The CFO owns the AI strategy: a return target on every use case, 50 agents in production, and a venture studio — all while doubling in size.
How is Huntington using AI?
Huntington is the large bank where the chief financial officer is also the AI strategist. Zach Wasserman, who runs finance, strategy and data analytics, has set an explicit return target — 10–15% cost reductions and 10–15% revenue increases from targeted generative and agentic use cases — and reports progress in agents: two at the end of 2022, 50 in production and more than 60 in development by April 2026, with about 15 new ones entering the pipeline each month. The program sits inside a bank that is doubling in size through the Veritex and $7.4 billion Cadence acquisitions, has launched a fintech venture studio to 'act more like a tech company', is a design partner and investor in Casca's generative-AI small-business loan origination, and won an American Banker Innovation of the Year award in 2026 with its payments partner. The public record is unusually specific about governance: Wasserman frames every use case around business value, oversight and adaptable operating models.
Lead bank
The Huntington National Bank
Assets (lead bank, Jun 30, 2026)
$283 billion
Charter
National bank (OCC)
Headquarters
Columbus, OH
Flagship platform
Agentic process transformation, run from finance
AI leadership
Zach Wasserman · Steve Steinour · Brant Standridge · Senthil Kumar · Kendall Kowalski · Vijay Konduru · Ameesh Vakharia · Rob Carnell · Igor Cerc · Joe Proudfoot · Christian Corts · Deepak Kapoor · Meredith Howerth · John C. (Chris) Inglis
- AI strategy is owned by CFO Zach Wasserman (ex-CFO of Visa North America and of American Express's US consumer business), with direct responsibility for enterprise-wide adoption plus finance, strategy and analytics.
- Agents: 2 in Q4 2022 → 50 in production and 60-plus in development by April 2026, about 15 new a month; 'a dramatic acceleration of agentic process transformation, including in my finance team'.
- Return discipline: on track for 10–15% cost reductions and 10–15% revenue increases from targeted LLM and agentic use cases (September 2025).
- Lending: investor in and design partner of Casca's generative-AI loan origination, alongside Live Oak (the number-one and number-two SBA 7(a) lenders); credit decisions stay with existing underwriting models and loan officers; AI-personalised deposit offers.
- Scale and structure: Veritex ($1.9 billion, closed October 2025) and Cadence ($7.4 billion, closed Q1 2026) take the bank to $284 billion; a fintech venture studio with Alloy Partners (October 2025); an American Banker Innovation of the Year 2026 award with Payabli.
- 2026 expense discipline: some technology hiring and spending trimmed to hold expense growth in the lower half of guidance — AI investment is judged inside the budget, not around it.
- Operating model: a federated structure under the CFO, with a central team setting strategy and building advanced applications and embedded teams in each business; 13 such teams were stood up in about 18 months to April 2026.
- Vendor-first build: the CFO expects up to 80% of AI to come from vendor suites (Salesforce and Microsoft are named major partners; Google Cloud, AWS and Azure are the three cloud providers) and about 20% to be built in-house; 28 generative-AI use cases were deployed by September 2025 against a target of 100.
- Governance: the board Technology Committee oversees the strategy and implementation of AI, the Q2 2026 10-Q lists an Artificial Intelligence Risk Committee among eight operational-risk committees, and a risk-tiered generative-AI framework requires human oversight for higher-impact uses.
- Integration: Cadence closed on 1 February 2026 (about $279 billion combined assets, 390 Cadence branches) and its systems conversion finished 235 days after announcement, using AI-enabled tools to automate manual processes; Veritex closed on 20 October 2025 and converted in January 2026.
- Expense action: in April 2026 management took about $50 million out of the expense base, saying it was accelerating efficiency programmes with 'very encouraging momentum, particularly in agentic process transformation'.
- Personalisation at scale: Huntington Heads Up delivered 14 million insights a month across 96 use cases at a 4.7 out of 5 satisfaction score in March 2025, and Huntington was named Euromoney's best US digital bank for consumers on 20 July 2026.
What is Agentic process transformation, run from finance?
