300+ branches.”
- Second, “once you have those DDA relationships how do we deepen them? How do we give a $3 million experience to someone with $300,000? So we rolled out our model we call Premier Client earlier this year […] and in April we will launch our rewards program.”
- Third, “people want to do more with PNC. We want to give them more ways to do that […] including deepening on card. We’ve got to be the number one card player for our core customers.”
Overstrom concluded that “people are going to have differentiated strategies […] the strategy and the paths that firms will take will become more important and ultimately allow them to differentiate. Ultimately, the strategy that each of us decide to pursue will be what drives either our success or our lack thereof.”
U.S. Bank Senior Executive Vice President, Consumer & Business Banking Products (and CBA Board Chair-Elect) Arijit Roy joined Overstrom and shared his views on the future of winning consumers:
“Today, we stand uniquely poised as an industry to serving for the first time […] five different generations in banking starting from Boomers through Gen X. It’s important for us to not just pay attention to where banks serve and make revenue today, but to also think about what’s coming five and 10 years down the road […] I think for the longest time people think about technology and generally apply the word ‘scale,’ and they talk about economies of scale. They think about a tech stack as being about to move trillions of bytes and serve millions of clients but in addition to thinking about economies of scale, its really important to think about economies of scope and I think that’s where there’s edge […] So if you have a DDA client or a banking client and they’re interested in a checking account and a credit card, why not reuse technology to take an application one time? That is a little bit of how we’ve been […] thinking about products like Bank Smartly, Business Essentials, where you use technology and reuse data fields you’ve captured and apply them in a way where you’re not creating friction for clients.”
2. The Regulatory Window Is Open to “Allow Banks to be Banks” to Best Serve Their Customers and Communities.
As Johnson noted in her discussion with Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, the regulatory and legislative environments are shifting to focusing on ensuring that “banks can be banks and that we can lend in our communities.”
Vice Chair Bowman's reproposed capital rules are designed to bring lending back inside the regulated perimeter – and she was candid about what motivated the rethinking:
“The previously calibrated capital requirements really pushed a lot of business outside of the regulated banking space. And so a lot of the motivation for the way that we've approached these capital proposals is to ensure that we allow banks to be banks — allow them to engage in traditional lending activities that support their consumers, their families, and the businesses that exist within their region or their communities.”
Similarly, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) has delivered bipartisan votes on housing, banking tailoring, and digital assets. U.S. HFSC Chairman French Hill (R-Ark.) made clear that the House has delivered on housing, banking tailoring, capital formation, and digital assets. Now he needs the industry to help carry it forward:
“Help us work with the Trump Administration to find the right package of bills that benefit commercial banking, expand capital access, make it easier to do mergers and acquisitions, lower costs to serve consumers, better ways to gather deposits, which are the lifeblood of the business.”
But a more favorable environment comes with higher expectations. City National Bank CEO Howard Hammond – a former CBA Board member who praised CBA’s work as “tremendous” and said he finds “a great deal of value” in it – put the responsibility squarely on the industry.
“With that comes a higher responsibility. We have to make sure that we police ourselves, that we root out bad actors, that we don't stretch too much for growth and earnings at the price of risk. And if we take that seriously and we work together with our regulators, I think the next five or 10 years can really be the best in the history of this industry.”
Speaking to an area where CBA has led in advocacy, HFSC Chairman Hill was direct: for consumer bankers, there may be no more important topic than the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) under this Administration:
“There are questions that many of you have in your board rooms and with your leadership. How will the Trump administration propose to reform the CFPB? When will they propose the replacement for the [Section] 1033 rule? When will they propose a replacement for [Section] 1071 rule or small dollar? I think you'll see us this year bring out a series of reforms in the House that answer some of those questions.”
Both Sections 1033 and 1071 are back in play, and this time, the direction reflects years of sustained engagement by CBA. Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman also reinforced the point, noting what bankers already know: the last wave of rulemaking pushed institutions out of the very lending consumers rely on.
CBA hasn't been on the sidelines. The reform agenda is taking shape, and the retail banking industry is helping define what comes next. Some examples of CBA’s advocacy work include:
- Several comment letters to the CFPB and Congress during this Administration;
- A white paper calling for CFPB reforms to transform the CFPB into the credible, durable regulator that consumers deserve;
- Congressional testimony from CBA President and CEO Lindsey Johnson and Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Head of Regulatory Affairs David Pommerehen;
- Legislative backing to rein in UDAAP overreach; and
- A sustained push for clarity and accountability at the CFPB.
