White paper · Banking
The Seat That Runs the Bank
The history and future of the Chief Banking Officer in mid-market banking
The person most likely to run a mid-market bank next is sitting in the CBO seat today, and almost nothing serious has been written about what that seat is. This paper is a first attempt, and an invitation to the people in it to correct and complete it.
01In brief
The most consequential, least examined seat in mid-market banking.
The Chief Banking Officer is the most common internal path to running a mid-market bank, it absorbs every pressure now reshaping how banks grow, and in 2026 its boundaries are being redrawn in both directions at once. This paper sets out where the role came from, what it was built to do for the business, and the fork it now faces. It is the companion to an interview series with sitting Chief Banking Officers.
Read the full paper.
14 pages. Every claim carries a named source, listed at the end of the paper.
02Inside the paper
6 chapters, 1 argument.
A pattern worth noticing
5 banks in 7 months of 2026, from a 24 billion dollar franchise to a community bank, handed the President or CEO title to the executive running the customer-facing business. Succession research across Russell 3000 banks says that is the norm, not the exception.
Where the seat came from
The CBO title is largely a mid-market invention: the structural answer to franchises that grew too large for the CEO to run the customer businesses directly, but not large enough for each line to carry its own executive suite.
What it was built to do
1 integration point for the whole customer franchise, the proving ground where boards watch the next CEO operate, and the growth conscience of the executive team. The CFO owns the balance sheet, the CRO owns what could go wrong, the CBO owns what has to go right.
Five forces converging
Deposits turned into a pricing and analytics discipline, fee income moved from nice-to-have to board mandate, the relationship manager model is under strain, AI landed first in the revenue engine, and acquisitions left seams. 1 seat absorbs all 5.
The fork in the road
Down one path the CBO stays a senior line manager, and the seat gets squeezed. Down the other the CBO becomes the architect of the bank's revenue system: the executive who owns how people, process, data, and now AI combine to grow the franchise.
The loneliest seat at the table
The CFO has a conference circuit. The CRO has the regulators. The CBO mostly has their own bank. That gap between accountability and peer connection is precisely the gap the CBO Series is built to close, 1 conversation at a time.
03The evidence
The road to the corner office runs through this seat.
Feeder roles for internally promoted Presidents and COOs at Russell 3000 banks, 2020 to 2025. Source: Pay Governance LLC, April 2026.
| Asset band | Institutions | The role |
|---|---|---|
| Under 500M | 2,461 | CEO is the head of banking |
| 500M to 1B | 747 | Title starts appearing |
| 1B to 10B | 887 | Increasingly standard |
| 10B to 60B | 109 | Core habitat |
| 60B and above | 46 | Fragments into segment CEOs |
Where the seat lives: US active FDIC-insured institutions by asset band, August 2026. Trilogy Insights analysis of FDIC data.
04Take part
The paper is a first attempt. The series completes it.
Hold the seat? The series wants your view.
45 minutes on Teams about your role and where it is going, not for attribution, no pitch in the conversation or after it. Insights are aggregated and anonymized, named quotes appear only with your approval, and you see each published synthesis before the rest of the industry does. Especially valuable where you think the paper has it wrong.
Or respond to any article in the series on LinkedIn.
05Beyond the paper