When Michael Wisler joined M&T Bank in 2018, technology was not central to the bank’s competitive strategy. The institution had grown into one of the nation’s largest regional banks by emphasizing disciplined execution, customer relationships and a deep understanding of its communities.

Wisler, now Senior Executive Vice President of Technology and Operations, believed preserving those strengths would require a different approach to technology and data. Working with Chairman and Chief Executive Officer René Jones, he embarked on an eight-year transformation designed to turn technology from a supporting function into a strategic asset.

M&T, which earned more than $9 billion in revenue in 2025 and has roughly $212 billion in assets, now invests more than $1 billion annually in technology. It has hired 1,000 technologists, established three technology hubs and sharply improved the reliability and productivity of its technology estate.

“We’ve just moved from some version of a liability to a real asset for the bank,” Wisler excitedly underscored.

Doing the Hard Work No One Sees

Wisler characterizes the early transformation as “the hard stuff that nobody cares about.” Customers and colleagues expect technology to work, but rarely see the engineering discipline and maintenance required to make that happen consistently.

When he arrived, M&T was experiencing well over 100 technology outages annually. The bank depended heavily on contractors, allocated resources through annual competitions for a small number of large projects and devoted considerable capacity to systems it no longer wanted.

Wisler’s team concentrated on talent, agility, engineering practices and technical debt. Over eight years, M&T reduced outages by approximately 90%. Annual releases increased from 15,000 in 2018 to 65,000 in 2025, despite the organization remaining roughly the same size.

Approximately 30% of M&T’s technology assets were initially considered non-destination assets. That figure is now in the low single digits. Meanwhile, 84% of the technology organization’s engineers are bank employees, reversing an earlier dependence on third parties.

“If you believe, like I do, that the skill of technologists and the ability to master technology is somewhere close to the central thesis of maintaining or creating an advantage, then you have to have a reverence for that,” Wisler said.

Changing Beliefs Before Techniques

The transformation required more than investment. Wisler initially resisted questions about whether M&T should build or buy systems, when it would move to the cloud and how it would introduce agile methods. He believed leaders first needed to examine their assumptions about competition.

“Do we believe that the winners of the future are going to be communities of learners?” he asked. “Do we believe that it’s the most nimble and the most responsive that are going to be the winners?” His answer to these rhetorical questions are yes and yes.

Once M&T aligned around those beliefs, it could establish behaviors that placed greater trust in employees closest to problems, encouraged leaders to support their teams and rewarded continuous learning. Only then did specific technology practices become useful.

Talent development became another foundation. M&T’s Technology Development Program has brought more than 350 recent computer science graduates into the bank. The company also created nontraditional pipelines to identify people in the community who possess technical aptitude but lack conventional career opportunities.

Bringing Technology and Operations Together

Approximately a year ago, Wisler’s mandate expanded to include operations. The change reflects M&T’s belief that the two functions are increasingly inseparable as customer service, back-office processes and risk management become more dependent on software and data.

“As our technology debt went down, as our resiliency went up, as our speed went up and as our quality went up, it became obvious to us that the next biggest opportunity for what I like to call the continuous renovation of the bank was likely in our operations,” Wisler noted.

Historically, many operational capabilities were embedded within business lines. That preserved proximity to the business but did not always provide the consistency and scale required of a larger institution. Bringing technology and operations together allows M&T to modernize processes and supporting systems through a common agenda.

Pursuing Three Pathways to AI

M&T’s technology modernization was accompanied by a similar effort to strengthen its data foundation. The bank spent years identifying where data resided, moving it to modern platforms, improving its reliability and making it more accessible.

That work was especially important for an institution whose advantage historically came from employees’ knowledge of local communities. Rather than replace that experience, M&T wants data to amplify it.

The foundation now supports dozens of generative AI use cases pursued through three pathways. The first is enterprise fluency, with approximately 16,000 employees actively using generative AI tools to learn and improve productivity. The second involves identifying valuable AI capabilities within the bank’s more than 1,800 applications, many of which are supplied by third parties.

The third is proprietary development. M&T is exploring where large language models and agentic solutions built around its distinctive data and processes could create competitive advantage. Early applications include automating repetitive work, accelerating software development and strengthening fraud prevention and cyber defense.

Wisler describes the philosophy as going “slow to go fast,” ensuring that data, risk controls and management disciplines are ready before capabilities scale. Generative AI poses a particular challenge in regulated industries, where models have traditionally been expected to deliver predictable outcomes.

“We’ve got to find safe, transparent constructs in which we can satisfy that model certainty with something that essentially is hard to pin down when it’s more generative,” he highlighted.

Wisler believes M&T’s years of foundational work leave it well positioned for this next era. The technology may be new, but the underlying requirements remain familiar: strong talent, trusted data, disciplined execution and a willingness to keep learning.

“We’re living in probably the fastest time of humanity,” he said. “That can be scary until you realize this is probably as slow as it’ll ever be.”

Peter High is President of Metis Strategy , a business and IT advisory firm. He has written three bestselling books, including his latest Getting to Nimble . He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on X @PeterAHigh .