Artificial intelligence is changing the way companies operate, but the most important question is not how much work AI can replace. It is how much better people can work when AI becomes part of their everyday environment.

Square’s refresh of its Square Credit Card, which was announced last week, is part of parent company Block’s broader strategy to more closely integrate payments, banking, credit and bill management within its platform, American Banker reported Monday (Aug. 17), citing its interview with Andrea Raj, head of product for Square Money.

Next generation of financial services will be built with AI not replaced by it | The Jerusalem Post This distinction is especially important in financial services. Across insurance, credit, investments and other financial activities, our work is built on information, judgment and trust.

Every customer interaction, claim, credit decision, investment analysis and business process creates data that can help us make better decisions and serve customers more effectively. AI creates a cascade of possibilities across every domain. The opportunity may look different in insurance, credit, investments, service or operations, but the underlying potential is the same: to give people better tools to understand information, generate insights and make better decisions. Unlocking that potential requires strong data foundations, digital capabilities and, above all, people who know how to use them.

At Phoenix Financial, this is the philosophy guiding our AI and digital transformation. We do not see AI as a sophisticated calculator that simply performs an existing task faster.

We see it as a tool that can challenge thinking, provide new insights and help employees take their own capabilities and professional judgment to a higher level. AI as a thought partner The real potential of AI is not in reproducing yesterday’s processes more efficiently. It is in helping us re-imagine better ones. In claims, for example, AI can help structure information from documents and images, identify missing details, support coverage or fraud checks and recommend next actions.

The result can be a faster and more transparent experience for customers, while allowing claims professionals to focus on complex cases where judgment and empathy matter most. In underwriting, AI can help organize large volumes of structured and unstructured information, surface relevant insights and support more consistent decision making. In customer service, it can help employees better understand the customer’s context and respond more quickly and personally.

The same principle extends across the group. In credit, AI can help professionals synthesize information and prepare decisions. In investments, it can accelerate research, surface relevant insights and make knowledge easier to access. The applications differ from one domain to another, but the underlying opportunity is the same: giving people better tools to elevate their own expertise and thinking. The objective in all of these cases is not to remove people from the process.

It is to give them better tools. When technology handles repetitive information gathering and synthesis, employees can spend more time on judgment, problem solving, creativity and customer relationships. That is why we think of AI as a thought partner, not a thought replacement.

Making adoption everyone’s job Technology alone does not create transformation. The harder challenge is creating an organization that is willing and able to use it. One of the ways Phoenix Financial has approached this is by building an internal community of AI Champions. Around 100 employees and managers from across the group, spanning insurance, investments, credit and other areas, are helping lead AI adoption within their own domains, translating new capabilities into practical tools and everyday ways of working for their teams.

The community went through a structured period of training, hands-on experimentation and ongoing mentoring, with the aim of turning AI from something employees hear about into something they can actively use and shape. We have also used initiatives such as an internal AI hackathon, where nearly 90 ideas were submitted from across the Group and 18 teams moved from business needs to working AI agents.

Importantly, these solutions were shaped and built by employees from the business itself, based on challenges they encounter in their daily work. This is fundamentally a cross-divisions, cross-domains transformation. There is no single AI playbook for every function, and there should not be. The value comes from giving each part of the group the capabilities to apply AI to its own needs, while allowing ideas, knowledge and reusable solutions to travel across organizational boundaries. These efforts matter because large transformations often create natural resistance.

New technology can feel distant, threatening or imposed from above. The goal is to create the opposite dynamic. When employees participate in the change, experiment themselves and see how AI can help them in their own work, resistance can turn into curiosity and adoption. AI becomes something people want to use, rather than something they are told to use. This cultural shift is just as important as the technology itself.

It also changes the role of an AI program. Instead of innovation sitting with a small central team, knowledge spreads through the organization, closer to the business problems, customers and employees it is intended to serve. This does not mean every employee becomes a developer. It means that business expertise becomes more actionable. The people closest to the problem can help define, test and improve the solution, while technology teams provide the secure foundations, integrations and governance that allow it to scale.

