Bank of America’s CashPro is focused on intelligent services, connected treasury

Speaker A: Um, hello and welcome to the FINAI Podcast presented by FINAI News. Today is October 29, 2026. My name is Whitney MacDonald and I'm the editor of FINAI News. The FINAI Podcast covers current trends and intriguing topics on AI applications and beyond, making it your definitive source for insights and news surrounding AI and financial services. Joining the podcast today is Tom Durkin of Bank of America. Thanks for being here tomorrow.

Speaker B: Well, thanks Whitney. I am, uh, excited to be here. Uh, it's been a busy time, uh, with a number of things going on, but happy, uh, to get on the podcast, talk to you about some of the things that are going on across bank of America with our Casper platform and certainly across the industry as well. So, uh, just a little bit of background on me, uh, I have the product responsibility for driving the strategic direction for caspro. So really think about that as the primary ways in which our corporate and commercial clients really interact from a client experience standpoint with all aspects of the banking platform. So that could be in terms of how they're doing their business for day to day, working capital, managing their payments, their investments, but also the important things like the data, intelligence, self service and so forth. So it's um, something I've done for the past couple of years. I'm really excited about the fact that I think I have, uh, also a great team to work with across the bank. Between working across our global payment solutions group, uh, we've got some great technology partners as well. So the fun part is spending all the time with customers asking them what they want. How can we build that into our strategic plan and really set our investment and direction to drive out the optimal experience for our clients across bank of America.

Speaker A: Well, before we get into what you're innovating, uh, what you're working on and you know, the plans for Cash Pro, can you kind of set the scene and maybe share with the audience that may not know much about Cash Pro, kind of tell us about the platform, how long it's been around, um, and you know, kind of the, the details around Cash Pro.

Speaker B: Sure. So Casper itself has probably gone through, uh, I'll do a little bit of a marathon analogy since we just had the Chicago marathon last, uh, week here in Chicago. Uh, but in evolution, meeting customers on the technology spectrum, wherever they are, as you look at, uh, probably over the last 20 years relative to the movement to the Internet adoption of services. And so when we talk about caspro as a platform, it's really the experience that could be the mobile app in your hand, your Company system to system connectivity if they're using a Treasury management system, if they're using an enterprise resource platform, and then the ability to interact with the platform through an online user um, experience. So really there's 35,000 clients across 145 plus jurisdictions. Casper itself supports 11 languages. And uh, through our network we embed with 70 of those different TMS and ERP platforms. So again, just to tie it back to a uh, technology marathon and journey, as companies evolve on the technology spectrum, that could be in terms of the volume they're processing for their clients, we enable them to scale with automation and efficiency. And that's why you'll hear us certainly talk about meeting the client where they're at on the technology spectrum. But that enables them to use all the different aspects of the platform so uh, adapting to those needs and then adapting to the things that are going to drive efficiency and automation certainly across uh, the client experience. And I would say too when I think about caspro overall, right, the ability to have a global platform for what it is. I mentioned one, um, hundred 45 different jurisdictions that clients are in. You're talking about over 350 payment types. And then certainly the reach provides uh, the ability for um, global reach, which is extremely important in this time of a lot of volatility in the marketplace.

Speaker A: I did kind of want to talk a little bit about, you know, where Cash Pro stands today. What are the capabilities that are already in place before we kind of move forward to what's to come. But can you kind of tell us a little bit about what are some of the functions that can be tapped already?

Speaker B: Sure, certainly. In terms of that, uh, if you think about the corporate Treasurer's day, the capabilities that are within the platforms relative to how they're managing, uh, money in terms of their working capital but also moving. So the capabilities would include looking at their cash position to start the day in terms of balances that have come in, uh, setting the position, making a decision on how much payments to do for the day, what excess cash to invest, uh, what cash to say, pay down on a loan. So think about cash forecasting as the critical component that the client does to start their treasury day. In terms of that, then the different functions across treasury, whether that's the AP or AR groups, are looking at both incoming cash flow, whether that's in the usa, their incoming receivables flows, and then their appropriate outgoing flows for pinky suppliers, uh, reaching and doing payments in terms of uh, out of their systems and doing the appropriate approvals. In Casper. So you see those different aspects in terms of helping the treasury teams manage the day, incoming payments, cash position, outgoing and then additional investments of excess cash. So they're really the core treasury functions, uh, to meet the client in terms of what they may need.

Speaker A: Now from my own coverage and just keeping up with bank of America, I know that there are often additions to the Cash Pro platform. Uh, the latest I saw was in September, the launch of Payments Insights. Can you walk us through that? The innovation and the demand behind a, uh, addition like that?

