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AI for Financial Institutions

AI Impact,
Hand Delivered.

We help financial institutions adopt, advance, and achieve through AI. We get it working inside the institution the way banking actually demands — with the rigor and reliability the business requires, and tuned to make a real, lasting impact.

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BANKING Strategy DIRECTION Tech ENABLEMENT People EXECUTION

What We Do

Strategy, Technology, and People combine to deliver real results.

We partner

With financial institutions ready to seize what’s next.

Banks and credit unions — and the sponsors who back them — that see a once-in-a-generation technology shift and intend to use it. An opportunity to transform operations, unlock new revenue, and build capability that simply wasn’t available before.

to achieve

Measurable results from technology investment.

Tech strategy connected to enterprise strategy, so every investment decision serves the institution’s actual goals. Teams and culture activated to execute. The result: measurable efficiency, growth, and deeper client relationships.

by integrating

Banking fluency with every discipline in sync.

We integrate banking fluency with strategic direction, technology capability, and people activation — as one team, not handoffs between specialists. Strategy points the direction, technology unlocks the door, and people walk through it.

The Challenges We Solve

Where financial institutions get stuck.

From the strategic questions in the boardroom, to mobilizing the people and culture to execute, to the technical work of reaching production.

01

“Help me get clear and strategic about AI in our institution.”

Every institution is working out what AI actually means for them and where to focus. Smaller institutions especially can’t chase everything — the real challenge isn’t budget size, it’s clarity and focus. Most are using AI but remain stuck in experimentation rather than scaling it.

Strategy
02

“Help our leadership team align on the way forward.”

The bottleneck is people, not technology. When leaders hold conflicting views of AI’s role, the organization can’t commit and the investment stalls. Transformation — not technology — is what separates the institutions that win from the rest.

Leadership
03

“Help us do more with the resources we have.”

Deposit costs, thin margins, and rising compliance complexity are squeezing profitability, while larger players out-spend on technology. Used well, AI is the most direct lever on the efficiency ratio — letting a lean institution deliver capability once reserved for the giants.

Resources
04

“Help us turn our AI investment into real return.”

Spend is up; returns aren’t. The majority of enterprise AI pilots deliver no measurable impact on the P&L — rarely because of the model, but because AI gets bolted onto legacy processes instead of being designed into how the institution actually operates.

ROI
05

“Help us move our pilots into production.”

Most AI work stalls between proof-of-concept and production. The capability gets demonstrated; the operating discipline to run it reliably at scale never gets built. For every handful of pilots, only a fraction ever reach production.

Execution
06

“Help us deploy AI with regulatory confidence.”

For a regulated institution, moving fast and governing carefully are in tension. Rushing pilots into production without the right scaffolding turns promised transformation into financial, operational, and reputational risk. The goal is to deploy with confidence, not caution alone.

Governance
07

“Help us build a sustainable operating model around AI.”

Most institutions bolt AI onto the existing structure and wonder why it doesn’t scale. Without clear ownership, decision rights, and a governance backbone, every new use case creates another orphan. The institutions that industrialize AI treat it as an operating-model redesign, not a technology project.

Operating Model
08

“Help us make sense of the technology landscape and make the right choices.”

The options are multiplying faster than any team can evaluate. Vendors, platforms, build-vs-buy, model choices — a wrong bet locks you in, a delayed bet leaves you behind. The challenge isn’t access to technology; it’s making principled choices that compound.

Technology

Why It Matters Now

The gap between leaders and laggards is widening.

The evidence across strategy, technology, and people points the same way: adoption is easy, impact is rare — and the institutions that industrialize AI pull away.

