Mile 23

If you’ve never run a marathon, it’s hard to explain what happens out there. By mile 23, you’ve already done what most people would consider impossible. You’ve trained for months. You’ve sacrificed mornings, weekends, comfort. You’ve fought through the early miles, found your rhythm, and convinced yourself that the hardest part is behind you. The finish line is close enough to feel real.

And then, without warning, your body turns on you.

I hit “the wall” at mile 23. It was the moment my lower body locked up, and I made an almost catastrophic decision to stop and stretch. In the next moment, my hamstring tightened into something that felt like a steel cable. The marathon all of a sudden stopped being a race and became a question: Am I going to finish?

I remember thinking: I could stop right now. No one would blame me. I’ve come farther than most people ever go. I could tell myself I made it far enough.

That’s what makes this moment so critical. People don’t usually quit at the start; they quit when they feel like they can’t go on. When the voice in their head starts telling them “close enough” is a victory.

But I kept going. Not because I was close to the finish line… I wasn’t. I kept going because I knew something deeper: defining moments don’t happen at the start. They happen when you find a way to keep going despite everything telling you to stop.

The Exhaustion Point

After speaking with more than 50 financial institution leaders this past year, I’ve realized something: Most of the industry is at their own mile 23.

This isn’t 2015. No leader is debating whether digital matters anymore; the investments have been made and the race is well underway. But after years of sprinting toward “modernization,” a specific kind of fatigue has set in.

I hear it in almost every conversation. Leaders describe a sense of diminishing returns… the feeling that they are working harder than ever but failing to gain ground. It’s a state of being operationally overextended:

• —Teams are redlining, caught between maintaining legacy systems and launching new features.
• —Legacy constraints act like a constant headwind, creating friction where there should be flow.
• —Customer expectations continue to outpace the speed of internal deployments.

This isn’t failure; it’s the Transformation Crossroads. It’s the temptation to regress into the comfort of “business as usual” just when the market demands your best execution.

The Growth Gap

In digital banking, this fatigue manifests as “settling.” It looks like layering workarounds instead of rebuilding foundations, or treating your digital platform like a utility rather than a growth engine.

The core problem is that most legacy platforms were designed for a slower era; one where digital was merely a “check the box” item for basic transactions and servicing.

You can’t survive the final miles of a marathon with cramped legs. And you certainly can’t accelerate growth with a platform built only for maintenance.

We’re trying to achieve aggressive growth goals with technology architected for a different decade.

He isn’t an outlier. I’ve heard this same challenge consistently in my conversations with over 50 banking leaders this past year. The reality is, these conversations haven’t changed much in seven years. My notes are practically copy and paste. I can’t help but feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, reporting the same thing over and over again.

No one moves on until they finally get it right. Until then… “It’s Groundhog Day!”

But you don’t have to take my word for it. There’s plenty of research out there.

Proof points from a recent Baringa Survey published on CIO.com:

Let that sink in for a moment before you move to the next part.

The Invisible Cramp

In my marathon, my body didn’t collapse in one dramatic moment. It seized. It tightened. It resisted. One step at a time. Digital banking breaks down the same way.

Most institutions won’t experience one catastrophic digital failure. They experience something worse: a thousand micro-frustrations. Compounding hairline cracks that break customer relationships. A clunky login flow. A broken mobile deposit. A product offer the customer already has. A disjointed experience between mobile and online. Individually, these moments seem trivial. Collectively, they erode trust and quietly push customers away.

Dams never fail in one big moment. They fail in thousands of tiny ones. This isn’t collapse. It’s erosion.

And here’s the most dangerous part: Research shows that 55% of consumers won’t complain about negative digital experiences (Coveo). They won’t file a complaint. They won’t walk into a branch and announce they’re done. They will simply ghost you.

So your dashboard looks fine. User counts look stable. Closures look low. But the relationship is already breaking. By the time attrition shows up in the numbers, the customer is already gone. The loss is silent. The churn is invisible.

When the Finish Line Moves

Here’s what (most) institution leaders are finally recognizing: digital banking is no longer a service utility. It is the primary growth channel. Growth objectives such as deposits, loans, membership, business banking, are now inseparable from digital execution.

• —You can’t achieve deposit growth if your onboarding experience bleeds prospects at every step.
• —You can’t expand business banking if your platform wasn’t built for commercial complexity.
• —You can’t position digital as a growth engine if you can’t identify who to target, what to offer, and when to engage.

The race is no longer about digitizing old processes. It’s about building the institution that wins the next era.

And that requires something most institutions don’t have at this critical juncture: the courage to push harder when the barriers seem to be multiplying.

A Confession

Here’s where I need to come clean with you. Throughout this article, I’ve been painting a somewhat misleading picture that digital transformation is a marathon.

The hard truth is:

Digital transformation isn’t a marathon. It’s an ever-evolving journey that has no finish line.

That’s what makes it so fatiguing.

You finish one modernization project, only to start the next. You spend months evaluating and implementing technology, only to go live and realize a competitor has already pivoted to something newer. You start again, because you can’t afford to be left behind.

The data reflects this urgency: Neobanks captured 44% of new checking account openings last year (Cornerstone Advisors), and Gen Z customers are switching primary institutions at rates exceeding 40% annually (The Financial Brand). Customer expectations aren’t plateauing; they’re accelerating.

In this race, there is no finish line… there are only defining moments.

The Weight of the Journey

Mile 23 of the Philly Marathon, on Kelly Drive, right around Falls Bridge, is where I had my defining moment. It’s when I realized I was carrying two types of weight: mental and physical.

The physical weight was obvious: extra layers I’d worn because it was cold at the start, and fuel I thought I’d need. Every ounce made each step heavier.

The mental weight was the internal battle: knowing that I had trained hard enough, and convincing myself that I could run through the pain rather than getting stuck in regret.

Many financial institutions are currently on the precipice of their own defining moment, and they’re carrying the same two types of weight.

The Mental Weight

The Mental Weight is exhaustion and fear. It’s risk aversion sold as strategy. It’s years of “we’ll address that next quarter” and decades of vendor relationships maintained out of comfort rather than capability.

The Physical Weight

The Physical Weight is technical debt. It’s the legacy architecture that made sense a decade ago but now creates friction at every turn. It’s the in-house customizations built for problems that no longer exist, and purchased products that promised transformation but never delivered.

The Courage to Shed

The institutions stuck at this crossroads aren’t there because they lack options. They are there because making the decision to shed the weight feels riskier than carrying it.

But achieving growth in a never-ending journey isn’t about working harder; it’s about adaptation. In a race, as conditions evolve, you make critical decisions. You shed the jacket you no longer need. You grab electrolytes. You adjust your pace.

The institutions that thrive do the same: they don’t cling to what got them here when it’s preventing them from getting there.

Digital modernization works the same way. You don’t just “will” yourself forward; you eliminate everything holding you back.