Huntington's AI program is led by CFO Zach Wasserman, who also runs strategy and data analytics. From two AI agents in late 2022 the bank reached 50 in production and more than 60 in development by April 2026, adding about 15 a month, with a stated return target of 10–15% cost reductions and 10–15% revenue increases from targeted LLM and agentic use cases.[1][2][8]
What AI partnerships and patents does Huntington have?
Huntington's public AI relationships are mostly vendor suites and fintech partners. The CFO says up to 80% of its AI comes from vendors and names Salesforce and Microsoft as major partners, with Google Cloud, AWS and Azure as its three cloud providers. Named programmes are an AWS machine-learning redaction pipeline, an investment in and design partnership with Casca for SBA lending, Personetics software behind Heads Up, Payabli embedded payments, Coverbase third-party risk management and an Alloy Partners venture studio. A Google Patents assignee search found 12 patents and applications assigned to Huntington Bancshares, from 1993 to 2025, none with AI in its title; only an abandoned 2022 application on emergency-fund goals describes a machine-learning algorithm. No agreement with an AI lab or GPU supplier was found in public sources. On patents, eight machine-learning grants of 2025–26 sit with The Huntington National Bank (fraud detection, anomaly detection, image labeling, unstructured-data workflows), alongside the non-AI grants listed below.[2][8][22][42][39][41][29][45][46][47][48][49][50]
| Item | What it is | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforce | Named major partner; 'a ton of work around AI' in its products | In production | 2025-09-11[2] |
| Microsoft | Named major partner; embedded generative-AI copilots in enterprise software | In production | 2025-09-11[2] |
| Google Cloud, AWS, Azure | The three major cloud providers the bank works with | In production | 2025-09-11[2] |
| Amazon Web Services | Textract, SageMaker and Step Functions pipeline that redacted more than 400 million documents | In production | 2026-06-24[22] |
| Casca | Huntington invested in the $29 million Series A and is a design partner for generative-AI SBA 7(a) origination | Rolling out | 2025-08-19[42][6] |
| Personetics | Personalisation engine behind Huntington Heads Up; flagship client since 2022, migrating to its SaaS platform in 2025 | In production | 2025-03-27[39][27] |
| Alloy Partners | Corporate venture studio; the partnership began in 2024 and had produced one venture by October 2025 | In production | 2025-10-23[41] |
| Payabli | Embedded payments in business online banking; American Banker Innovation of the Year 2026 honoree | In production | 2026-06-01[43][7] |
| Coverbase | AI-engineered third-party risk management platform; Huntington named as an enterprise customer | In production | 2026-09-29[29] |
| US 12,602,693 B2 | Fraud detection using byte pair encoding (machine learning); assigned to The Huntington National Bank | Granted | 2026-04-14[45] |
| US 12,355,794 B1 | Multi-dimensional anomaly source detection (machine learning); assigned to The Huntington National Bank | Granted | 2025-07-08[46] |
| US 12,412,412 B1 | Unstructured data identification and workflow execution using machine-learning techniques; assigned to The Huntington National Bank | Granted | 2025-09-09[47] |
| US 12,205,162 B2 | Time to cure negative balances in financial accounts (granted patent; not AI) | Granted | 2025-01-21[48] |
| US 2022/0164884 A1 | Customising emergency-fund build-up; the specification describes a machine-learning algorithm that sets a personalised goal | Abandoned application | 2022-05-26[49] |
| US 11,194,637 B2 | Extensible alerts platform (granted patent; not AI) | Granted | 2021-12-07[50] |
What has Huntington done on AI, and when?
- Sep 29, 2026
Named a Coverbase enterprise customer[29]
Coverbase, an AI third-party risk management vendor, names Huntington Bank among new enterprise customers alongside CVS Health, Alaska Airlines and Edward Jones as it adds go-to-market and alliances leaders.
- Sep 25, 2026
Vakharia on AI in bank marketing[44]
The new chief marketing and digital products officer says customer research is moving to large language models and agentic AI, and that marketing uses AI tools internally for creative development, reviews and workflow.
