Itaú: The Challenge of Leading the Future and the New S-Curve

Itaú, Latin America’s largest private bank, has repeatedly reinvented itself in response to technological and competitive disruption. Following a decade-long digital transformation, the bank faces a new strategic challenge: becoming an AI-first organisation while preserving customer trust, sound risk management, and a customer-centric culture. The case explores how Itaú developed the leadership, governance, technology, data, talent, and organisational capabilities needed to sustain continuous transformation. As the bank launches ia.i, its conversational banking platform, executives must decide how AI will reshape customer relationships, work processes, decision-making, and the operating model, and whether Itaú’s historical strengths can remain sources of competitive advantage in the next wave of technological change.°°°°°

After studying this case, participants will be able to:
1. Assess how incumbent organisations can respond to disruptive technological change while leveraging existing scale, assets, and capabilities.
2. Examine digital transformation as an enterprise-wide change process encompassing technology, organisational design, customer experience, talent, and culture.
3. Evaluate the transition from a digital-first to an AI-first operating model and its implications for strategy, productivity, decision-making, and customer relationships.
4. Analyse how leadership, governance, and ownership structures can support continuous transformation across successive technological waves.
5. Explore the tensions between agility, experimentation, and innovation on the one hand, and risk management, ethics, regulation, and trust on the other.
6. Identify the organisational capabilities required to embed AI successfully, including data governance, talent development, cross-functional collaboration, and change management.
7. Consider how AI may redefine the balance between human expertise and technological execution, and how organisations can redesign roles, responsibilities, and career paths accordingly.
8. Discuss whether incumbents’ heritage, customer relationships, and institutional trust can provide a sustainable competitive advantage over digital- and AI-native competitors.