RALEIGH, NC (May 12, 2026) |
Abrigo, a leading provider of compliance, credit risk, and lending solutions for financial institutions, concluded its ThinkBIG 2026 conference, which welcomed more than 1,150 total attendees over three days. The event brought together industry professionals from 425 financial institutions to explore practical strategies for managing risk, fighting financial crime, and driving growth.
Each year, ThinkBIG invites banking professionals from across the U.S. to share best practices, gain hands-on product knowledge, and learn from peers tackling challenges in lending, portfolio risk, and BSA/AML compliance.
This year’s conference highlighted how AI, working alongside people, can drive stronger outcomes for financial institutions and their customers. Key highlights included new agentic lending capabilities, an enhanced consumer lending solution, and continued advancements to Abrigo’s AI banking agent, AskAbrigo. The event also showcased expanded banking intelligence and AI-driven innovation across financial crime and risk — helping institutions reduce manual work, accelerate decision-making, and gain clearer, more actionable insights.
“AI is closing the gap between the data you have and the decisions you make, and it’s going to radically change how you think about your work,” said Abrigo CTO Ravi Nemalikanti, addressing the conference. “We’re focused on creating purpose-built AI for financial institutions that is both explainable to regulators and able to help staff work faster and smarter inside their Abrigo solutions.”
Polling of Abrigo customers has captured strong interest in AI adoption. 30% are already utilizing some AI pilot programming and another 46% plan to evaluate AI adoption in 2026, reinforcing that AI is moving from exploration to execution within financial institutions.
With increased focus on AI and data, trust remained a central theme throughout the conference. Attendees engaged in discussions around:
- How AI models generate explainable, defensible outputs that enhance human decision-making • How transparency into data usage and protection builds trust
- The importance of maintaining control and auditability in highly regulated environments
ThinkBIG also highlighted the unique value of Abrigo’s network of financial institutions, and how aggregated, anonymized data can be transformed into meaningful insights. Abrigo users have access to shared peer data that can strengthen decision-making across credit and portfolio risk management, fraud, financial crime detection, operational benchmarking, and performance insights.
From peer-led user groups and roundtables to product demos and creative keynote speakers, ThinkBIG offered opportunities for practical, role-specific learning. The themes of actionable AI, data intelligence, trust,
and partnership were woven into each session, ensuring attendees left with not just bold ideas but clear paths to execution.