Data and digital foundations make AI real AI does not operate in isolation. Its usefulness depends heavily on the quality, accessibility and governance of the data underneath it.

For a diversified financial group, this is particularly important because critical information exists across many systems, business units and formats. Building strong data infrastructure, improving digital journeys and creating the right governance, with clear guardrails around security, privacy and responsible use, are therefore part of the same transformation.

Phoenix Financial’s AI efforts are developing alongside a broader evolution in digital capabilities, marketing and data infrastructure across the group. Together, these foundations make it possible to move from isolated experiments to tools that can become part of real business processes. The ambition is not to accumulate dozens of disconnected AI pilots. It is to rethink entire domains and ask how they should work if we were designing them today with the capabilities now available to us.

The answer will look different in insurance, credit, investments or service, but the principle is the same: use AI where it can meaningfully improve how people think, decide and operate. Building the next-generation company AI technology will continue to evolve quickly. Generative AI is already progressing toward more agentic systems that can complete sequences of tasks, interact with tools and support increasingly complex workflows. The specific technologies will keep changing.

For companies, that makes adaptability more important than any individual tool. The organizations that benefit most from AI will be those that build strong data and digital foundations, create the right governance, develop their people and make experimentation part of the culture. They will also be the ones that remain clear about where human judgment matters most. For Phoenix Financial, the transformation is ultimately about building that kind of organization. One where AI does not narrow the role of employees, but expands what they can do.

One where technology makes information more accessible and decisions more informed. And one where innovation improves not only productivity, but also the experience of customers and employees. At its best, AI gives every employee, regardless of function, a new set of capabilities to take their own expertise, judgment and thinking several levels further. When that happens across divisions and across domains, individual adoption can become an organization-wide transformation. The next generation of financial services will not be defined simply by who uses the most AI.

It will be defined by who learns how to combine human expertise, data and technology in the most powerful way, across functions, professions and business domains. Written in collaboration with Phoenix Financial “LMG Asset Finance has grown into a significant part of our diversified broker offering, and Tom has been key in helping drive this,” said Sam White (pictured right), executive chairman at LMG. “We feel this is the right time to set the business up for what’s next, and I want to thank Tom for everything he’s built here.” Tim Wells will take on the role of deputy CEO, working alongside Howell and the existing LMG Asset Finance leadership team, which comprises Chris Sims as head of product and broker experience, Sam Greenwood as head of engineering, and Alex Ventura as head of marketing. The team will be responsible for the division’s strategy and operations, with broker support and platform development among its stated priorities. Howell joined LMG in May as group executive for business lending.

He brings more than two decades of experience across retail and business banking, product and transformation, and was most recently general manager of commercial banking at Westpac. LMG operates across Australia and New Zealand, supporting a network of more than 6,000 brokers and partnering with over 70 banks and lenders.

Its brokers settled more than $167 billion in loans in FY26, with a collective loan book of $428 billion. Vishal Garg feels duped.

“He hoodwinked me,” the just-ousted Better Home & Finance CEO said about Daniel Lewis, the man who replaced him last week. “He said he liked the company’s strategy. He praised us on X and used that to get on our board and win our confidences.” Garg, who made headlines for laying off 900 employees on a company Zoom just before the 2021 holiday season, says he was fired on August 3 just as he brought the company to the precipice of success. Better has been through a lot with Garg at the helm over the past several years.

During the pandemic-fueled refinancing boom when mortgage rates were below 3%, the company held an $8 billion valuation. Today, with an imploded refi business and rates closing in on 7%, the AI mortgage company’s market value stands at just $300 million. Toss in a leave of absence after the embarrassing Zoom layoff fiasco, a whistleblower lawsuit (it was dropped), an investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission (nothing came of it), a disastrous 2023 SPAC merger that sent the company’s stock cratering 93% and years of mounting losses ... it’s a minor miracle that Garg lasted this long as CEO. But Garg says he was just about to deliver on the company’s unlikely turnaround.

