February 3, 2026—Last week, Cornerstone Advisors released its What’s Going On in Banking 2026: AI, Crypto, and Fraud: Oh My! report written by their Chief Research Officer, leading banking and fintech thought leader and spirited author Ron Shevlin. This report provides financial institutions with a clear view of industry trends through fresh insights from the author and compelling survey data collected from over 400 financial institution executives nationwide.
Among the key takeaways from the report, 2025 will be remembered as the year banks and credit unions woke up to AI—when they stopped just talking about it and started digging into what it could really do for them. Read more below:
1. AI Adoption: From Chatbots to Generative and Agentic Platforms
If 2025 was the year banks woke up to AI, 2026 is positioned as the year to operationalize it—while confronting the data and infrastructure realities that will determine who actually benefits.
Credit unions are even further along in their AI investment: 59 percent have deployed generative AI, 46 percent chatbots, 41 percent machine learning, and 17 percent agentic AI, with about a quarter of respondents planning investments in each category this year.
Financial institutions are rolling out generative AI strategies and tools for fraud management, IT, back-office operations, lending, marketing, and contact centers. Few are reporting plans to utilize AI for branch operations or legal functions. Only 23 percent of banks and 8 percent of credit unions say they have no plans for generative AI, highlighting how quickly the technology has shifted from experiment to expected capability. Still, executives warn about hype, vendor overuse of the “AI” label, and gaps in security, governance, and in-house expertise that could leave institutions overly dependent on third parties.
2. Agentic AI and Model Context Protocol: Next-gen Architecture
Agentic AI—AI agents that can take actions on behalf of users—is emerging as the next frontier, particularly for fraud management, contact centers, lending, and finance/accounting. Both banks and credit unions see strong potential for agentic AI in early fraud detection, pattern recognition, prioritization of cases, and decision support for complex disputes.
The Cornerstone report argues that Model Context Protocol (MCP) will be a key enabler of effective AI agents in banking by standardizing how models access and interpret contextual data from core, treasury, analytics, and other systems. MCP acts as a secure context middleware layer, feeding models structured snapshots of transactions, balances, cash-flow trends, and behavioral metrics, while enforcing governance, privacy, and role-based access.
3. Data Execution Quality: The Hidden Constraint on AI
Despite improved self-perceptions of data strategy and governance, a separate Cornerstone research report using their proprietary data visualization and readiness framework, suggests that most small or community-oriented institutions are only about halfway to where they should be on data quality across planning, marketing, credit analysis, operations, and analytics. Credit analysis is the most advanced area, while sales and marketing are lagging behind: two-thirds of institutions scored below 50 out of 100 in that function, indicating immature use of data for targeting, personalization, and channel optimization.
The report emphasizes that AI initiatives will underperform or fail where underlying data remains fragmented, inconsistent, or inaccessible. It calls for structured self-assessment of data quality, identification and remediation of “impeder” leaders who do not foster a data-driven culture, targeted skill-building (especially for marketers), and vendor selection that prioritizes organizational change and data execution, not just software features. For technologists, this reframes AI as a multi-year data modernization program rather than a series of isolated pilots.
4. Fraud Tech, Instant Payments, and Payments Hubs
Fraud management is a central focus of 2026 technology plans, with three-quarters of institutions expecting to increase fraud prevention and dispute budgets and many exploring AI-enabled pattern recognition, risk scoring, and case triage. However, banks have consistently under-delivered on planned fraud/BSA/AML system replacements: from 2023–2025, planned replacement rates exceeded actual deployments each year. Credit unions, by contrast, have slightly outpaced their plans, reflecting more acute pain from fraud losses and higher urgency to modernize tools.
On the payments side, instant payments adoption remains modest but is building, with account-to-account transfers, last-minute consumer payments, payroll, and recurring bill pay as key use cases. Planned deployment of payments hubs is surging: after only 4 percent of institutions deployed new hubs from 2022–2024, 9 percent did so in 2025, and nearly 24 percent plan investments in 2026 to support smarter routing across ACH, Wires, RTP, FedNow® Service, and card rails. This positions the payments hub as a foundational layer for future innovations, including tokenized money and programmable payments.
5. Tokenization, Stablecoin, and Blockchain Tooling
Tokenization and stablecoins have moved from the fringe into board-level discussions, catalyzed in part by the 2025 GENIUS Act. Among banks, 9 percent plan to invest in tokenized deposits in 2026, and small minorities plan investments in blockchain and stablecoins; more than half have discussed tokenized deposits and blockchain at the board level, and 71 percent have discussed stablecoins. Credit unions are slightly behind on immediate investment but are also elevating these topics to executive and board forums.
Institutions see the most value from tokenization in faster/cheaper internal transfers and settlements, cross-border payments, and digital/crypto wallets, with additional opportunities in commercial payments, embedded finance, and loyalty/rewards. Technology partners for tokenization are expected to include core and digital platform providers, tokenization-focused fintechs, bank consortiums, and blockchain infrastructure firms, reflecting a multi-vendor ecosystem rather than purely in-house builds. However, lack of regulatory clarity, limited member/client demand, and infrastructure gaps remain major brakes on near-term deployment.
6. Tech Budget Trajectories
Tech spending is rising sharply in 2026. Among banks, 84 percent expect higher tech budgets, with 12 percent planning increases above 10 percent; for credit unions, a similar overall share will spend more, and 22 percent expect double-digit increases—twice as many as the prior year. The top drivers of increased spend are IT infrastructure renewal and digital/customer experience platforms, followed by back-office platforms, communications, and core modernization.
Planned new or replacement systems for 2026 are led by consumer digital account opening and payments hubs for banks, with data analytics/BI platforms newly entering the top five. Credit unions plan strong investments in P2P payments, consumer digital account opening, payments hubs, and BI platforms. At the same time, Cornerstone’s Technology Demand Index shows a consistent pattern: planned demand exceeds actual deployments, especially for complex platforms like LOS, payments hubs, and fraud systems, highlighting execution capacity and change management as critical constraints on tech roadmaps.
The complete Cornerstone Advisors report is available for download on their website.
As the year progresses, count on Vertifi to keep you informed on our blog. If the articles and research we share sparks ideas for your organization, or if you have any questions about how we can help you advance your technology strategies, please contact us. We’d love to have a conversation with you.
Editor’s note: This information is provided for educational purposes only and is the opinion and research of Cornerstone Advisors.