- Sep 8, 2026
Brant Standridge named president[14]
Succession planning at the holding company and the bank.
- Sep 2, 2026
Business innovation and AI products organisation[25]
Vijay Konduru heads the new business innovation and AI products organisation; Ameesh Vakharia joins as chief marketing and digital products officer.
- Aug 27, 2026
Blend award for Huntington's consumer digital lead[28]
Naming Huntington among seven customers honoured at its Forum 2026, Blend gave Meredith Howerth, consumer banking digital director, its Digital Experience Excellence award for running 'a large, multi-line digital ecosystem at Huntington'.
- Jul 28, 2026
Q2 10-Q: AI Risk Committee among eight operational-risk committees[34]
The committee list adds a Regulatory and Data Oversight Committee to the seven named in the 10-K; the filing also cites AI developments as raising the sophistication of cyberattacks.
- Jul 27, 2026
AI in deposit pricing across 56 rate regions[23]
The CFO says AI analyses customer behaviour to price 'extraordinarily granular' across regions and segments.
- Jul 23, 2026
Q2 call: Cadence converted in 235 days with AI-enabled tools[33]
Standridge says the conversion used 'AI-enabled tools to automate a number of the manual processes' and moved 4,500 colleagues, and that pricing analytics let the bank optimise rates at local-market level.
- Jul 20, 2026
Euromoney names Huntington the US best digital bank for consumers[40]
The release credits the mobile app, The Hub, Huntington Heads Up, Teen Banking and Caregiver Banking for personalised guidance in the app.
- Jun 24, 2026
400 million documents redacted with AWS machine learning[22]
Amazon Textract, SageMaker and Step Functions pipeline cut a multi-year compliance project to months.
- Jun 1, 2026
Innovation of the Year 2026, with Payabli[7]
American Banker honoree.
- May 28, 2026
Investor deck: AI among the levers behind $1.4 billion of efficiency gains[21]
'BPO, Automation, AI & Other' listed with org simplification, branch optimisation and vendor efficiencies as sources of baseline-expense re-engineering since 2019.
- Apr 28, 2026
Casca: a design partnership with Live Oak and Huntington[6]
Casca's CEO says it spent 12 to 18 months in a design partnership with the number-one and number-two SBA 7(a) lenders before going to market with a third bank, Celtic.
- Apr 24, 2026
Technology spending trimmed to hold expense guidance[12]
Marketing and branches protected; some hiring and tech spend cut.
- Apr 24, 2026
50 agents in production, 60-plus in development[1]
About 15 new agents a month; the CFO as AI strategist.
- Apr 23, 2026
Q1 call: about $50 million of expense tuning, agentic momentum[32]
The CFO says the baseline expense action is about $50 million and that management is accelerating efficiency programmes, with encouraging momentum 'particularly in agentic process transformation'.
- Apr 23, 2026
Q1 2026 call: an enterprise-wide AI program in five areas[20]
Technology, process transformation, customer-facing use cases, colleague productivity and training, and data and platforms.
- Mar 23, 2026
Embedded payments for business clients[43]
Deepak Kapoor, head of payment product, describes API-based embedded payments (ACH, Apple Pay, Google Pay) for business clients, using technology from Payabli.
- Mar 12, 2026
Proxy: board Technology Committee oversees AI strategy[19]
Shareholders asked about board oversight of AI; the Technology Committee oversees 'the strategy and implementation of AI'.
- Feb 13, 2026
2025 10-K: AI risk factor and an Artificial Intelligence Risk Committee[18]
AI 'in connection with our business and operations, including through the models we employ' named as a risk; an AI Risk Committee sits among the operational-risk committees.
- Feb 5, 2026
BNY's former CRO hired as risk chief[13]
Senthil Kumar succeeds Helga Houston.
- Feb 2, 2026
- Feb 2, 2026
Generative-AI risk framework: risk-tiered use cases, human oversight[30]
At a Fortune CFO webinar on 27 January, Wasserman says a short delay in adopting AI can create a significant competitive disadvantage, so Huntington prioritises use cases by risk level and requires human oversight for higher-impact applications.