Strategy
20%
Up to a 20% cut in banking-industry costs from AI — captured only by institutions that move decisively.
McKinsey, Global Banking Annual Review 2025
39%
88% of organizations use AI, yet only 39% report any earnings impact from it.
McKinsey, The State of AI 2025
Technology
12%
Only about 12% of AI pilots reach production — just 4 of every 33 an enterprise launches.
IDC / Lenovo, AI CIO Playbook 2025
42%
Organizations abandoning most of their AI initiatives jumped from 17% to 42% in a single year.
S&P Global Market Intelligence, 2025
People
#1
When leadership owns AI — with the CEO overseeing governance — it’s the single factor most tied to bottom-line impact.
McKinsey, The State of AI 2025
23%
Just 23% of banks are investing in reskilling their existing workforce for AI.
Capgemini Research Institute, World CIB Report 2026

Credibility

Trusted inside the institutions we serve.

70+
financial institutions engaged
450+
CEOs & directors advised
100%
FI-focused — banks & credit unions only

Engagements are selective. Client work is confidential and shared only with permission.

Our DNA

Three disciplines, working as one system.

Strategy, technology, and people don’t operate in sequence — they turn together, inside deep banking expertise. That’s what makes change actually execute.

BANKING Strategy DIRECTION Tech ENABLEMENT People EXECUTION

Strategy

Aligning leadership on direction, priorities, and the hard choices that drive execution — connecting the institution’s overall strategy to its technology strategy so AI investment builds toward the goals that actually matter.

Technology

Engineering depth to build, integrate, and deploy AI inside regulated institutions — with principled, purposeful choices about platforms, vendors, and architecture, on the right data and governance foundations.

People

The leadership behaviors, culture, literacy, and capability that make adoption stick — from executive alignment to frontline fluency, long after the engagement ends.

The AI Industrialization Operating Model™

AI is an operating-model redesign.

Successful AI adoption isn’t a technical project — it touches the whole institution. These are the ten pillars that must be in place, and activated, for AI to actually deliver your institution’s goals.

01StrategyWhere AI creates value for your institution, what you’ll do about it — and what you deliberately won’t.
02GovernanceOne accountable owner, clear decision rights, and the discipline to move pilots to production or kill them.
03ValueEvery initiative tied to a financial outcome, every dollar traceable to the goals it serves.
04Risk & ComplianceThe controls, validation, and exam-ready evidence that let you deploy AI a regulator can question.
05TechnologyModern, modular infrastructure that runs AI safely alongside your core — and the principled vendor choices behind it.
06DataOne governed, trusted version of the truth — including the unstructured data where the signal hides.
07ProductAI built into what you offer — new products and embedded intelligence that open revenue, not just cut cost.
08PeopleThe skills, roles, incentives, and culture that decide whether AI gets adopted or quietly ignored.
09ProcessInternal work redesigned end to end around AI — not tools bolted onto yesterday’s workflows.
10ClientsDeeper insight, better experience, and earned trust — AI that strengthens the relationship, not erodes it.

End-to-End Services

From baseline to scale.

Five disciplines, one operating model. We industrialize AI for financial institutions so it sticks and makes an impact.

5 Services Know exactly where you stand across strategy, technology, and people
01

Strategy & Leadership Readiness

The need: Most institutions have no honest read on whether leadership is aligned or the organization can absorb change.

What we do: We assess strategic clarity, leadership alignment, and organizational readiness — the diagnostic that tells you whether you’re ready to build on a solid foundation.

02

AI Readiness Assessment

The need: Before spending a dollar, you need an honest baseline — and most institutions don’t have one.

What we do: A structured read of your people, process, technology, and data, showing exactly where you stand and what’s between you and real deployment.

03

Data Strategy & Readiness Audit

The need: AI is only as good as the data underneath it.

What we do: We assess core integrations, data quality, and architecture gaps to confirm whether your institution can actually support the use cases you’re being sold.

04

Peer Benchmarking

The need: You can’t set the right pace without competitive context.

What we do: We benchmark your AI maturity against comparable institutions so leadership can calibrate ambition and investment.

05

AI Threats & Opportunities Assessment

The need: Picking use cases from a vendor catalog ignores what AI actually means for your business — offensively and defensively.

What we do: We evaluate where AI creates real value and real risk for your institution and its customers — mapping where AI strengthens your position and where it exposes risk.

