CES is thought for flashy devices and enjoyable client expertise. For many banks, CES shouldn’t be a must-attend occasion as a result of it doesn’t concentrate on fintech and banking. There’s, nonetheless, nonetheless worth in attending the present, as rising applied sciences can sign how buyer expectations and new working fashions are evolving.
U.S. Financial institution understands this and despatched two executives, Don Relyea, Chief Innovation Officer, and Todder Moning, Head of R&D, Innovation, on a “Future Safari” to take a look at what’s new, what’s subsequent, and what’s potential in the case of implementing applied sciences.
After they returned to the workplace final week, we interviewed Relyea and Moning to unpack what CES 2026 revealed from a banker’s perspective. From embedded AI and robotics to agentic commerce and cross-industry convergence, they spotlight new developments, unpack which had been overhyped, and clarify what financial institution leaders must be listening to over the following 12 to 24 months.
From a banker’s perspective, what indicators did CES ship this yr about the place expertise funding is definitely heading—and which developments felt extra operationally actual than hype?
Don Relyea and Todder Moning: Properly, it’s secure to say the expertise funding is growing throughout the board. We love taking Future Safaris™ to CES as a result of it’s an effective way to get concepts and see and comply with rising developments throughout many areas that may enable us to enhance the client expertise in addition to combine with different new tech improvements.
Traits that caught out to our crew this yr embrace:
In every single place Intelligence – Embedded in Every thing: Synthetic intelligence is not a standalone class—it’s being woven into units massive and small, on the edge (on-device) and within the cloud, turning peculiar merchandise into good, context-aware companions. When it comes to potential monetary implications, customized monetary assistants that perceive habits, spending patterns, and context may dramatically enhance person expertise and belief sooner or later. Nonetheless, elevated reliance on AI raises privateness, bias, and regulatory issues—particularly as monetary choices turn out to be automated.
Digital Well being/Wellness/Longevity Tech: Tech that senses, analyzes, and predicts well being was signposted at CES 2025 and carries into 2026 with smarter biofeedback units. We see healthcare as related to monetary providers and actually have a saying: “healthcare is wealth care.” Cash is emotional and has impacts on folks, their households, and companies, each good and unhealthy, and serving to to succeed in higher wealth care outcomes (monetary outcomes) positively impacts folks’s well being and wellness.
The convergence of AI, wearables, mind interfaces, and different age-tech are going to increase life. There is a chance for banks to weave that right into a extra holistic planning course of for our purchasers. We additionally noticed quite a few wearables and different AI-based improvements that monitor numerous metrics and values to tell you about well being dangers or issues. That is related as a result of there’s a sturdy correlation between bodily well being and monetary well being. These improvements may additionally assist catch pricey medical issues earlier than they happen, saving folks cash and stress. For instance, transaction metrics may flag early indicators of dementia or an eldercare abuse problem.
Robots for industrial and residential use: The resurgence of robotics was probably the most seen development at CES this yr. “Embodied AI” or what some name “Bodily AI” are catchier names for clever robotics. We’re seeing tons of AI and much more robotics this yr than in prior years, and because the two domains merge extra deeply, a wave of AI-enabled, extra common objective, and sometimes extra human-like robotics options are rising.
Robots, humanoid, non-humanoid, and robotic exoskeletons that you simply put on are graduating from managed environments to unstructured, real-world contexts—folding laundry, navigating houses, manufacturing and even autonomous automobiles.
Trying forward: CES exhibits a shift from gadget splendor to system-wide integration—all the pieces is related and clever. AI, robotics and immersive interfaces are converging—not simply making issues “good” however connecting behaviors, identities and environments.
As CES showcased advances in client {hardware}, AI assistants, and related units, what new expectations do you suppose clients will carry again to their monetary establishments?
Relyea and Moning: You’re hitting on two of the 5 themes about why we wish to take Future Safaris and why CES is without doubt one of the finest—what we name lateral and longitudinal. At CES, we’re in a position to see many industries and domains in a concentrated period of time. Taking the lateral view, we see what and the way quite a few industries use comparable applied sciences to do one thing. It is a nice option to accumulate and curate direct or oblique ways in which you are able to do metaphorically comparable issues in your future, {industry} and area of curiosity.
