The bets Codat’s leaders are making on what comes next.
From our daily conversations with senior leaders across commercial banking, Codat has a front-row seat to how the industry is quietly but decisively changing. We see where banks are placing their bets, where priorities are shifting away from legacy playbooks, and where operating models are being rebuilt from the inside out.
What’s emerging is a fundamentally different blueprint for commercial banking. One where fee-based economics replace NII growth, where credit reviews are always on, where AI is embedded end-to-end, and where the advantage comes less from the tools a bank buys and more from how effectively its people use them.
Below is our leadership team’s perspective on what 2026 really holds for the commercial banks determined to lead.
Joey Rault, Chief Revenue Officer
1. Fee income will take over the growth agenda
Traditional lending economics have hit structural limits and senior leaders know it. As Joey puts it, “banks are hitting the ceiling on traditional lending growth” and the smartest institutions are shifting hard into fee-based revenue.
“2026 is the year banks stop betting on NII and start building fee machines.”
Payments, FX, commercial card, and treasury will become the new growth engines, while data, insights, and workflow products, once treated as ancillary, will be recognized as monetizable assets.
Product teams will move beyond feature upgrades to “revenue-producing solutions that expand share of wallet.” Boards will push for durable, recurring, usage-based revenue streams, and fintech partnerships will accelerate because “fee revenue requires faster cycles than banks can build alone.”
2. AI adoption signals the end of reactive banking
In 2026, AI’s role in commercial banking will shift from exploratory to foundational. As Joey notes: “AI is not a side project anymore, it’s the engine for how banks lend, sell, and serve.”
What separates leaders from laggards will not be model sophistication alone, but the quality and freshness of the data feeding those models. With permissioned accounting and ERP data flowing continuously, every banker interaction becomes proactive rather than reactive. Relationship managers move from periodic check-ins to delivering forward-looking insights. Credit teams price risk with live financials instead of static files. Treasury teams optimize cash flow and working capital using predictive signals. And AI copilots finally remove the administrative drag that has constrained bankers for decades.
3. Cost structure becomes a competitive moat
2026 will reward banks that “elevate operating leverage to a central KPI and tie it directly to the maturity of the bank’s AI and tech strategy”. The banks that gain the most ground will be those that simplify their technology stacks, consolidate vendors, and modernize their cores through API-driven upgrades rather than long, high-risk rewrites. Institutions that fail to modernize risk becoming “permanently underwater on cost to serve.”
Rebecca McKenzie, Chief Legal & Business Officer
4. AI governance will grow up fast
“This year, AI gets its own org chart, its own rules, and its own regulators.”
According to Codat’s Chief Legal and Business Officer, 2026 will be the year AI oversight becomes a true strategic discipline.
“Banks are spinning up AI governance centers that bridge technical, legal, and business functions,” a clear shift away from privacy teams owning AI risk toward dedicated, multidisciplinary experts. Chief AI Officers will become standard, in charge of enterprise-wide strategy and responsible deployment.
At the same time, Rebecca cautions against the rise of “black box vendor AI.” Banks are demanding deeper transparency into how models work, what data they rely on, and how risks are mitigated. TPRM processes are becoming more technical, more exhaustive, and materially longer as financial institutions probe far more deeply into AI suppliers than in previous years.
Piers Marais, Chief Customer Officer & General Manager
5. Credit moves from annual reviews to always-on
For decades, commercial credit has followed a familiar rhythm: once-a-year reviews, periodic covenant checks, and point-in-time assessments that quickly lose relevance. In 2026, banks will finally move away from this model.
Instead, credit decisions become always-on, with banks “ending reliance on once-a-year reviews and starting to use live financial data to monitor businesses continuously.” The shift reflects a recognition that waiting for an annual review means “spotting problems too late.”
Banks with continuous visibility will act earlier, price risk more accurately, and intervene while there is still time to change the outcome. Just as importantly, they will retain their strongest clients by responding quickly as those businesses grow or face challenges.
6. Trust becomes something banks compete on
As decisioning becomes more automated, trust emerges as a key battleground.
In 2026, leading banks will put more effort into explaining how and why decisions are made, not just delivering the outcome. Credit decisions, pricing changes, and risk actions are no longer opaque events. They are accompanied by clear rationale that customers can understand.
Banks that can “clearly explain credit, pricing, and risk decisions” build stronger trust, improve retention, and deepen long-term relationships. Those that cannot increasingly feel harder to work with and easier to replace.
For customers, this transparency changes the dynamic. Businesses understand their options better, feel more confident in decisions, and trust their bank to act as a genuine long-term partner rather than a black box.
7. The relationship manager role is rewritten
The RM role is evolving rapidly. In 2026, banks will increasingly adopt the automation and data-led workflows long associated with digital-first players, dramatically reducing administrative work and manual analysis carried out by frontline teams.
The result is not a loss of human relationships, but a more focused and scalable RM model. Routine preparation shifts into the background, allowing RMs to spend more of their time where they add the most value: applying judgment, advising clients, and deepening trusted relationships.
In this model, RMs are better equipped and more effective. They arrive at conversations with a clear understanding of their customers’ financial position, and can operate with the confidence and insight typically associated with fintech-level tooling, without losing the human connection that differentiates banks.
Customers will notice the difference. They spend “less time explaining their numbers and more time having useful, informed conversations” with bankers who already understand their business.
8. The death of “digital transformation”
In 2026, “digital transformation” stops being a strategy and starts sounding like a red flag.
Boards and executives will stop funding abstract, multi-year programs and instead ask one sharper question: what is the actual return? Technology initiatives “must clearly link to growth, efficiency, or risk reduction to survive”.
For customers, this shift is welcome. They see faster improvements in products, service, and decision-making, driven by tangible outcomes rather than long roadmaps. The experience feels more like a fintech and less like “multi-year programmes with little visible benefit.”
The bottom line
Across these perspectives, a shared conclusion emerges. Commercial banking is being rewired from the inside out. Fee income becomes the growth engine. Real-time data and AI move from supporting roles to the core operating infrastructure. Operating leverage, not scale alone, becomes the true competitive moat.
At the same time, governance and security grow louder and more visible as trust becomes something banks actively compete on.
By the end of 2026, commercial banking will look materially different.