Product roadmap, data governance key for AI vendor selection

Lenders are looking deeper into product roadmaps, platform resilience and data governance when vetting third-party vendors amid growing AI adoption. Rapid AI advancements have shifted how banks evaluate fintechs, with a heightened focus on the innovation timeline and “platform resilience,” Suzanne Rathbun , senior vice president and lending operations group manager at U.S. Bank , said last week during a fireside chat at the FinAi Lending Summit in Las Vegas. “What is the roadmap? I think that's a question that always gets lost,” she said. “You could end up adopting it, and something you thought was going to be there isn't there, and then you're like, ‘Well, now we have to fix it. We’ve got to create a Band-Aid.’” [caption id="attachment_57389530" align="aligncenter" width="800"] U.S. Bank's Suzanne Rathbun (right) discusses emerging AI trends in lending with FinAi News Editor Whitney McDonald. (Photo/Royal Media)[/caption] Vendor selection and management are starkly different in the AI era, Rathbun said, adding that banks previously could adopt a system and use it for 20 years with minimal changes. “Now, it's moving so fast,” she said. “You need to make sure that who you're selecting to partner with is going to move at that same pace. And if they're not, then you really have to consider ‘is that really the right partner from a technology standpoint?’” Lenders also must account for existing vendors’ product roadmaps, Jay Budzik , senior vice president and director of AI/ML model development at Fifth Third Bank , said during a panel discussion at the summit. “They’re all embedding AI into their solutions,” he said. “You have to predict what's going to be available in a year or so from the vendors that you already have, because you don't want to necessarily onboard a new vendor, go through all that due diligence and then … discover that the [AI] feature is now built into the software that you already own.” The right questions To ease concerns related to product roadmap, U.S. Bank’s Rathbun said lenders should ask: Are you using AI? If not, what is your time frame for adopting AI? What type of AI are you using? How are you using the data from a security standpoint? Are you only using our data to train the models going into the platform and the product that we are using, or is it being shared across clients? Data security is also a top consideration for Fifth Third when evaluating AI providers, Budzik said. “Am I going to send all my proprietary data to some vendor who's then going to go sell it to everybody else?” he said. “What's my data management? How do I get that in house, and how do I maintain control, especially in highly governed business processes where we have to have repeatability and consistency?” Stay up to date with all the news coming out of FinAi Lending Summit 2026 here .

Product roadmap, data governance key for AI vendor selection

FinAi Lending Summit

AI helps Fifth Third find $2B-$3B in extra consumer balances for lending decisions

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Product roadmap, data governance key for AI vendor selection

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AI helps Fifth Third find $2B-$3B in extra consumer balances for lending decisions

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