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Citizens Financial is welcoming a top wealth advisory team led by Daniel Menton, Adam Waldman and Vincenzo Iannucci. This addition underscores Citizens’ commitment to serving a growing customer base. Through team hires, Citizens continues to strengthen its position as a premier firm for wealth management, private banking and commercial banking – offering clientele an unmatched, integrated banking experience to meet complex financial needs. With more than seven decades of combined experience, the team, which previously managed nearly $1.5 billion in client assets, caters to the sophisticated financial needs of ultra-high-net-worth clients, their families, and businesses.   Daniel Menton, Managing Director, Citizens Private Wealth said,  “With Citizens’ extensive capabilities, we will provide clients with a truly integrated experience, seamlessly addressing their wealth, private banking, and commercial banking needs.” The new team will partner closely with Citizens Commercial Bank and Private Bank. Citizens recently opened its first New York Private Banking office and also has 174 branches across the Tri-State metro area. It has posted top-quartile household and deposit growth in the most competitive market in the country. 

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The idea now taking root among platforms like Shopify, Uber, Walmart, and Amazon is how deeply embedded finance can be integrated and intelligently adapt to user needs. In March 2025, Walmart integrated J.P. Morgan Payments’ embedded finance solution into its Marketplace, enabling sellers to receive consumer payments and manage vendor payouts directly on the platform. This move, according to Jeff Lin, Head of Industry Product Solutions for Embedded Finance & Solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments, represents “an evolution in how financial services are accessed and distributed,” not a threat to traditional banking. He explains, “This opportunity overall has differences from traditional channels in that it requires partnering with platforms to deliver a digital experience, while also adhering to regulatory and internal control requirements.” Walmart’s choice to partner with a legacy bank, despite its scale and ability to build in-house, reflects a prioritization of “stability, compliance, and control” over speed. The embedded solution gives Walmart a pre-built, compliant, and extensible financial core that simplifies operations for its sellers. Lin adds, “We aim to be the engine powering platforms and fintechs, delivering growth, stickiness, stability, and scale for clients and their ecosystems.” He notes that embedded finance isn’t one-size-fits-all: platforms can either build from scratch or accelerate by partnering with banks offering pre-integrated tools. Regardless of the approach, Lin emphasizes, “every solution must be built with regulatory compliance in mind.” Walmart Marketplace serves a diverse seller base, and a robust embedded solution must cater to varying needs—from instant payouts to seasonal capital or integration with financial records. “Well-built embedded financial solutions will fundamentally simplify the overall operations of sellers, regardless of their size,” Lin says. Ultimately, J.P. Morgan’s role is shifting from service provider to infrastructure partner. “Embedded finance allows for a partnership between platforms and banks in co-creating experiences that drive end-user access to relevant financial services,” Lin explains. This model, grounded in compliance and platform integration, is shaping the future of financial services. Retailers aren’t becoming banks—but they are becoming financial service distributors, with banks like J.P. Morgan choosing to power, rather than resist, the shift. Future embedded systems may offer real-time financial recommendations, liquidity alerts, and multi-platform cash optimization—all contingent on having secure, compliant foundations that make these advanced capabilities both trustworthy and actionable.

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UK digital challenger bank Chase is launching its first credit card, offering customers 0% interest on purchases for up to 15 months. Following testing, all Chase customers can now check their eligibility and apply for the credit card via the bank’s app. In addition to 0% interest on purchases for up to 15 months, the card comes with no annual fees, and no FX fees alongside competitive exchange rates. Features include real time balance updates, instant notifications on purchases, and in-app tools such as the ability to instantly freeze and unfreeze their physical and virtual card, turn on and off certain spending features, and spend tracking. Like Chase’s debit card, the credit card is numberless – with card details stored in the app so only customers have access to them. Mark Powys, MD, daily banking and borrowing, Chase, says: “Designed specifically to meet the borrowing needs of our customers, the Chase credit card offers a seamless digital experience and a range of features to help people effortlessly manage their money.”

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There are now applications pending at the FDIC for deposit insurance for five proposed industrial banks — four by auto companies and one by OneMain Financial, a finance company that serves nonprime borrowers. Nissan Motor Acceptance Co. — NMAC — an arm of the Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co., is joining bids by Ford, Stellantis and General Motors. The proposed Nissan Bank U.S. would provide expanded commercial financing options for both Nissan dealers as well as other auto dealer. NMAC would continue to handle the manufacturer’s consumer auto financing activities. The latest application came from Nissan Motor

