Alkami webinar spotlights digital maturity in banking

Alkami has announced a webinar on digital maturity in business and commercial banking, featuring speakers from the Digital Banking Report, Tradition Capital Bank and SRP Federal Credit Union.

The session will explore how banks and credit unions are changing account opening, onboarding, servicing and fraud prevention in response to rising expectations from business customers.

Drawing on Alkami's latest research on business banking digital maturity, the webinar will examine how financial institutions are moving from artificial intelligence trials to broader operational use. It will also look at how organisations are aligning data, workflows and decision-making across the banking lifecycle.

The focus reflects pressure on financial institutions to deliver faster onboarding, more tailored services and stronger fraud controls for commercial clients. In the research cited by Alkami, 39% of participating institutions reported already implementing AI agents for selected use cases.

Shift in focus

That figure points to a broader shift in how banks are approaching AI in business banking. Rather than treating the technology as a standalone experiment, institutions are increasingly applying it to customer onboarding, transaction monitoring and staff workflows.

The webinar will cover three areas in which more digitally mature institutions are distinguishing themselves: digital account opening and onboarding, fraud prevention, and employee enablement through unified data, updated tools, and training.

The account opening discussion will focus on streamlining funding, automating identity verification and enabling customer self-service. On fraud, the emphasis will be on introducing controls earlier in the client journey to reduce losses before they occur.

Employee experience is also expected to feature prominently. Banks and credit unions are under pressure to give frontline and operations teams a more complete view of customer information while reducing reliance on disconnected systems.

One of the speakers, Molly Jones, Director of Business Services at SRP Federal Credit Union, described how that approach has taken shape at her institution.

"Serving small businesses in Georgia and South Carolina, our strategy has always been to pair strong, local relationships with an equally strong digital banking experience," Jones said.

"For us, that means making it easier for business members to originate ACH, send wires, manage deposits, and protect their accounts in one place. That coordinated suite of solutions is helping us expand our treasury and cash management offerings and proactively deepen the business relationships that matter most to SRP Federal Credit Union," she added.

Her remarks reflect a practical challenge for many regional and community-based institutions: how to preserve relationship banking while meeting demand for digital self-service and faster processing. Treasury and cash management services have become an important competitive area as smaller institutions try to retain business customers who might otherwise turn to larger banks or specialist providers.

Data readiness

Data quality and connectivity are another central theme. The webinar will examine how clean, connected data can support wider use of AI and AI agents across a financial institution.

The issue has become more important as banks and credit unions look to move beyond isolated technology projects. AI systems used for fraud checks, onboarding decisions or service prompts depend on consistent underlying information, and fragmented records can limit their effectiveness.

Jim Marous, Owner and Chief Executive Officer of the Digital Banking Report, said the market has changed over the past year.

"Over the past year, we've seen a clear shift from AI experimentation to real execution," Marous said.

"In the webinar, we'll hear from two banking leaders as they share their organization's digital maturity results, how they're building their business and commercial strategies, and their approach to using data and AI as part of their operating rhythm," he said.

The speaker line-up also includes Matt Bleecker, senior vice president of treasury management product and strategy at Tradition Capital Bank, and Taylor Adkins, vice president of product management at Alkami. The discussion is expected to cover both product strategy and the operational demands of commercial banking services.

For Alkami, the webinar also reflects a broader industry view that digital transformation in financial services is shifting from front-end channels to end-to-end processes. That includes linking account opening, payments, servicing, and risk controls so that business customers encounter fewer delays and fewer handoffs between systems.

As institutions face competitive pressure from both larger banks and fintech providers, the ability to combine local service with integrated digital tools is becoming more urgent for business banking teams. The finding that 39% of institutions are already implementing AI agents for selected use cases suggests that, for many firms, the debate has moved from whether to adopt such tools to where they can be used safely and effectively.