Speaker B: Certainly. So yes, we're really proud of the Payments Insights launch as part of our Casper data Intelligence suite. So it's about giving more analytics on payment efficiency, cross border flow and then really that critical component of the working capital performance I mentioned earlier. The other thing that really has been driven by client feedback in that case is clients ask us a lot to do proprietary peer benchmarking. They want to know how they're doing against, um, best practice in the industry. And so the ability to visualize that dynamically on the spot as they're measuring with their own data really is an important part of what Payments Insights brings to the table. The other thing that makes it powerful is the volume of transactions running through Caspro. So uh, if I recall correctly, we're up over 10% for the first half of 2026 compared to 2025. So that's over 213 million payments that are additionally running through the platform. So you've probably seen some of the different stats, uh, as reported through our third quarter earnings, uh, in terms of record numbers, our payment approvals that are done through the CashPro app are up over 19% and if I recall correctly, our largest single day. So this is just one day at the end of June. Right. We did almost $19 billion in payment approvals in a single day. So that's payments that are approved through the caspro app. So it does highlight the client, um, trust belief, uh, in the platform based upon these significant dollar values that are flowing through the platform in terms of payments, uh, and numbers that are going through. So there's a lot of other stats that are probably part of the platform that I would just highlight that we just throw in a couple other areas. Um, we tend to talk about servicing and when we talk about service, it's the best of what we refer to as high tech, high touch. Ah. And as part of that you've got the technology capabilities within caspro to chat, um, and engage with our Erica technology and probably over 50% of those queries that come in through Casper Chat are handled by the technology. We obviously have the live service, uh, agent that's available as well. But just using the platform to engage with all that data that's running through off the backs of the different payments and so forth provides a unique opportunity to drive that payment's insights and highlight more analytics. So just a, a little bit of a long answer there, but it's to help tie the baseline of what's running through and then be able to act upon those capabilities.

Speaker A: No, not too much at all. Thank you so much for breaking that down. And when you can quantify some of the results that you're seeing, some of the growth that you're seeing, that's all really helpful. Uh, maybe you can tell me a little bit about what makes everything tick on the back end. Um, when you have these innovations and the feedback and what clients are demanding. Are you building everything in house? Can you tell me a little bit about like the development team?

Speaker B: Uh, well it's a great partnership between our technology development team, our product management teams that work together in terms of prioritizing the user experience. It's also, if you think about the product development life cycle, the ability starts with listening to clients. So we spend a lot of time with clients. This year we've hosted 14 different in person sessions throughout the year with 250 different clients in locations such as Dublin, Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi, Sydney, Santiago and Shanghai, uh, in addition to Chicago in the US So that candid dialogue helps set a great um, engagement with live demonstrations, prioritization exercises and really helps the client drive and validate the near term and long term roadmap. And it also becomes an important point of uh, what I like pressure testing emerging concepts, what needs to change as the market moves in an area. It's especially important with security, that's especially important with data. And then they help drive it. So you bring that in, you run a series of uh, early adopters. After working through the user experience, design and aspects, clients participate in that. So we refer to that as our Casper process and continue to invest in that flywheel. So by the time we get to finalizing the development build with our technology teams, we have the ability where we've got client feedback throughout the process and we feel that best positions it for a general market launch in terms of capabilities. And that's a little bit of what really drives the, the aspect of success with payments, that's for sure.

Speaker A: Now I kind of want to get into a little bit about what you have on your roadmap um, what's on the horizon for Cash Pro? You mentioned all the things that have to be in place before something goes live. Um, why don't you tell us a little bit about uh, what's ahead for Cash Pro, what you're paying attention to, um, what's of interest for your client, uh, base.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So if you think about just building off the payments, uh, insights and data intelligence, last year as well we launched Capital Markets Insights and security insights driving more additional data points beyond the payment rails to help round out the overall experience. I think for us it's going to be an important element of the platform. Clients are automating how they're engaging with the bank, whether that's over our Casper API rails in terms of bringing in more data so that they can act in a particular automated fashion as well. So the direction of a platform is to continue to focus on intelligent self service and what we would call like a connected treasury experience with a increasing focus on security built into every one of those steps. So you think about security as wrapping around the whole experience to drive it. We spend a lot of time on continuing to evolve and especially the way that technology is changing these days, continually working with clients to drive out additional services that are expanding. You know our uh, AI supported service via chat and automation. We got, we got a lot of interesting things that are going to come, whether it's on the payment creation and approval side, but also look at the successes that um, we're building off of on how to help clients in terms of in payment investigations, additional alerting relative to security and fraud prevention. So all of those cases relate to the experience itself on how to advise clients, provide the right recommendations and use the data that's already running through bank of America. So leveraging off that in the trusted environment that we are in will provide in our belief a uh, deeper system connectivity with clients, but also enabling the full broad aspect to our global payment solutions infrastructure across all of our full branch network without minimizing anything on identity and security and so forth. What we'll do as we go through the fourth quarter is really setting that prioritization. So we have a pretty good idea on what we want to do. We look at our uh, work across with our technology teams, how will we set our release roadmap and then again we'll validate that with clients. Actually yesterday that's a little uh, information of that 250 clients, we had um, a smaller subset doing a webinar yesterday, fine tuning some of the early adopter insights who just helping prioritize in our CASPRO API space. So it's an ongoing thing. And I would say from a product standpoint, you're not really done. You gotta keep going. You keep focusing on time with clients as their challenges continue and bringing information. So we've still got some work to do.

Speaker A: Yeah, I like what you said about that. You're never really done. There's a constant feedback loop. Obviously, where we stand today in terms of technology, it's always evolving. You got to keep up with that. Um, so we will definitely be following along as we always do. And Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to join us for the podcast today.

Speaker B: Absolutely, Whitney. Appreciate it, all the support, and look forward to continuing the conversation.

Speaker A: You've been listening to the Finai Podcast presented by FINAI News. Please follow us on X and LinkedIn. And as a reminder, you can rate this podcast on your platform of choice. Be sure to Visit us@ah, finai news.com for more AI news. Thanks for listening.