Associated Bank Thought Leadership Podcast

WGN: We’re on with Dustin Detrick, vice president and business banking relationship manager at Associated Bank. Dustin, welcome back.

Duston Detrick: Thanks, Steve.

WGN: I’m going to focus our first part of our conversation on banking trends for 2026. Let's go through some of these. I saw this report that said at least some of the strategy is changing so that you want to have banking that works the way people live. What does that mean?

DD: Yeah, I think it's digital, right? I mean, going into a branch is sort of an antiquated part of people's lives now. I mean, even my 78-year-old mother-in-law is taking pictures of checks and doing everything through her mobile phone. And I think, at this point in time, it's expected that our digital and the enhancement to it are top notch. Obviously, we've been competing with fintech and having some comparisons to that. But also people are just comparing us to Amazon and Facebook and anything that's online and that's mobile. And so banks are adapting and I think doing a pretty good job.

WGN: So are we going to see the bank branches go away? I mean, we have seen them starting to fall away, but will they go away completely?

DD: I think they're still a staple. You know, I talked to a lot of people, business owners, and one of the first questions they ask, especially if they're a prospect, is “Where is the closest branch?” Maybe not necessarily because they go to it, but because they want to see it and touch it and drive by it. There are a lot of banks who are building branches just to increase their footprint and market share. I think branch visits are for more formal meetings, you know, whether it be loans or whether it be updating what signatures are stored. So I think it's a complement. For the most part, they're definitely losing traffic, but in my opinion, not losing value.

WGN: You know, you talked about the increasing movement to digital here, especially by older folks. There was at least, you know, I remember some of our past conversations, thought leader conversations about this, where some folks were just not trusting of the digital process. Is that changing? Do people have more trust in the digital?

DD: I do. I think the confidence is getting stronger, especially for the folks who are pushing off for a while, but they also see the simplicity in it, right? My mother-in-law, again, back to her story. She doesn't want to go to a branch, doesn't want to take a check, doesn't want to drive. And if there's any reason for her not to drive, she'll do it. So she's jumped on board with taking pictures of checks. She's transferring money. We enrolled her in Zelle a few weeks ago. And not to say she's the only story, but I think it's across the board. People are gaining confidence. And so I do think that they're utilizing it more and confidence is higher, for sure.

WGN: Yeah, they're learning, I think, what most of us knew already, and that is we get these balances quickly. They’re more accurate, the alerts we get, we don't have to reconcile our accounts or there's fewer errors where that goes. And personalization that feels, I guess, helpful rather than intrusive, right?

DD: Yeah, Just like everybody else. We're using the data that we're collecting. I mean, the amount of data that a lot of this stuff now brings allows for a better client experience, more customization and a better user dashboard, we'll call it, right? And so instead of it being one-sided and having the same for everybody, it can prompt different marketing, different suggestions, different ideas for when people are in there based on the data that's in there. And so it's really customized. And yeah, I think it's fantastic.

WGN: Yeah, so as more people switch to data and this becomes a bigger or digital rather than this becomes a bigger deal. Talk to us a little bit about the cybersecurity part of this. The banks are trying to up their game with the criminals. It's always a battle to see who wins there, but this is still going to be a problem, the cybersecurity issue, right?

DD: Yeah, you know, we get into digital, but more importantly, AI, which is what everybody talks about nowadays in cybersecurity and fraud detection. I've always said there's smart people on both sides, good and bad. You know, unfortunately, the the smart people on the bad side have started to use a lot of this—deepfake voices, just pure identity takeovers. You know, we started to use Pindrop, which is a voice detector software from AI that basically can sort of figure out or try to predict if that's a deepfake or if that's somebody's real voice.

The fraud protection and detection is another reason we're starting to use a lot of that, you know, the cybersecurity part is probably where we're using it as much, if not more, than the digital side of the fence. Just as much as they try to get us through expanding and changing their ways, we have to adapt and up our game as well. So it's it's kind of a race to the top, if you will, but it's just never going to end. So we're using it. They're trying to use it. And as you said, it's a battle.

WGN: So it's AI versus AI.

DD: Smart people on both sides will say good versus bad. Yeah. So AI versus AI.

WGN: I want to switch our conversation here to a couple of new business growth strategies for 2027. This specifically for small businesses. I saw a report that listed seven of these different growth strategies. And not surprisingly, since we've been talking about AI, AI is one of them, right? The embracing of AI is not just for big business but also small business as well.

DD: I think it is, right, and I think it's ways for small business owners to try to be able to keep up or maybe even compete with some of these big dogs out there as far as making it more efficient, making a stronger process and automating different items, whether it be customer experience, whether it be marketing, whether it be sales. In part of that article, there was actually a follow up—post sale—which a lot of companies fall short on.

And so there's just so many cool things that I some of the agents that we're creating inside of the AI that these small businesses can quickly adapt to. And it's not a huge spend all the time. So it's not like they have to spend the same amount. I think they just have to execute as well or close to to try to be able to compete. But to me, it's super exciting to be a small business, right, because they don't have to outspend the largest competitors, they just have to out-execute them. And being as nimble and potentially as small as they are, it allows them to automate that AI and create partnerships with agents. And so, exciting partnerships, exciting strategies as well.

WGN: Yeah, I want to go through a couple more of these of the seven. Number two was create a sales playbook. This suggestion is that if you have a good playbook, a strong playbook, you're going to see success in in your work or in the field, however you want to describe it, describing, you know, defining vision, putting a clear sales process in place with flexible plans. Talk to us a little bit about this.