On the longitudinal view, should you’re in a spot and time the place a lot of applied sciences, developments, or enterprise fashions are current, it’s an important alternative to gauge how every expertise, improvement, or enterprise mannequin is altering over time. This was the financial institution’s fifteenth yr at CES, which permits us to gauge how every expertise or improvement is altering over time. Are robots getting higher and extra helpful, or are they creating slowly (or worse, stalled and in decline)? Is AI advancing and in that case, in what locations and methods? Is a touted expertise delivering in opposition to the hype, or is it prancing round with no actual innovation use. In Texas, we name the latter “large hat, no cattle.”
The massive concept is that expertise, design, and experiences are erasing the limitations and bounds between industries. If one involves count on what’s potential to do in a single {industry}, enterprise, or product, they’ll probably come to count on that for different industries and companies. That’s the form of meta-trending we attempt to discover after which apply to what which means for banks and monetary providers going ahead.
Buyer interactions proceed to turn out to be more and more digital and more and more enabled by AI and sensors, and U.S. Financial institution is at the vanguard of visioning the place tech is headed and what our clients want from us—as we offer the expertise and steering that make their monetary lives easier and extra handy. We’re proud to have one of many longest operating devoted innovation practices in banking right this moment.
AI being embedded in all the pieces goes to lift the bar for client expectations of what good is. This yr AI was not entrance and middle at CES, it was embedded and bettering the automation of client units in refined and simple to make use of and simple to entry methods. Assume rings, pins, and enterprise card type components you could discuss to (which will or could not connect with different units or the cloud) and ask them to transcribe, translate, make PowerPoints, fill out kinds, handle calendars, and plenty of different issues. That is going to lift the expectations of consumers that extra must be executed for them.
Did you discover fintech ideas like embedded finance, identification, or real-time funds displaying up inside non-financial expertise at CES?
Relyea and Moning: Sure, we noticed issues like an AI-enabled oven that helps you grocery store for components.
We noticed a number of biometric cost checkout interfaces. These had been simple to make use of and arrange and could possibly be built-in into something requiring identification and funds fairly simply.
We noticed biometric expertise utilizing keyboard habits that would assist flag a big habits change in an worker (for instance), who’s both below duress or as a disgruntled worker may make poor choices impacting the enterprise. One other instance we noticed is asset-tracking expertise that could possibly be used off-grid, to say monitor vehicles, railcars, mining tools, and so on.
For almost all of financial institution leaders who didn’t attend CES, what’s one rising theme from the present that you simply suppose will impression monetary providers over the following 12 to 24 months, and why?
Relyea and Moning: I’d say the embedding of AI into units and what has began taking place in agentic commerce. Gadgets of all types are displaying indicators of turning into commerce orchestrators and brokers for purchasers—and it’s a brief bounce from there to having units turn out to be a kind of buyer. Lots of the issues we see at CES include subscriptions—as an illustration, the longevity mirror I used got here with an annual subscription for you and your loved ones to make use of its AI knowledge and fashions. You may think about that many of those month-to-month or annual subscriptions we would have sooner or later. Are you going to handle all of these, or will the gadget handle it for you with restricted spending capabilities you present it?
Inform us concerning the coolest non-banking use of expertise you noticed at CES?
Relyea and Moning: I feel the exoskeletons had been actually cool. Don was in a position to put on the leg ones that helped him climb stairs a lot simpler and sooner. I used to be in a position to put on one on my again and hips that helped me to select up a heavy merchandise with ease. I additionally favored the sustainable printed battery that was paper skinny. It could possibly be embedded into most something and energy airtags in issues like your passport service, purse, pockets, that form of factor. And if you throw it away, it’s fully compostable.
And we all the time love the autonomous mobility work that the massive agricultural and development/mining manufacturers present—autonomous combines with autonomous hoppers that preserve tempo with the mix, and AI-assisted and autonomous Bobcats and development excavators. It simply exhibits how autonomous mobility is going on, even when its tempo is slower than was initially anticipated firstly of the last decade.
Photograph by Pixabay
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