What AI Adoption Looks Like Inside a Real Institution
AI adoption case study at West Coast Community Bank in regulated banking environment.
Original episode title: AI Adoption Case Study Masterclass, w/ WCCB’s Krista Snelling & Matthew March
Guests
Krista Snelling
CEO and Chairman, West Coast Community Bank
Krista Snelling is CEO and chairman of West Coast Community Bank, a California community bank. She leads the organization’s operations and strategy in a regulated financial environment, including its practical approach to AI adoption, governance, employee training, and workflow improvement without reducing headcount.
Makes the executive case for additive adoption: remove drudgery and widen capacity without beginning from a plan to shrink the team.
Profile →
Matthew March
CIO and EVP, West Coast Community Bank
Matthew March is chief information officer and executive vice president at West Coast Community Bank. He works on technology, information security, and operational modernization in a regulated banking environment, including the governance, vendor-risk, and employee-adoption practices needed to introduce AI without compromising customer data or trust.
Shows how governance, approved tools, employee learning, and measured workflow changes can move together inside a regulated institution.
Profile →
Watch on YouTube ▶What this conversation is really about
Krista Snelling and Matthew March describe how West Coast Community Bank paired clear boundaries with employee experimentation. Approved tools and data rules came first. Then employees closest to repetitive work surfaced use cases, shared prompts, and reviewed results together. The useful story is not that a bank bought AI. It is that leaders tried to return tedious work to machines while preserving judgment, client relationships, and job security. Jeff’s workshop and consulting involvement makes the case unusually concrete and is disclosed in the source notes.
From the conversation
The argument in focus
Krista Snelling
CEO and Chairman, West Coast Community Bank
Krista Snelling is CEO and chairman of West Coast Community Bank, a California community bank. She leads the organization’s operations and strategy in a regulated financial environment, including its practical approach to AI adoption, governance, employee training, and workflow improvement without reducing headcount.
Makes the executive case for additive adoption: remove drudgery and widen capacity without beginning from a plan to shrink the team.
Profile →Matthew March
CIO and EVP, West Coast Community Bank
Matthew March is chief information officer and executive vice president at West Coast Community Bank. He works on technology, information security, and operational modernization in a regulated banking environment, including the governance, vendor-risk, and employee-adoption practices needed to introduce AI without compromising customer data or trust.
Shows how governance, approved tools, employee learning, and measured workflow changes can move together inside a regulated institution.
Profile →“We’re embarking on this AI journey to create efficiency, not to reduce.”
Evidence status
Client/operator-reported case
A named institution describes its own adoption process. Workflows and controls are concrete; outcomes and time-saved claims are not independently corroborated.
Boundary map
Where the system stops
- What the system handles
- Drafting, summarization, document comparison, and other bounded administrative work inside approved tools.
- What remains human
- Policy, data boundaries, exception review, financial reporting, client judgment, and the decision about how returned capacity is used.
- What remains open
- Did measured time savings become durable service, judgment, or growth—and can primary records demonstrate it?
Ideas worth carrying forward
- Governance is an adoption enabler when it answers what data, tools, and review are allowed.
- Frontline employees are often the best scouts for safe, high-friction workflow improvements.
- Shared prompt libraries and live peer support turn individual experiments into institutional learning.
- Time returned should be redirected toward judgment, risk work, and client relationships—not treated as an automatic headcount claim.
What this changes Monday
Start with a one-page AI boundary map: sensitive data, approved tools, prohibited uses, human review, and an escalation path. Then convene a small cross-functional group of curious people who do the repetitive work every day. Ask each person to bring one drudgery-heavy workflow, test the smallest safe version, and document exceptions rather than celebrating a clean demo. Create one shared place for prompts, examples, and lessons. Review the experiments on a regular cadence. Track estimated time returned, but do not call it audited ROI. Most importantly, state plainly what the efficiency is for: better service, deeper judgment, or capacity for growth.
Original episode notes
What does it take to make AI adoption stick in a high-stakes, heavily regulated industry, without triggering job-loss panic?
In this episode of AI-Curious, we have a hyper-specific case study of AI adoption. Host Jeff Wilser talks with Krista Snelling (CEO and Chairman) and Matthew March (CIO and EVP) of West Coast Community Bank about their practical playbook for rolling out AI the right way: governance first, culture second, and measurable wins that free up time without cutting headcount.
Why this is something of a “very special episode”: The story and success of the West Coast Community Bank is something that Jeff knows personally. Jeff was honored to visit WCCB’s headquarters and work with their leadership team on AI culture and AI strategy, helping to transform curiosity into clarity.
In this podcast for the first time, Jeff peels back the curtain to share the AI and Leadership workshops he conducts for businesses.
Special thanks to Vistage Chair Richard Bell and the larger Vistage community.