Risk chiefs warn AI and fraud will redefine bank defenses

Bank chief risk officers have warned that artificial intelligence and fast-evolving fraud schemes will reshape risk management over the next three to five years, elevating nonfinancial threats alongside credit and market risks.

Speaking at the recent American Bankers Association annual convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, Brad Bender, chief risk officer at Truist, said the coming disruption from technology, financial crimes and fraud is “almost immeasurable” compared with today’s landscape.

The $544 billion-asset bank is spending “a tremendous amount of our time in the nonfinancial risk domains,” he said, citing a pivot that has swept across the industry.

Risk functions that once concentrated on financial exposures now sit at the center of increasingly digitized and complex threats.

As a result, the CRO role has become more strategic and visible, with boards pressing for faster escalation pathways, stronger third-party oversight and clearer ownership for technology and data risks.

Bender said financial crimes are “ramping up dramatically,” particularly in the fraud domain, because threat actors now wield AI to scale social engineering, deepfakes and credential attacks.

That shift is pushing banks to upgrade analytics, tighten controls at customer touchpoints and coordinate more closely with law enforcement and payment networks.

Panelists also focused on culture. Risk can be stereotyped internally as “the Department of No,” said Kristina Schaefer, associate general counsel and director of government relations at Dacotah Bank.

“You’re not the Department of No, you’re the Department of How,” she said, arguing that risk teams should enable safe delivery of new products rather than block them.