DD: Yeah, I think it's back to process, and AI has done such a great job of helping us understand what our process is. And inside of that, you know, you call it a playbook for sales. And if they figure out from the data that that one angle is working better than the other, it can adapt. But define your vision. What's your mission going to be, what your values are going to be? And it does it so fast, it can help you create that vision and create it across the culture of the company. And then you build a sales process that everybody can understand. And if there's a process that's defined inside of your culture, to me, it's easier to follow. You know who your target market is, who your audience is, you know what those leads mean. And then keep it

flexible because again, as we’re inundated with all this data that we're getting from AI, we can adjust and learn from it and make sure that we're getting better. And again, to me, this was a lot of stuff that maybe just the larger companies could take advantage of, maybe afford or even understand. And I think this is simplifying it a lot for these smaller businesses and allowing them to be as competitive, if not more because of their size and being nimble.

WGN: One of the other suggestions was to create some hyper-focused partnerships to amplify your small business growth strategy. Talk to us a little bit about this. What kind of partnerships would we be talking about here? How would this work?

DD: Yeah, I mean, again, with the with anything, I think it's partnering up with with different inter-department groups, whether it be sales, whether it be marketing, whether it be accounting. You know, a lot of times we always say we're one bank. But a lot of times, our departments are siloed. And I think most corporations are like that, and we get stuck in our “here's what we're looking to focus on, here's where we define success.” Well, this partnership, I think, goes across the company in the culture and can streamline that understanding and making sure that all these departments are truly going back to that vision from a sales playbook. Going back to that process and really understanding it and making sure your CRM, whether it be Salesforce or whatever customer relationship management tool you're using inside of the business, it just allows that partnership to go across all those departments and become a true one company, which again, we've said it in the past and if this actually helps, can help everybody—small, medium and large companies.

WGN: You know, one of the goals here is to improve customer loyalty, to get these customers to stay with you and maybe even recommend your business to one of their friends as well. What are the strategies for improving customer loyalty for a business?

DD: You know, I think of cookies, right? It's like I just moved. I google U-Haul and then, all of a sudden, there's U-Haul posted all over my phone or my iPad or whatever I'm searching, right? It's just one of those things where it kind of follows you, and this takes it a step further and just talks about further, “Hey, here's how we can help.”

And then again, post-sale. That's where I think a lot of this loyalty can help. A lot of times, you know, I say, buy a car. That's the one I think of. After you buy a car, you never hear from anybody ever again. A lot of this stuff can be automation and process-driven to where you're saying, Hey, you bought a car, let's talk about follow up with the oil changes, follow up with tires, follow up with maintenance, whatever the case is, and it goes back to the automation and process that I think AI is just making so impactful for all businesses, but allowing it for these small businesses. Again, back to the customer loyalty, make sure there's follow-up: set further appointments, cross-sell, whatever that would be.

WGN: What do you see as some of the common challenges that small businesses face?

DD: I mean, it's the uncertainty. You know, obviously, the economy's doing well. There's a lot of indicators are showing it's going in the right direction. But there's so much volatility with Iran and sort of the back-and-forth with that. There's still some lingering stuff around tariffs. You know, I think the the supply chain shocked a lot of people a few years ago. And so I think the uncertainty and the unknown is just the biggest challenge that small businesses face. And that includes AI and that includes technology—am I taking this the right direction and am I using the right software? Am I using the right AI? Am I going in the right direction? And that uncertainty because nobody really knows. I think there are a couple that probably keep people up at night.

WGN: We've had past thought leader conversations about attracting and retaining talent, finding the right employees. And it's been kind of tough for some, some employers, some businesses. Is that still an issue as we move into the second half of this year?

DD: You know, the job report came out today. It was a little bit less than expected, but the unemployment rate's 4.2, which I would say is what they would define as full employment. And so, yeah, I think it's still out there. It's still a concern. But but really the skill set, I think, is where people struggle to find folks that fit in. But again, we talk about AI and how fast you can learn, how quickly you can kind of bring that skill set to where it needs to be. So, you know, I think employment skill set, employment that matches the company and the culture I think will continue to be a fight. And is unemployment still relatively decent at 4.2? It's going to continue to be a challenge and you've got to have that pipeline of talent and pipeline of people that are going to actually come in, make an impact and fit into the culture.

WGN: You know, as we zoom out just a little bit, you talked a little bit about the jobs there. Let's talk a little bit about the stock market. Last few days, the stock market's been on a tear. We've seen record highs for the Dow and the S&P 500. Do we pay attention to the stock market? Does that give us an indication of how the economy is doing?

DD: I mean, it's always an indicator. Today it's up again, at least this morning. They hit a record high yesterday, 54,000. You know, all sorts of good news, I think, coming from it. And again, to me, the market's great. But I feel like the most important piece to me is the confidence that these business owners and these companies have to be able to continue to invest and to grow. But the market again, great, the Magnificent Seven had some great results. You know, there was some AI obviously conversation around everything, the data centers, semiconductors, all of that stuff is probably driving it more than anything. And so the market's up. It's doing well. Manufacturing is up. So I think some of this domestication or on-shoring seems to be helping, at least manufacturing and in the Midwest, that's super important. And a lot of that production will ripple down to, you know, obviously to the shippers, the distributors, the service, the transportation type stuff. So markets are always a great indicator. But to me, the biggest piece is the confidence that we're seeing, even through that uncertainty and even through that unknown that we just talked about, that are some challenges.

WGN: All right, Justin, great conversation. How can people get ahold of you and have a one on one if they want?

DD: Appreciate it. On LinkedIn a lot. Give me a call. Shoot me an email. Always happy to be a resource and an advisor, however I can.

WGN: Dustin, thank you. We'll talk to you next time.