Acceptance Co. — NMAC — an arm of the Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co., joining bids by Ford, Stellantis and General Motors. The proposed Nissan Bank U.S. would provide expanded commercial financing options for both Nissan dealers as well as other auto dealer. NMAC would continue to handle the manufacturer’s consumer auto financing activities. Ordinarily, five applications wouldn’t seem like a surge. But the population of existing industrial banks is small. At yearend 2024 there were 15 in Utah, three in Nevada and five in other states, according to a study on the state of industrial banks by the Utah Center for Financial Services at the University of Utah. (Industrial banks are also called industrial loan companies, or ILCs.) So, if all five applications receive insurance approval and obtain charters, that would mark a rise in the tally of about 21%. In 2025, SmartBiz Bank resulted from a fintech’s acquisition of a community bank and its charter. Alt worked with SmartBiz on that. While not an industrial bank, it is seen as an harbinger of loosening federal attitudes on nonbank entrance into banking in general. In general, the Trump administration has made it clear it is open to more charters and that applications for charters and mergers and acquisitions will proceed more quickly than during the Biden administration years. Much attention has centered on the potential of the industrial bank charter, which appeals to nonbank companies particularly because they can own one and avoid coming under oversight and regulation by the Federal Reserve as a bank holding company. These state-chartered entities exist in a handful of states but depend on federal deposit insurance, which is granted, or not, by FDIC. During the Biden years, especially, policy was clearly against permitting more of them to open. The banking lobby has been fighting encroachment by industrial banks for years. Michele Alt, a former regulator and now partner at Klaros Group. Alt has been working with Nissan on its application and has worked with other nonbanks and fintechs on charters. Presently much of the activity that’s been seen in both the industrial bank and traditional bank chartering (and deposit insurance coverage) reflects deals that were in the works prior to the election, notes Alt. Fresh activity driven by the thawing regulatory environment is coming. Alt says it will be led by refilings of proposals withdrawn earlier. Gradually completely new proposals, already being discussed with Alt’s firm and others, will begin to emerge. Alt points out that while four auto companies are in the regulatory process for industrial bank charters, that’s a limited universe. She believes fintechs will be candidates soon, as more clarity emerges. “But remember it is a rare charter type and politically controversial,” says Alt. Some in Washington don’t like the fact that these charters allow nonbanks to own banks and yet be out from under the Fed. As more fintechs investigate bank charters of all kinds — industrial banks, full-service charters, limited-purpose charters — Alt says the concept of “community,” in terms of serving the needs and convenience of a community in exchange for a charter, may evolve. “In fairness, the regulators have absolutely been going to school on innovation and figuring out how to supervise innovative models,” says Alt. “They’ve really done a lot of work there.” From the viewpoint of incumbent banks and credit unions, such new players getting charters represents a challenge, especially in the ability to raise insured deposits. Alt says 95% of applicants see the deposit powers as a key feature.

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Susan Zaunbrecher, Fifth Third’s head of legal, government, and regulatory affairs, will retire. Christian Gonzalez will join the lender as executive vice president and chief legal officer, effective July 7. Kevin Lavender, head of Fifth Third’s commercial bank, will become its vice chair effective July 14, the bank said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Kevin Khanna, who is head of corporate and investment banking, will replace him and take up the role effective immediately. Fifth Third’s latest executive shuffle highlights the lender’s commitment to growth and innovation amid a dynamic regulatory environment, the bank’s CEO, Tim Spence, noted. Gonzalez, meanwhile, will join the Cincinnati-based lender from Dinsmore & Shohl, where he has worked for nearly 15 years and was most recently the chair of the corporate department.  Khanna, meanwhile, joined Fifth Third in 2015 to create and co-lead the tech, media and telecom group. He later added the diversified industries West Coast practice under his wings. Before joining Fifth Third, Khanna was the managing director and headed part of the communications, media and entertainment group at CIT, where he worked for 10 years. 

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Mobey Forum, a global association for banks, has released a report titled “Embedded Finance: A Strategic Roadmap for Banks,” offering actionable insights for banks to succeed in the digital economy by embedding financial services into digital ecosystems, reshaping customer experiences, and delivering integrated, customer-centric solutions. The report explores three core Embedded Finance business models. First, API-Driven Banking positions banks as “producers” that expose their financial products and services through APIs, allowing external platforms to embed these offerings seamlessly. This model emphasizes automation, scalability, and alignment with regulations like PSD2/3 and Open Banking, broadening banks’ distribution channels. Second, the Verticalised Offering model casts banks as “distributors,” integrating third-party services into their offerings while retaining control over branding and customer relationships, thus enriching solutions within a unified experience. Third, Platform Banking represents the most comprehensive model, where banks act as “marketplace orchestrators” facilitating exchanges among producers, consumers, and partners in a centralized ecosystem. Unlike the vertical model, this approach enables onboarding of users who may not initially be banking customers. The report provides practical frameworks and maturity models to guide banks in embedding finance effectively, with strategies such as developing robust API infrastructures and forming strategic third-party partnerships. Real-world case studies from UBS, PostFinance, and SEB Embedded demonstrate how Embedded Finance can drive customer engagement and unlock new revenue. Ultimately, the report issues a call to action, warning that banks must define their Embedded Finance strategies now or risk losing market relevance, customer loyalty, and income streams to faster-moving non-bank competitors.

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