After its core refinancing business went belly up, Better’s annual sales plummeted from $1.5 billion in 2021 to $70 million in 2023. This year, the company is on pace to deliver $200 million in sales, he said. It bounced back by training AI models to quickly process mortgages — a task that would normally take dozens of people several days to accomplish. It partnered with Neo Home Loans, which doubled productivity and reduced loan origination costs by 50%, Garg claims.

Impressed with the results, Intuit, Coinbase and OpenAI partnered with Better this year to power their mortgage services. The company also developed a strong home equity line of credit business.

“We’re winning. We’ve tripled loan volume. We’re close to profitability,” Garg said. “We were at the 5-yard line after taking the ball all the way down the field from the other side.” Garg acknowledges he’s “hard-nosed” and the famous Zoom layoffs severely damaged the company’s reputation — a mistake he knows will continue to haunt him.

But as criticized as Garg has been for placing near-impossible demands on the company and its employees, he said Lewis convinced the board he didn’t push hard enough. Better and Lewis did not respond to a request for comment.

On August 4, Lewis posted on X, “There was never a $BETR without @vishal_better. That demands respect.” ‘It’s not about me’ Lewis, a hedge fund manager with a mixed track record of success, approached Garg six months ago with thoughts about cost savings and good ideas about delivering profitability, Garg says.

“(Lewis’) thoughts about cost savings were good. His ideas about innovation were not,” Garg argued.

“It’s so much easier when we’re this close for someone to come in and say that they could have done better.” Lewis was brought on to the board on July 27. A week later, he had convinced the other directors to oust Garg as CEO and name himself as Garg’s replacement.

“It’s not about me,” Garg said. “I care about delivering savings to people and helping them live the American Dream. So when shareholders said, ‘You need to take a back seat,’ I complied.” But Garg says he believes Lewis hadn’t been forthcoming about his intentions over the past several months, as he advised Garg and convinced him to give him a board seat.

“I suspect he always wanted to become CEO,” said Garg. “The board made a mistake.” Investors appear to agree with Garg. The stock has fallen 45% since Lewis took over as CEO. (The stock had been down more than 16% this year before Garg’s departure was announced.) In the week since Garg stepped aside (but remained on the board)

he says a number of horrified investors reached out to plead with him to take his CEO job back. Armed with Class B shares with special voting powers — his own and from a group of committed early investors — Garg says he has the votes to win. He has retained high-powered lawyer Alex Spiro, partner at Quinn Emanuel, to represent him, and he sent a letter to the board on Monday demanding it return him as CEO. He says he’ll work for $1 a year until he returns the company to profitability, and he’ll transition out of the CEO role afterward.

“It’s an acknowledgment that I’ve been doing this for 10 years, but execution hasn’t been perfect,” Garg said. “I hope it gets resolved. I think the future still remains very bright for Better.” The-CNN-Wire & 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

- Wisconsin4 minutes ago Dozens of deer in Wisconsin dead from EHD - West Virginia10 minutes ago U.S. Sen. Capito pushes 2026 Water Restoration Act for flood mitigation - Wyoming16 minutes ago Samuel Harris Lands on Another Preseason Watch List - Crypto22 minutes ago Flowery Branch man accused of running $165 million crypto Ponzi scheme deported from Fiji, authorities say - Fitness34 minutes ago Struggling to be consistent with exercise when life gets busy? Fitness coach Raj Ganpath shares how to prioritise it - Movie Reviews46 minutes ago ‘Ketticè’ Review: Luca Guadagnino-Produced Sicilian Teen Stoner Dramedy Suffers From a Lack of Spark - Lifestyle2 hours ago In ‘Etna,’ a canine narrator delivers a poignant anti-war message - Technology2 hours ago ABC’s livestreamed news show is powered by trending topics