- Jan 22, 2026
Q4 2025 call: investment to grow about 20% in 2026[17]
Digital and technology capabilities, including AI use cases that the CFO said are increasing across the organisation.
- Dec 1, 2025
Cadence Bank's 2024 10-K filed as an 8-K exhibit, with a generative-AI risk factor[35]
The exhibit lists 'the development and use of generative AI presents risks and challenges' among Cadence's operational risks, two months before the merger closed.
- Oct 27, 2025
- Oct 27, 2025
Fintech venture studio with Alloy Partners[4]
'It's not just about keeping pace, it's about setting the pace' — acting 'more like a tech company'.
- Oct 23, 2025
Treasury Management Connectivity Ecosystem[15]
API-first platform with 500-plus interfaces and intelligent automation for business clients.
- Oct 20, 2025
Veritex acquisition closes[38]
Integration involves signage changes, a systems conversion and some layoffs; the CEO calls Texas a springboard.
- Sep 24, 2025
Framework for deploying AI at scale[8]
Operating models, oversight and governance, in a WSJ/Deloitte interview.
- Sep 11, 2025
28 generative-AI use cases live, target 100[2]
The CFO says software development is the furthest-advanced use, that technology investment has grown at a 25% compound rate against 5% for total expenses over five years, and that agentic AI is used in software development, employee productivity, customer service and marketing.
- Sep 11, 2025
The return target: 10–15% costs, 10–15% revenue[2]
Wasserman's mission to obtain a return on generative AI, balancing urgency with risk.
- Aug 19, 2025
- Jul 14, 2025
Agrees to buy Veritex for $1.9 billion[37]
All-stock deal for the Dallas bank holding company, 1.95 Huntington shares per Veritex share; followed in October by the Cadence agreement.
- Mar 27, 2025
Heads Up: 14 million insights a month[39]
Joe Proudfoot, SVP of digital product and capabilities, describes Huntington Heads Up delivering 14 million curated insights a month across 96 use cases at a 4.7 out of 5 satisfaction rating, with a migration to Personetics' SaaS platform under way.
- Mar 19, 2025
AI to personalise deposit offers[9]
Among regional lenders using AI on customer data to compete for deposits.
- Mar 4, 2025
'It's a tremendous priority': the CFO on AI[3]
Wasserman explains why finance leads AI strategy at the bank.
- Dec 31, 2022
Two AI agents in production[1]
The baseline Wasserman later cites for the agentic build-out.
- Jan 19, 2022
Named a Personetics flagship client[27]
Personetics' Thoma Bravo funding release named Huntington Bank among flagship clients of its AI personalisation and engagement software; the deployment is not described.
Where does Huntington use AI today?
| System | What it does | Status | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agentic process automation[1] | 50 agents in production across the business, including finance. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Gen-AI SBA loan origination (Casca)[5][6] | Huntington is a design partner and investor; Casca software automates much of the small-loan process (Live Oak targets approval in a day or two). Huntington said in August 2025 it would deploy it in 2026, and the credit decision stays with its existing underwriting models and loan officers. | Rolling out | Credit scoring & underwriting |
| AI-personalised deposit offers[9] | AI on customer data to tailor deposit products. | In production | Customer-facing chatbots |
| Treasury connectivity automation[15] | Intelligent automation across 500-plus interfaces for business clients. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| AI-enabled fraud defence[16] | Guidance and controls against AI-crafted BEC and impersonation. | In production | Fraud detection |
| Machine-learning redaction of sensitive data[22] | More than 400 million stored documents scanned and redacted with Amazon Textract, SageMaker and Step Functions at about 10 million a day; the framework is to be reused for M&A. | In production | Data & privacy |
| AI risk factor, AI Risk Committee and board oversight[18][19] | 10-K risk factor on flawed, biased or misleading model output and evolving AI law; a management AI Risk Committee; board Technology Committee oversight of AI strategy and implementation. | In production | Model risk management |