3 Services Build the structure to operate safely and grow
01

AI Risk & Compliance Framework

The need: Deploying AI without governance is a regulatory liability — and an operational one.

What we do: We build institution-specific policies aligned to OCC, FDIC, and Fed guidance, structured so they protect the business and enable growth.

02

Policy & Procedure Development

The need: Examiners expect documented governance before they find gaps.

What we do: We develop acceptable-use, model-oversight, vendor-management, and incident-response procedures your institution can actually operate.

03

Third-Party Model Validation

The need: Regulators increasingly expect independent validation of models in credit, fraud, and customer-facing use.

What we do: We provide independent validation that satisfies SR 11-7 expectations and protects you from model-risk exposure.

9 Services Decide what’s worth building — on a shared foundation
01

Purpose & Strategy Alignment

The need: AI plans built on an unclear or unshared strategy collapse under their own weight.

What we do: We help leaders reset and align around the institution’s purpose and strategy first — so every AI and growth decision builds on a solid, shared foundation.

02

AI Leadership Alignment

The need: The people-and-culture gap is the #1 reason AI investment stalls.

What we do: We build genuine shared understanding across your executive team of what AI means for your competitive position — alignment before deployment, so the organization can commit.

03

AI Use Case Ideation & Prioritization: Internal Workflows

The need: Most institutions chase the use cases everyone else is chasing.

What we do: We surface the internal workflow cases unique to your operations and rank them by effort, ROI, and regulatory exposure — a defensible portfolio that drives efficiency and capacity.

04

AI Use Case Ideation & Prioritization: Client & Partner Products

The need: AI doesn’t just improve operations — it can transform what you offer.

What we do: We identify client-facing and partner-facing product opportunities where embedded AI opens new revenue, deepens relationships, or creates competitive differentiation.

05

AI Operating Model Design

The need: Most institutions lack the ownership structure to scale AI — or to run it stably once it’s live.

What we do: We design the governance structure, roles, and decision rights so AI has a clear owner and can grow into core operations, not stall in a committee.

06

Technology Strategy

The need: The technology landscape is moving faster than any team can evaluate — and a wrong bet compounds.

What we do: We help leadership make principled platform, vendor, and build-vs-buy decisions — a technology strategy connected to the enterprise growth strategy, not a vendor wish list.

07

AI Business Case & ROI Modeling

The need: Boards need numbers, not vendor promises.

What we do: We build rigorous business cases tied to your efficiency ratio, loan growth, and headcount economics — grounded in institutional math.

08

Future-State Operating Model Design

The need: Few leaders agree on what the institution becomes in 36 months.

What we do: We translate market signals into a concrete future-state operating model before you commit to building it.

09

Strategic Scenario Planning

The need: The landscape won’t move linearly.

What we do: We stress-test your strategy against competitor adoption, regulatory tightening, and deposit flight to AI-native challengers.

5 Services Translate strategy into systems and behaviors
01

AI Roadmap Development

The need: Strategy without sequencing is just aspiration.

What we do: We build a phased, executable roadmap with clear owners, milestones, and board-ready metrics at every stage.

02

Organizational & Change Architecture

The need: Investments stall when the organization isn’t built to execute the strategy.

What we do: We define the processes, systems, tools, skills, knowledge, behaviors, rituals, and stories required to make change real — the human blueprint that pairs with the technical roadmap.

03

Vendor Selection & Due Diligence

The need: The market is flooded with vendors promising transformation.

What we do: We evaluate and validate partners against your risk tolerance and roadmap, so decisions rest on evidence, not sales decks.

04

Custom AI Application Development

The need: Off-the-shelf tools were built for the average institution.

What we do: We design and build custom applications tailored to your workflows — solutions your core vendor doesn’t offer and competitors can’t replicate.

05

Pilot-to-Production Acceleration

The need: If a pilot has run 90+ days, something is broken.

What we do: We diagnose why it’s stuck and build the framework to move it from experiment to production operating lever.

5 Services Grow AI into a core operating lever
01

Staff Upskilling & AI Literacy

The need: AI exposes who hasn’t adapted.