3. Fraud Demands a Whole-of-Government Response.
The prevalence of fraud and scams came up in nearly every general session. Senate Banking Committee Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who introduced the bipartisan SCAM Act with Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), made clear this is not a narrow problem:
“This is not like your 80-year-old grandma, by the way, that's getting scammed. This has happened to people of all generations, people with different types of educations that are getting scammed all the time.”
Sen. Gallego has been a lead sponsor of CBA-supported bipartisan legislation, the SCAM Act, which would require online platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent fraudulent and deceptive ads and strengthen accountability when scams slip through.
Similarly, HFSC Chairman Hill called for better visibility into fraud losses – including changes to call reporting so policymakers and boards can see the true scale of the problem:
“We also ought to change the call report to break out fraud losses out of other expense and let boards, let policymakers realize what a tremendous monthly and quarterly expense fraud is to most of our community banks and our national financial institutions.”
CBA remains focused on addressing this growing issue and has been at the forefront of this conversation. In fact, CBA’s Fraud Management Committee Chair Patrick McDade testified before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee this year and CBA secured language in the GUARD Act requiring ongoing federal fraud reports.
4. Digital Assets and Stablecoins: Protecting Deposits, Enabling Innovation.
Digital asset policy is moving from discussion to decision-making. Three separate sessions addressed stablecoins and digital asset regulation. And the concern is clear: Who can offer yield? Under what rules? And what happens to the deposits that fund lending in every community across the country if that line blurs?
Sen. Ruben Gallego confirmed that deposit protection is a bipartisan concern on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee:
“People on the committee are very keenly aware of the danger of deposit flight [...] If they have deposit flight, that means they have capital flight. And if you have that, the local businesses, these small businesses that have traditionally been going to that community bank for the longest time to get that loan, it's just not gonna have the same amount of access.”
SoFi CEO Anthony Noto, who is a known early adopter of crypto and supports stablecoin legislation, also highlighted how SoFi obtained a national bank charter in 2022 and framed the yield debate – “don't try to make our country weaker because you don't want be strong”– and laid out the standard he believes should apply:
“People shouldn't be able to give interest on stored values or deposits unless they're an IDI, and that's to ensure safety and soundness. If you're going to take someone's assets and use it for anything else, you should reach the highest standard, which is a national bank charter, not a national trust.”
Circle President Heath Tarbert framed stablecoins as payment infrastructure, not competition to deposits, but was clear-eyed about what banks should be watching:
"What could be, though, the emerging competition? Are these on-chain lending and other protocols that are trying to replicate the business of banking on-chain. And so obviously I think there should be a movement to appropriately regulate those activities, as well as innovations within banks to match those activities and have your products on-chain as well."
Sen. Gallego also acknowledged CBA's role directly:
“There's been a louder and bigger presence from y'all this time around […] which is greatly appreciated. Greatly appreciated and certainly has helped kind of shape the debate and the legislation around market structure.”
CBA's original research has shown that if non-bank entities pay yield above the federal funds rate, disruption to bank-intermediated lending could reach $1.5 trillion.
Expect this conversation to intensify in the coming weeks.
5. Leading with Hope and High Standards.
The common thread across these conversations is what Sen. Gallego called “smart regulation, not strangulation.” Whether rethinking housing policy, adjusting capital requirements, reforming the CFPB, or building a framework for digital assets, the goal is a system that makes room for growth – and for the banks that finance it.
Amidst this complexity, the human element remains the most critical variable. Howard Hammond framed leadership through a story about former Duke University men’s basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski (“Coach K”) noting people kept asking him about strategy. His answer:
“If I get the right people on the bus, I can drive it anywhere.”
City National Bank CEO Howard Hammond carried the thought further:
“I've always believed the most powerful thing you can give people is hope […] The older I get, the more I believe that to be true. The rest of it has a funny way of working out.”
As Johnson said in her opening remarks at CBA LIVE:
“At every turn in American history, banks didn't just adapt to change, we financed it. We enabled industrial expansion. We underwrote growth and innovation. Today is no different.”
CBA LIVE 2026 made one thing clear: the work ahead is significant and the industry is ready. CBA will continue to be where the decisions are being made – with the research, the relationships, and the resolve to move the needle for the banks and the consumers they serve.
You can watch all the recorded general sessions from CBA LIVE 2026 HERE.
Background
CBA LIVE is the must-attend annual event for the retail banking industry. Nearly 2,000 senior bankers and industry leaders gather from across the country to experience this premier event, which offers 80+ hours of top-notch programming, delivered by 230 speakers, tailored toward professionals motivated to learn new trends and share ideas with the most influential decision makers in the business.