| Enterprise-wide AI program[20] | Five areas: software delivery, agentic process transformation, customer-facing use cases, colleague productivity and training, and data platforms. | In production | AI governance (general) |
| Coverbase AI third-party risk management[29] | Vendor names Huntington Bank as an enterprise customer of its AI-engineered third-party risk management platform. | In production | Third-party & vendor AI |
| Generative-AI software development[2][32] | The furthest-advanced generative-AI use in 2025 ('a very significant amount of productivity lift'); the Q1 2026 call puts improving the software delivery life cycle first among five AI areas. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Servicing and exceptions-handling agents[2] | Agents summarise a customer's earlier interactions, trigger escalation protocols and check proposed fixes against policy; agentic AI is also used in employee productivity and marketing. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Finance-team agents for regulatory reporting[1] | Agents work on SEC reporting, tax filing and the data management behind more than 200 regulatory reports a year. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Casca borrower assistant for SBA applications[5] | Applicants can put questions to a chatbot overnight and a banker reviews the exchange the next morning; the loan decision stays with existing underwriting models and loan officers. | Rolling out | Customer-facing chatbots |
| Huntington Heads Up personalised insights[39] | 14 million curated insights a month across 96 use cases at a 4.7 out of 5 satisfaction rating (March 2025), delivered on Personetics software. | In production | Customer-facing chatbots |
| Risk-tiered generative-AI framework[30] | Use cases are prioritised by risk level and higher-impact applications require human oversight (CFO, January 2026). | In production | Model risk management |
| AI-enabled tools for the Cadence conversion[33] | Tools automated manual conversion processes; 4,500 colleagues moved onto Huntington systems and the conversion finished 235 days after announcement. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Marketing workflow tools[44] | Marketing uses AI internally for creative development, reviews and workflow; the marketing chief says customer research is shifting to large language models. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
Use-case links open the tracker's rules-by-use-case matrix: which documents govern each system type.
Treasury tools compared across banks: AI in bank treasury management.
Which AI vendors and fintechs does Huntington work with?
| Company | What Huntington uses it for | Status | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personetics | Named client (2022): listed as a flagship client in Personetics' January 2022 funding release; the deployment is not described and no later confirmation was found. | Selected | Conversational AI |
| Blend | A multi-line consumer banking digital platform on Blend; Blend gave Huntington's consumer banking digital director its 2026 Digital Experience Excellence award. | In production | Document AI |
Each vendor and fintech page cites the source for the relationship, and vendor pages list products, pricing and other bank customers. Compare AI tools for banks by category, or read the fintech and neobank AI dossiers.
What has Huntington disclosed in numbers?
| Metric | Value | As of |
|---|---|---|
| AI agents in production / in development | 50 / 60+, ≈ 15 new a month[1] | Apr 24, 2026 |
| Return target | 10–15% cost reduction and 10–15% revenue increase from targeted use cases[2] | Sep 11, 2025 |
| Total assets | $284 billion[26] | Jul 30, 2026 |
| Cadence acquisition | $7.4 billion[11] | Oct 27, 2025 |
| Treasury connectivity interfaces | 500+[15] | Oct 23, 2025 |
| Documents redacted with AWS ML pipeline | 400 million+; ≈ 10 million a day; cost ≈ 5% of original estimate; accuracy > 95%[22] | Jun 24, 2026 |
| Planned 2026 investment growth (incl. AI) | ≈ 20%[17] | Jan 22, 2026 |
