# What Real AI Strategy Looks Like Inside a Bank: Zions Bancorporation's Approach
_Published: 2026-10-06T00:00:00.000-04:00_

See how Zions Bancorporation is sequencing its AI strategy across agentic AI, operations, and data, while keeping people and trust at the center.

Every institution has an opinion on AI right now. Fewer have a strategy. At Zions Bancorporation, that strategy is specific enough to name, sequence, and staff, and it's being shaped by leaders who are just as focused on their people as they are on their technology.

Neelan Suri, Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives Manager for Commercial Lending Technology, and Chantel Chase, Executive Vice President and Director of the Business Banking Loan Center at Zions Bancorporation, recently shared how the organization is thinking about AI, not as a single initiative, but as a shift that touches strategy, infrastructure, and culture all at once.

## **A Frictionless, Predictive Future**

“I actually think we're going to be much more nimble,” Chase replied, when asked where she believes banking is headed. “I'm really excited about where the banking industry is going in the next five years. We'll have a more seamless experience for our customers, and we'll be able to be predictive and proactive versus today, where we're very reactive.”

Suri sees the same shift from a different vantage point. “I see a future where banking is extremely frictionless, with digitization, smart contracts, digital assets, and paperless banking. Banking is going to be embedded into the lives of our customers. We'll probably know what the customer needs before they even realize it themselves.”

## **From Generative to Agentic**

What separates Zions' AI conversation from a purely aspirational one is specificity. Suri names three concrete priorities driving the institution's AI roadmap.

“One is switching from generative AI to more agentic AI and moving away from just generating content to actually having AI help do the work,” he said. “The second is looking internally at where AI can improve our operations, which translates into a better customer experience. And the third, AI is only as good as the data you give it, so a lot of infrastructural upgrades have to go in to enable all of this.”

It's a strategy built in the right order: capability, then operations, then the data foundation underneath both.

## **The Human Element Doesn't Go Away**

As a leader in lending at Zions, Chase is keenly aware of the momentum behind AI, and just as clear about where the technology stops.

“The functions that could never be replaced by AI, it's the human element,” she said. “Banking is built on trust and relationships, and technology isn't going to replace that. We still need trusted advisors who are empowered to use tools that make them more efficient, so they can focus more on building relationships than writing the book.”

That “book” reference points to an analogy she uses with her own team: it's easier to read a book than to write one. AI can do the writing, assembling information, handling the administrative load, so people can spend their time on the reading: the judgment, the decisioning, the relationship.

## **Preparing People Alongside Systems **

Both leaders describe AI readiness as a people problem as much as a technology one.

“There's a definition alignment required for what AI means to a company, and it may differ by area — operations versus technology versus HR,” Suri said. “We're upskilling people and giving them tools to explore.”

On the trust side, Chase points to a simple, human strategy: build familiarity before you build reliance. “If we can be transparent about how we're using AI, that helps maintain trust,” she said. “We build confidence through experience. The more we work with these tools, the more confident we'll be in the outcomes.”

## **Why Build on nCino Instead of Building It Themselves**

With a strategy this deliberate, it would be reasonable to assume Zions Bancorporation built its own platform to support it. Suri explains why they didn't.

“Our primary business is banking, not software development,” he said. “Given all of the other banks that have adopted nCino and helped improve it over the last 10 years, it's a much better proposition to build on what's already been solved rather than reinventing the wheel ourselves. That was one big factor in why we chose to buy versus build.”

It's a candid answer, and a useful one: Zions' AI strategy isn't about doing everything in-house. It's about knowing which problems are worth solving from scratch and which ones are better inherited from a decade of collective progress across the industry.

[_Want to see what a modern, AI-ready platform could mean for your institution? Talk to nCino._](https://www.ncino.com/demo)

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