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AI & AUTOMATION • By The Shore Group Team

Starting Small with AI: Dave Macolino on Lumio's Banking on Data Podcast

A hype-free conversation on AI, automation, and why starting small wins

AI has become a standing item on the board agenda at community banks this year, usually under one unspoken question: are we already behind?

Dave Macolino, Shore Group's President and COO, thinks leadership and the board are asking the wrong question, and the team at Lumio Solutions invited him onto their Banking on Data podcast to make the case that starting small is the more practical approach. Dave joined host Ed Vincent for an engaging conversation about where AI actually earns its place inside a community bank, and where it does not. It is the third installment in Lumio's "Future of Community Banking" series, following conversations with KBW's Joe Berry and the American Fintech Council's Phil Goldfeder.

Here are a few key take away's from this episode before you press play:

  • AI works best as an assistant to a problem someone has already defined, not the starting point of a project. Skip that order and a bank can end up running a pile of small pilots that never add up to anything.

  • The back office, not the customer-facing side, is where Dave sees the most recoverable value sitting right now: manual, spreadsheet-heavy work that has gone unaddressed for years.

  • Built the right way, a small tool can stay entirely inside the bank's own environment with a full audit trail, so speed and security are not a trade-off.

To catch the full episode, visit LumioSolution.io or watch the full video version on YouTube.

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Start-Small Community Bank Use Case Examples:

Dave and Head of Banking Services, Ted Gibson was also invited back to record two micro-episodes, sharing "start small" examples and use cases where Shore has been able to build light weight automation tools for clients, leveraging AI enabled development.