What we do: We deliver executive and frontline literacy programs that cut resistance and reduce implementation failure rates.

02

Board Readiness Training

The need: Boards are asked to govern AI they don’t fully understand.

What we do: We deliver director-level fluency on AI risk, exposure, and the right questions to ask management — so the board governs with confidence.

03

Culture & Adoption Activation

The need: Investments stall when the culture can’t absorb what’s built.

What we do: We move people through the full journey from awareness to sustained daily use, and design the rituals and behaviors that make change durable.

04

Ongoing Performance Monitoring

The need: Going live is not the finish line.

What we do: We monitor model drift and regulatory alignment and deliver quarterly optimization, so the investment compounds rather than decays.

05

AI M&A Integration Advisory

The need: In a merger, AI systems don’t integrate themselves.

What we do: We assess compatibility, identify AI-related liabilities, and sequence integration to protect continuity and accelerate value capture.

What Makes Us Different

Why institutions choose LeapFI.

Lean, senior dynamism

Small teams of senior practitioners — not a pyramid of junior consultants. The people who scope your work are the people who do it.

A systems approach

Strategy, technology, and people move together, inside deep banking expertise — so change actually executes instead of stalling between functions.

Outcome-driven simplicity

We focus on results, not motion. Every engagement ties back to a measurable outcome — efficiency, growth, risk, or readiness — not a deck.

AI-powered delivery

We run on AI ourselves — giving a small team the horsepower of firms many times our size. Every engagement produces practical artifacts for day-to-day use, not decks.

Team

Built with deep strategic and technical authority.

Senior practitioners with direct operating experience inside the institutions we serve — backed by an extended advisory board across banking, enterprise technology, regulatory affairs, and defense-grade infrastructure.

Adam Schlesinger

Adam Schlesinger

Founder & CEO — LeapFI.AI

An MIT-trained engineer and former Microsoft executive, Adam brings 25+ years of C-level leadership across global banks and technology firms. He has served as Chief Transformation Officer at First Republic Bank, inaugural Global CDO at National Bank of Canada, and held a decade-long executive role at Microsoft overseeing a $3.5B financial services P&L. Three startup exits. OCC bank board director. Teaches AI for Bankers at University of Washington (PCBS) and LSU Graduate School of Business.

MIT EngineeringFormer MicrosoftFormer First Republic CTOFormer NatBank Global CDOOCC Board Director
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Uche Chuta

Lead AI Architect & Advisor — LeapFI.AI

A cloud and AI transformation executive with deep expertise in enterprise data platforms, scalable infrastructure, and regulated-system architecture. Uche designs and builds the custom AI applications, automation pipelines, and integration layers that power LeapFI’s BUILD engagements — letting institutions deploy AI without touching their core systems. His background spans Boeing, global payments infrastructure, and financial-grade application architecture.

McGill Comp SciBoeingPayments InfrastructureLLM Architecture
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Uche Chuta
Adam Rubin

Adam Rubin

Lead Innovation & Strategy Advisor — LeapFI.AI

An innovation and strategy leader with 20 years of experience across Capgemini, Frog Design, Fahrenheit 212, and Heidrick & Struggles. Adam facilitates the leadership strategy sessions that help banks and credit unions align on purpose, direction, and growth — the organizational foundation that determines whether AI investments and transformation roadmaps actually deliver. He works at the intersection of strategy, technology, and people.

Rotman MBACapgeminiFrog DesignHeidrick & StrugglesExecutive Alignment
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Jose Ribau

Senior Advisor & Engagement Lead — LeapFI.AI

20+ years leading large-scale digital transformation inside major financial institutions. At LeapFI, Jose is the lead engagement architect — translating strategy into executable roadmaps, running client workstreams from diagnostic through delivery, and ensuring every engagement ships a measurable outcome. His expertise spans AI deployment, process re-engineering, and the change-management discipline that gets transformations to stick.

Digital TransformationFinancial ServicesAI DeploymentEngagement Architecture
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Jose Ribau

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