What drew you to a career in transaction banking?

I started my journey in transaction banking back in 2003, when I had left an early version of a fintech on the West Coast to move to New York to start my official banking career. I ended up in transaction banking because I worked in financial services consulting out of university – my first assignment involved figuring out how to achieve efficiencies in cheque processing and using that data to roll out debit cards.

From a personal perspective, my father ran manufacturing for the consumer products division of Johnson & Johnson, so I grew up around factories and plants. The transaction banking business resonates with me, because it’s part of the infrastructure for how things work – it’s less esoteric than other parts of banking.

How is Wells Fargo approaching the transaction banking business?

Wells Fargo has had a storied history in banking in the US, but I would say the transaction banking business has primarily been focused on our core bread and butter of the middle market. The opportunity – now that we’ve had the asset cap lifted – is to focus on growth, and on reintroducing ourselves to the market as a bank that’s here to facilitate global commerce on behalf of our clients.

As a primarily US domestic bank, we do have some capabilities globally. But unlike our peer banks in the US, we’re not looking to plant flags around the world – we’re saying that we have a core client base in the US that we serve, from consumers to global corporates, and we’re looking to partner with the broader ecosystem to deliver capabilities. In today’s world of distributed ledgers, artificial intelligence and real-time payments, you can serve clients very differently.

Another topic is that this business is a core infrastructure for the bank. Whether you’re a consumer, a small business, a mid-market company or the largest company in the world, money in and out of Wells Fargo comes through the transaction banking business. And those rails are changing. In the US, we’ve added two different real-time payment rails. We’re in ongoing discussions about how distributed ledger can augment or replace capabilities – and we’re also looking at how we can finally vanquish the cheque.

What’s top of mind for you at this year’s Sibos?

For one thing, the discussion we’re having today around distributed ledger could best be described as ‘back to the future’. In 2015, at Sibos in Singapore, there was a whole discussion with Ripple and XRP, and how that could be the next set of rails – and for myriad reasons, the world wasn’t ready for it. But many of us kept playing with the technology, and some of the regulatory developments around the world have pushed things forward, so we can now start to get a framework in place.

The second thing that’s top of mind for me is how much the global economic climate has changed. There are a lot of questions around whether we are going to be in a sustained period of growth, or whether we are going into recession, globally or regionally. And there’s a lot of friction between countries that we have to address on behalf of our clients who are trying to do business around the world. You can’t shift a supply chain overnight because of a political decision, so helping clients manage through that turmoil and risk is key.

How are corporate clients reacting to these changes?

What I hear from most of our clients is that in the past we’ve made them understand the mechanics of payments to a level they really didn’t want. There are so many corporate treasurers who say they know way too much about BICs, IBANs and cut-off times. I think the promise of distributed ledger is that they can put all of that in the background – the infrastructure should really be behind the scenes. What corporates really need is certainty of settlement, better cyber security, certainty over who they are paying and clarity on fees.

Which developments are clients asking you about the most?

These are interesting times. There are two technologies that have exploded in the last three-to-five years, giving every board and CEO a fear of missing out. One is artificial intelligence, and the other is distributed ledger. Every conversation I’m currently having includes the impact of both these technologies.

Another thing that keeps coming up in conversations with corporates is the theory that everything is going to happen in an on-chain world. But at least for the foreseeable future, it’s clear that we’re going to be operating in a hybrid world, with activity on-chain taking place alongside activity on traditional rails.

That poses a lot of problems for payments, because of the need to move from fiat currency to tokens, and vice versa – if it’s Monday in New York, and the banks are closed for a bank holiday in Japan, you can’t get fiat. So that gives rise to questions about whether real-time payment rails need to be running 24/7/365, how we’re going to make the economy real-time, and what role distributed ledger will play in that.

Which other topics are your clients in North America focusing on?

There are a lot of conversations about tariffs and how that topic is going to play out, both financially and from a supply chain perspective. There are also a lot of conversations about AI and the impact this is having on businesses.

Another important topic is office culture and the future of work. The financial services industry in the US has been at the forefront of promoting back to the office working arrangements. Certain cities like New York have been very forward on this, while others have been lagging behind.

For me, there’s no substitute for being live in-person with the team, using the white board and being in the room – it’s much easier to understand people’s language and emotions, and have deeper conversations than you can have over a screen when people are multitasking.

What’s top of your mind as we look forward to 2026?

First of all, I’m hoping that my team takes a break – it’s been a very long and busy year! In the US we’ve had the conversion to ISO 20022 for Fedwire, so there’s been a lot of focus on making sure that everything is working well. And of course there has been a lot of turmoil in areas such as trade, while clients have also been asking about topics like AI and crypto. Next year, the focus will be on how we can start experimenting with these new technologies and getting some practical pilots underway.