When the customer relationship moves to an AI assistant
Personal AI assistants are starting to handle everyday decisions, including financial ones. For banks, that raises the question of who their customers will talk to about money.
Before a trip to the US this month, I realised at the last moment that I needed health insurance for the visit. I asked ChatGPT and went with its first suggestion.
That small purchase shows what is changing for financial institutions. When it is easier to ask a general-purpose AI than to ask your own provider, customers move their guidance relationship to the AI. The provider is then left hoping that its product is the one recommended, and a digital competitor that has optimised for AI recommendations is likely to be better placed.
Assistants that act on your behalf
At the end of September, OpenAI launched always-on personal agents in ChatGPT, which it calls dots. I have been using one since early October. Every hour it checks my email, researches what needs researching, drafts replies for me to review and adds meetings to my calendar. Similar assistants are appearing from other technology companies.
For organising a children’s party or booking an NCT test, handing the task to an assistant is a clear improvement. Decisions about money carry more weight, and people want to trust whoever is guiding them.
Two routes for banks
A bank can make its products easy for third-party assistants to find and use. That brings some immediate gains, but the customer relationship then sits with another company, which decides which products the customer sees.
Alternatively, a bank can offer its own trusted conversation about money inside its app, building on the trust its customers already place in it. The relationship then stays with the institution that holds the products and carries the responsibility.
On either route, the line between guidance and regulated advice still applies. Guidance helps a customer understand and prepare, and decisions about regulated products stay with the customer and the institution.
Why timing matters
Customers will use whatever help is available to them today. An assistant that works now will be chosen ahead of a bank service that is still years away, so for banks the question of how to respond is a current one.
This is the problem we built Narrative Coach to address: a relationship manager for every small business customer, inside the bank’s own app and working from the business’s own figures.
Read next
What a two-hour subscription review saved us
Reviewing every software subscription with AI cut Narrative’s costs by about €1,000 a month in two hours. Most small business owners have neither the time nor the expertise to do the same, which is why Coach starts with costs.
Small business owners are taking their money questions to AI
Recent surveys suggest owners increasingly turn to general-purpose AI for financial guidance. For banks and lenders, the question is whether they take part in those conversations.
Talk to us about your small business customers.
We’ll show you Narrative Coach and talk through how it could work for your institution.