U.S. Bank is taking steps to achieve autonomous banking, or “the nirvana” of banking, according to Doug Nielson, the bank’s senior vice president of innovation research and development.  

“The nirvana, if you will, of banking would be truly autonomous banking, like the autonomous car,” Nielson said during a fireside chat today at Banking Transformation Week, an online conference focusing on banking, finance and fintech. “If you give us permissions and set your plan, we should be able to do [the job] for you.” 

Nielson outlined U.S. Bank’s three-step journey toward “digital maturity,” which starts with a DIY approach, enabling as many products to be digital and mobile so customers can self-service. The second step in the journey is designing products to be “more personal and smart” by leveraging the bank’s customer data to make informed recommendations for clients.  

“If you tell us you want to have a well-balanced wealth management portfolio, we should be able to say, ‘Hey Doug you’re kind of getting off track a little bit, you need to shift, say, things from stocks to bonds,’ and then as the user you can actually do that,” Nielson said. 

As U.S. Bank works toward the last step, autonomous banking, Nielson said artificial intelligence and open banking will be two focus areas as the bank ramps up its data strategy and use of data.  

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“Part of that is leveraging the data that we have, taking it out of the silos and being able to actually use it, leveraging AI and [machine learning] in responsible ways so we can provide the insights our customers are looking for,” Nielson said. Open banking will also play a “bi-directional” role, he added, as U.S. Bank looks to partner with new fintechs as well as streamline processes to connect with existing clients and merchants. 

U.S. Bank made structural and cultural changes internally to accommodate the company’s innovation shift, starting with tweaking the organizational structure, standing up agile teams “to the point where just about every product we’re creating now has an agile journey team,” Nielson said. U.S. Bank shifted its mindset about identifying benchmarks. No longer does Nielson consider legacy banks to be major competitors, calling that metric “a lagging indicator.” Rather, U.S. Bank sets itself against leading tech companies, naming Apple and Facebook as examples.  

Additionally, U.S. Bank rejigged its API configuration, “from having big monolithic APIs” to a microservice architecture style, in which APIs are still connected to the core system, but in a more streamlined fashion, Nielson explained.