Modern Banking Runs on Customer Moments More Than Product Design
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The defining characteristic of a modern bank isn’t its mobile app or digital account opening experience. Instead, it’s the ability to meet customers wherever they are, through the channels, brands, and moments that matter most to them.
In a recent conversation on the Banking Transformed podcast, Peter Gasparro, Chief Development Officer at Barclays US Consumer Bank, argues that this shift requires banks to rethink far more than their technology. From organizing teams around customer journeys instead of products to building growth through strategic partnerships and preparing for AI-driven commerce, Gasparro outlines a blueprint that extends well beyond Barclays’ unique business model.
Key insight: Long-term success will depend on delivering relevant value, modernizing the way organizations work, and recognizing that customer expectations are increasingly shaped by experiences outside the banking industry.
Need to Know:
- Organize teams around customer journeys rather than individual products to improve speed, consistency, and customer experience.
- Strategic partnerships create sustainable growth only when both organizations share goals, contribute value, and strengthen customer trust.
- Customers increasingly choose financial providers based on specific needs instead of maintaining a single primary banking relationship.
- AI is changing product discovery, software development, and marketing, requiring banks to rethink both technology investments and performance metrics.
- Banks should focus internal resources on capabilities that create competitive advantage while partnering for technologies others can deliver faster.
Why Modern Banking Starts with Customer Journeys
Banks have spent decades organizing themselves around products. Consumers, however, organize their lives around goals.
Someone isn’t looking for a personal loan. They’re renovating a kitchen. They aren’t shopping for a rewards card. They’re planning a vacation. They aren’t opening a savings account. They’re saving for a milestone.
Gasparro believes that disconnect is driving one of the biggest organizational shifts happening inside financial institutions today.
Rather than building teams around products like credit cards or deposits, Barclays has reorganized around customer journeys. Cross-functional teams composed of business leaders, product managers, and engineers continuously improve each journey instead of handing projects between departments through traditional waterfall development.
Key takeaway: The result is faster delivery and better customer experiences because improvements happen continuously rather than waiting for large technology releases. While this operating model works well for Barclays, the lesson here is that organizational structure should reflect how customers actually interact with the bank.
Banks looking to make a similar shift should start by asking a few fundamental questions:
- Where do customers experience the most friction?
- Which journeys span multiple products or business units?
- Are teams optimizing individual products or the complete customer experience?
Modern architecture — including cloud infrastructure, APIs, and agile development — makes this approach possible. But Gasparro argues that technology is only valuable when it enables banks to respond faster to changing customer expectations.
Build Around Value, Not Products
Every financial institution should understand its “right to win.” Why should customers deepen their relationship with your bank instead of choosing another provider?
For Barclays, the answer is partnerships. Rather than relying on a traditional branch network, the bank has built its U.S. business by delivering financial products through trusted brands such as JetBlue, AARP, and General Motors. But Gasparro argues that the broader principle applies to banks of every size.
Instead of simply attaching financial products to recognizable brands, the company looks for ways to extend the value customers already associate with those brands. When Barclays launched its personal loan product, for example, it paired competitive rates with airline loyalty points, reinforcing the customer’s existing relationship with JetBlue while creating a more compelling reason to choose Barclays.
Community and regional institutions can apply the same thinking locally.
Rather than focusing exclusively on national brands, banks can develop partnerships with schools, retailers, employers, healthcare providers, or local businesses that already enjoy customer trust. Today’s technology also makes those relationships significantly more valuable than they were in the past.
Key insight: Real-time transaction data, digital channels, and personalized offers allow institutions to deliver experiences based on individual behavior instead of broad customer segments.
Successful partnerships also require more than distribution agreements.
According to Gasparro, the strongest relationships share three characteristics:
- Leadership teams remain aligned around common objectives.
- Each organization contributes meaningful customer value.
- Every interaction reinforces trust by consistently delivering what customers expect.
Trust remains the foundation because customers now have more choices — and more tools for comparing them — than ever before.
Banking Competes with Amazon, Not Banks
Consumer expectations are increasingly being shaped by companies outside financial services.
People expect immediate access, personalized recommendations, seamless digital experiences, and the flexibility to interact whenever and however they choose. Those expectations were established by Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and leading fintechs rather than traditional banks.
That shift has fundamentally changed how financial relationships develop. Previous generations often established one primary banking relationship early in adulthood and maintained it for decades. Today’s consumers are far more willing to choose different providers for different financial needs.
One institution may provide checking. Another may offer a credit card with better rewards. A third may finance an auto loan.
Rather than fighting that reality, Gasparro believes banks should focus on becoming the preferred provider for specific customer moments.
That philosophy also extends into digital wallets.
Physical wallets forced consumers to prioritize a handful of cards. Digital wallets simplify payment choices but also increase the importance of becoming the card customers use first.
Key insight: Instant digital card provisioning illustrates how customer expectations have evolved. Instead of waiting days for a physical card to arrive, approved customers can immediately add credentials to Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Wallet, or merchant wallets and begin transacting within minutes.
Convenience has become part of the product itself.
The AI Era Demands New Metrics
Like many financial institutions, Barclays initially applied AI to operational efficiency, including call center support, coding assistance, and internal workflows.
Gasparro believes the next wave will reshape how customers discover financial products.
As AI assistants begin recommending cards, loans, travel options, and financial services, institutions must think beyond traditional search engine optimization. Product information, rewards programs, and value propositions increasingly need to be understandable not only by people but also by large language models and AI agents making recommendations on customers’ behalf.
That change reaches well beyond marketing.
Banks should also reconsider how they measure success.
Traditional metrics like account openings and balances remain important, but they no longer provide a complete picture of customer engagement. Leaders should regularly evaluate whether the KPIs they monitor still reflect how customers behave today, rather than how they behaved several years ago.
Finally, Gasparro challenges banks to reconsider a long-standing assumption: that every capability must be built internally.
Cloud providers, fintechs, and specialized technology partners often innovate faster than individual institutions can. Rather than investing heavily to recreate capabilities that others already deliver well, banks may generate greater value by partnering strategically and concentrating internal resources on the areas where they can truly differentiate.
Bottom line: In an industry where technology, customer expectations, and AI continue to evolve at extraordinary speed, competitive advantage may depend less on owning every capability than on assembling the right combination of people, partners, and platforms.