| Cumulative efficiency gains from expense re-engineering (levers incl. automation and AI) | > $1.4 billion since 2019; investment/revenue ratio 4.7% → 8.2% (2019–2025)[21] | Dec 31, 2025 |
| Generative-AI use cases deployed / target | 28 / 100[2] | Sep 11, 2025 |
| Share of AI delivered through vendor suites | up to 80%; about 20% built in-house[2][8] | Sep 11, 2025 |
| Technology investment vs total expense growth (five years) | 25% vs 5% compound annual growth[2] | Sep 11, 2025 |
| Embedded data and AI teams stood up | 13 in about 18 months[1] | Apr 24, 2026 |
| Role content changed per AI deployment | 10–20% of a person's role[8] | Sep 15, 2025 |
| Heads Up personalised insights | 14 million a month; 96 use cases; 4.7 out of 5 satisfaction[39] | Mar 27, 2025 |
| Cadence systems conversion | 235 days after announcement; 4,500 colleagues moved; AI-enabled tools used[33] | Jul 23, 2026 |
| Baseline expense tuning, April 2026 | about $50 million[32] | Apr 23, 2026 |
“It's really a dramatic acceleration of agentic process transformation, which is really important, including in my finance team.”[1]
Zach Wasserman · Chief Financial Officer · Apr 24, 2026
“It's a tremendous priority.”[3]
Zach Wasserman · Chief Financial Officer · Mar 4, 2025
“I'm actually leading the AI effort for the company.”[1]
Zach Wasserman · Chief Financial Officer · Apr 24, 2026
“Our philosophy is that this is so foundationally transformational that basically every part of the company needs to start adopting it at pace and at scale.”[1]
Zach Wasserman · Chief Financial Officer · Apr 24, 2026
“These agents will effectively be taking on jobs for the company that we used to hire people to do.”[2]
Zach Wasserman · Chief Financial Officer · Sep 11, 2025
“we have a comprehensive enterprise-wide AI program underway that is gaining momentum and already contributing to productivity and efficiency across the company.”[32]
Zach Wasserman · Chief Financial Officer · Apr 23, 2026
“digital and technology, the AI was included in that.”[31]
Steve Steinour · Chairman, President and CEO · Jan 22, 2026
Who runs AI at Huntington?
Zach WassermanLinkedIn ↗
Chief Financial Officer; leads AI strategy, strategy and data analytics[1][8][3]
Steve Steinour
Chairman and CEO[10]
Brant StandridgeLinkedIn ↗
President (from September 2026)[14]
Senthil KumarLinkedIn ↗
Kendall Kowalski
Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer since February 2014 (previously cybersecurity and technology roles at JPMorgan Chase)[24][19]
Vijay KonduruLinkedIn ↗
Head of Business Innovation and AI Products (2026; previously Chief Marketing Officer)[25]
Ameesh Vakharia
EVP, Chief Marketing and Digital Products Officer (from September 2026, ex-USAA)[25]
Rob CarnellLinkedIn ↗
Enterprise Data and Analytics Director (AI, modeling, insights and digital teams)[22]
Igor Cerc
Chief Enterprise Strategy Officer and Head of Ventures; runs the Alloy Partners venture studio[41]
Joe Proudfoot
SVP, Digital Product and Capabilities (as of March 2025); owner of the Huntington Heads Up personalisation programme[39]
Christian Corts
Regional banking director; SBA lending and the Casca deployment[5]
Deepak Kapoor
Head of payment product (embedded payments platform)[43]
Meredith Howerth
Consumer banking digital director[28]
John C. (Chris) Inglis
Director; the 2026 proxy lists him as chair of the board Technology Committee, which oversees AI strategy and implementation (former US National Cyber Director)[19]
What AI roles is Huntington hiring for?
Data as of · 9 AI-titled postings · read from Huntington's own careers site, re-checked weekly
9 open AI-related postings on Huntington's careers site as of Oct 25, 2026. A snapshot of current openings, not a source: postings close. Compare with other banks on which banks are hiring for AI.
Senior Principal Software Developer (AI Cybersecurity)
Columbus OH (+6 more) · posted
Senior Manager, AI Engineering Platforms
Columbus OH (+15 more)
Digital - Principal SRE (AI Engineer)
Columbus, OH
Lead Data Scientist-Machine Learning
Columbus, OH · posted
MLOps Automation Engineer Lead
Columbus OH (+6 more)
AI Risk and AI Risk Governance Manager-1
Charlotte, NC
Columbus, OH · posted
AI Threat Emulation Capabilities Developer
Dallas TX (+5 more)
Columbus, OH · posted
Which regulators govern Huntington's AI?
