Consumer expectations are outpacing legacy digital banking models: Alkami CTO

As banks move from fragmented systems to unified digital experiences, the gap between what institutions offer and what users expect is widening. In a conversation with TechCircle, Deep Varma, Chief Technology Officer at Alkami, talks about why legacy and stitched approaches fall short, how data and platform design are reshaping engagement, and why anticipatory banking is still a work in progress.

Edited Excerpts: 

How would you describe the current phase of digital banking evolution? What’s fundamentally changed in the last 3–5 years?

For years, financial institutions have navigated two primary paths in digital banking. The first is legacy systems, disconnected platforms where account opening, servicing, lending, and marketing all live in separate silos. The second is the stitched-together approach, connecting best-of-breed tools across multiple vendors. Both can work, but both still introduce friction for the institution and, ultimately, for the consumer.

What's fundamentally shifted in the last three to five years is consumer expectation. People no longer think in channels or product lines, they expect one unified, seamless journey. That gap between what legacy and stitched-together approaches deliver versus what consumers now demand is widening fast.

At Alkami, we saw this coming. As a TechFin, we chose a third path: the Digital Sales & Service Platform, a unified platform built around customer and member journeys, not product or feature silos, and powered by data. We're not just integrating tools; we're rearchitecting how digital banking works from the ground up. Our philosophy is straightforward, build it right, build it fast, and build it with the financial institution. That partnership model is what sets us apart.

How much of anticipatory banking today is truly being driven by AI versus rule-based systems? Are we already there, or still in transition?

Anticipatory Banking is a forward-thinking strategic vision that financial institutions can use as a guiding principle to act with forethought. Anticipating an account holder's financial needs before they are expressed moves banks and credit unions from reactive service to proactive growth. It allows financial institutions to scale what they've always done best by layering in behavioral data, smart marketing, and seamless user experiences across every digital touchpoint.

AI represents marketing's third great inflection point, demanding ethical oversight and a focus on human-centric messaging, the idea that you want to be found by the machine, but you want to talk to the human. The biggest shift will undoubtedly be anticipation, transforming the digital banking experience with precisely tailored offers. This evolution will see agentic AI potentially acting as a proactive virtual financial advisor, ensuring account holders are always in control and never alone.

We are still in transition, but the direction is clear, and the pace is accelerating.

Banks sit on enormous amounts of customer data, but many struggle to use it effectively. What are the biggest barriers you see in turning data into meaningful, real-time engagement?

Transaction data is the most powerful intelligence a bank or credit union already has sitting in its ecosystem. Financial institutions can refine, enrich, and categorize raw transaction data into behavioral data tags that reveal intent, and this data is one of the most overlooked sources of growth across financial institutions. It already reflects the behavioral patterns of account holders that tell their financial story, and once organized, that data can highlight external relationships, life changes, and shifts in engagement. When transaction data is translated into meaningful signals, institutions can respond faster, personalize outreach more effectively, and strengthen account holder relationships over time.

This intelligence empowers the data-informed digital banker — a leader within the bank or credit union, to make every engagement with account holders relevant, predicting what's next before it's asked.

How critical is cloud-native architecture today for financial institutions? Is it still a competitive advantage, or has it become table stakes?

Cloud platforms are evolving fast, especially for regulated industries like digital banking. Cloud services are reshaping the way financial institutions build, secure, and scale their systems. As cloud providers enhance built-in security, compliance, and optimization tools, institutions can reduce custom engineering, streamline operations, and build more adaptable, resilient platforms.

What was once a competitive advantage is quickly becoming table stakes — and the institutions that haven't made that shift are already feeling the gap.

Open fintech ecosystems are growing fast—APIs, partnerships, embedded finance. Do you see banks becoming platforms, or will fintechs continue to dominate that layer?

Open architecture is becoming the foundation for the next era of growth. It gives financial institutions the flexibility to innovate faster, adapt more intelligently, and create more connected value through an expanding ecosystem of technologies and partners. Financial institutions need to treat extensibility as a strategic advantage, where they can sell and service financial products in a digital-first world.

The institutions that will be the pacesetters in this market are the ones that have a platform creating the most value for their business and their account holders. That is exactly what the Digital Sales & Service Platform is built to do.

Legacy systems are still a reality for many institutions. How does Alkami approach modernization without forcing a complete overhaul?

By bringing together best-in-class Onboarding & Account Opening, Digital Banking, and Data & Marketing into one unified Digital Sales & Service Platform, financial institutions can convert more applicants, increase primacy, and expand relationships over time. Alkami has strengthened its position as the premier digital sales and service platform in the industry — allowing financial institutions to onboard, engage, and grow their account base.

For each critical job to be done, Alkami provides and maintains a best-of-breed solution, each of which can stand alone, so the bank or credit union can modernize and grow on their own terms.

What are the biggest technology shifts you believe will redefine digital banking over the next 3–5 years—beyond AI, what else should we be watching?

Fintech platforms will leverage the combination of GenAI, LLMs, and MCP orchestration to provide real-time, personalized, context-aware services across account holder journeys and internal workflows — think dynamic underwriting, personalized financial advice, fraud detection, adaptive risk monitoring, and automated compliance.

As financial systems adopt GenAI and LLM agents interacting via MCP, the industry will enforce stricter software engineering controls around model outputs, agent actions, data access, and compliance logging. Engineering teams are already embedding audit and tracking layers as a default — not an afterthought.

But beyond AI, financial institutions will need to understand and prioritize the customer journey. The next evolution of relationship banking is anticipatory banking — where one unified platform, powered by data, empowers FI leaders to anticipate the needs of the account holder and gives data-informed bankers the ability to onboard, engage, and grow relationships.

Imagine a world where consumers can open a retail deposit account in five minutes or less, a banker has a holistic view of the account holder's digital journey, what channel they engage with, what activity they perform, so they can serve them better by seeing exactly what they see, with all activity in one place

The Digital Banking Solution delivers one integrated experience for retail and business account holders across every device, and the Data & Marketing Solution, using insights from the institution's transaction data, delivers the right offers and nudges in real-time, exactly when they're needed

This vision is executed through the Alkami Digital Sales & Service Platform. By unifying Onboarding & Account Opening, Digital Banking, and Data & Marketing, we are redefining what Relationship Banking looks like — built to compete with megabanks, neobanks, and emerging fintechs.