| Authority | Why it matters here | Documents |
|---|---|---|
| OCC | National bank; the revised model risk guidance applies, and the OCC's Risk Perspective on gen-AI governance is the frame for 50-plus agents. | OCC Bulletin 2026-13 OCC Semiannual Risk Perspective, Spring 2026 |
| CFPB | Gen-AI loan origination and AI deposit personalisation sit under ECOA and UDAAP. | ECOA / Regulation B adverse action (15 U.S.C. 1691(d); 12 CFR 1002.9) Regulation B final rule on disparate impact (April 2026) |
| Federal Reserve | Casca, Payabli and other fintech partners are third-party relationships under interagency guidance. | SR 23-4 |
| Colorado AI Act | A Texas- and Colorado-adjacent Southern and Western footprint after Cadence brings state ADMT laws into scope for consumer lending. | SB 26-189 |
Side by side: SR 11-7 vs SR 26-2 · OCC vs CFPB on AI lending · PRA SS1/23 vs SR 26-2 · MAS AI Risk Management Guidelines vs SR 26-2 · EU AI Act vs Colorado AI Act · all comparisons.
What does the public record suggest about Huntington's AI strategy?
Analysis by BankingNewsAI from the sources cited on this page. Observations, not advice.
01
Finance-led AI is the cleanest answer to 'where is the ROI?'
Putting the CFO in charge means every agent carries a business case and a budget line. It also means AI investment gets trimmed with everything else when revenue softens, as it was in April 2026.
02
Fifteen new agents a month needs an inventory and a kill switch
At that pace the governance question shifts from approving use cases to managing a fleet — the lifecycle and entitlement controls in the agents section of this site.
03
Lending is where the consumer-law exposure concentrates
Gen-AI SBA origination through a fintech partner is efficient and examinable; adverse-action reasons and third-party oversight are the two things to keep in view.
04
Two acquisitions and an AI build-out at once
Cadence and Veritex integrations compete with the agent program for the same technology capacity; the 2026 expense trims show that trade-off being made.
Where does the Huntington record go deeper?
5 topic pages under this profile, each answering one question from the same sourced record.
- What is Huntington's AI strategy and who runs it?
- What AI patents and partnerships does Huntington have?
- How does Huntington govern and control its use of AI?
- What technology stack does Huntington run?
- What proprietary AI has Huntington built in-house?
- Has Huntington Bancshares had a publicly reported AI incident?
Which leader rankings does Huntington appear in?
8 of the computed leaders rankings include Huntington, each ranked from the same sourced bank pages.
How does Huntington compare with its peers?
- How does Huntington Bancshares compare with its peers on AI and technology?
- Huntington Bancshares competitors and alternatives, by business line
Its peer group on this site, by business model and size:
- Google Helps Huntington Bank Deploy AI-Powered Operating System
- Huntington Bank Launches AI-Powered '1866 Studio' with Google Cloud Gemini
- Huntington National Bank Launches 1866 Studio AI Platform for Small Businesses
- Huntington Bank Introduces The 1866 Studio, an AI-Powered Small Business Operating System Built with Google Cloud
- Huntington Bank partners Google Cloud for AI-powered small business operating system
Who leads AI at Huntington?
Chief Financial Officer Zach Wasserman, who also runs strategy and data analytics. He told Fortune in April 2026, 'I'm actually leading the AI effort for the company.' He runs a federated model: a central team sets strategy and builds advanced applications, with embedded teams in each business, 13 of them stood up in about 18 months. Kendall Kowalski, chief information officer since February 2014, runs technology; Senthil Kumar has been chief risk officer since March 2026; the board Technology Committee oversees AI strategy and implementation; Vijay Konduru heads business innovation and AI products.
How many AI agents does Huntington have?
Fifty in production and more than 60 in development as of April 2026, with roughly 15 new agents entering the pipeline each month, up from two agents at the end of 2022, according to the CFO in Fortune.
How does Huntington govern its AI?
Three layers. The board Technology Committee oversees the strategy and implementation of AI, and the 2026 proxy says use cases for colleagues are scoped with oversight from the board, the Risk Oversight Committee and the Technology Committee. Management has an Artificial Intelligence Risk Committee, one of eight operational-risk committees named in the Q2 2026 10-Q. CFO Zach Wasserman says use cases are ranked by risk level and higher-impact ones need human oversight. The 2025 10-K lists AI use through the models the bank employs as a risk that may expose it to material harm.
What AI patents and partners does Huntington have?
Eight machine-learning patents granted in 2025 and 2026 are assigned to The Huntington National Bank, among them fraud detection using byte pair encoding (US 12,602,693), multi-dimensional anomaly source detection (US 12,355,794) and unstructured-data workflow execution (US 12,412,412); a search under the holding company's name alone misses them. An abandoned 2022 application on emergency-fund goals also describes a machine-learning algorithm. Partners are mostly vendors: Salesforce and Microsoft are named major partners, Google Cloud, AWS and Azure are its cloud providers, and AWS machine learning redacted more than 400 million documents. Huntington invested in Casca, uses Personetics software for Heads Up, and runs a venture studio with Alloy Partners.
- At Huntington Bancshares, the CFO is also the AI strategist
- Huntington Bank's plan to obtain a return on gen AI
- 'It's a tremendous priority': Huntington CFO Wasserman on AI
- How Huntington Bank is acting 'more like a tech company'
- Huntington, Live Oak to invest in, deploy gen AI-based lending
- How AI is quickly overhauling one segment of SBA lending
- Innovation of The Year 2026
- Banking on AI: Huntington's CFO on Innovation and Risk Oversight
- Fifth Third Among Banks Using AI to Help Lure Customer Deposits
- Huntington to trim Cadence staff after acquisition, CEO says
- Huntington to buy Cadence Bank for $7.4B
- Huntington whittles expense growth
- Huntington hires BNY alum as next risk chief
- Huntington elevates Standridge to president
- Huntington Bank Announces Treasury Management Connectivity Ecosystem
- AI Fraud Prevention & Best Practices
- Huntington Bancshares Q4 Earnings Call Highlights
- Huntington Bancshares Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025
- Huntington Bancshares 2026 Proxy Statement (DEF 14A)
- Huntington Bancshares Q1 Earnings Call Highlights
- 2026 Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference presentation (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1)
- Huntington Bank: Redacting sensitive data from 400M+ documents with AWS
- Huntington banks on fee growth amid deposit cost competition
- Form 4: Kendall A. Kowalski, Chief Information Officer
- Huntington Bank Names Ameesh Vakharia Chief Marketing and Digital Products Officer
- Huntington Bank Commits $80 Billion to Support Affordable Housing, Small Businesses and Local Communities (boilerplate: $284 billion assets)
- Personetics Secures Over $160 Million in 2021 and Accelerates the Global Expansion of its AI-Driven Personalization and Engagement Solutions for Financial Institutions With $85 Million Investment From Thoma Bravo
- Blend Honors Seven Customers With Best in Banking Awards at Forum 2026
- Coverbase Adds Third-Party Risk Veterans as Enterprise Adoption Accelerates
- What CFOs at Adobe, Dataminr, and Huntington say about scaling AI
- Huntington (HBAN) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript
- Huntington (HBAN) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript
- Earnings call transcript: Huntington Bancshares tops Q2 2026 estimates, shares fall
- Huntington Bancshares Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026
- Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1: Cadence Bank Form 10-K for 2024
- Huntington Bank Completes Merger with Cadence Bank, Expanding Presence Across Texas and the South
- Huntington Bancshares Incorporated Announces Acquisition of Veritex
- On heels of two big deals, Huntington Bank sees Texas as 'springboard'
- Huntington Bank: A Masterclass in Data Enrichment and Customer Engagement
- Huntington Bank Named the United States' Best Digital Bank for Consumers
- Alloy Partners and Huntington Bank Launch New Venture Studio to Accelerate Innovation and Growth Across Banking
- AI-Native Loan Origination Platform Casca Raises $29 Million to Replace Legacy Lending
- 'We won't cede any ground': Huntington's embedded payments push
- Huntington unites marketing, digital in a push for growth
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