A couple of years after its initial boom, artificial intelligence (AI) still remains a huge buzzword in the fintech industry, as every firm looks at a new way of integrating the tech into its infrastructure to gain a competitive edge. Exploring how they are going about doing this in 2025, The Fintech Times is spotlighting some of the biggest themes in AI this February.
There are multiple ways in which AI can impact the customer experience. Having looked at the regulations that are going to play major roles in shaping the technology to the importance of the ‘human touch‘, we now turn our attention to the role of AI agents in banking and how they are going to impact consumers in 2025.
Ensuring security while improving financial management and autonomy
For Gabriel Bridger, global head of design and strategy at Rightpoint, a Genpact company and ‘total experience’ provider, the true benefit of AI agents lies in the personalisation levels of service they can provide.
“The integration of personal AI agents into banking is set to redefine customer interactions by making financial management more personalised and autonomous while remaining secure. We see this as both empowering the customer as well as creating more efficiency for financial institutions.
“Specifically, they’ll have the ability to analyse individual behaviours to provide tailored advice, automate transactions, and optimise investment decisions in real time. There’s also an anticipatory aspect allowing them to suggest the best times to pay bills, invest surplus funds or be aware of ultra-specific changes in the market that will affect them.
“One of the biggest areas of innovations will be in fraud detection. We can expect AI agents to dynamically adapt to a user’s unique spending patterns to prevent fraud and offer personalised financial products. With AI seamlessly embedded into everyday platforms, banking will evolve from a series of transactions into a continuous, almost invisible service integrated into daily life.”
Humans will remain front and center
Kevin Green, COO at Hapax, the firm providing AI services to the financial sector, notes a similar point about the additional perks of using AI agents in providing a more personalised experience. However, he adds that AI will never be able to fully deal with financial issues due to their importance to the customer and the need for empathy with their situation.
“AI agents will become strategic allies and partners to bank employees, helping banks maintain a competitive advantage. The adoption of agents will enable human employees to focus on delivering more personalised services to deepen customer relationships.
“Gartner‘s 2025 tech trends report predicts that by 2028, 15 per cent of daily work decisions will be made autonomously by agentic AI systems. However, in banking decisions are rarely trivial; they carry significant weight. A decision to fund a business loan or not can shape a company’s trajectory. And mistakes can cost businesses, individuals, and communities opportunities, and lead to hefty compliance fines for financial institutions.
“Simply put, the stakes are too high in a highly regulated industry like banking. Therefore, with the introduction of agents, humans must remain at the helm of final decision-making.
Redefining automation
Morgan O’hana, co-founder of fintech lending platform Defacto, also noted the importance of AI in ensuring customers get the best personalised service available to them. In addition to this though, she also highlights the important role AI has to play in back and mid-office operations as well.
“The banking industry is full of edge cases that, historically, couldn’t be automated, requiring large mid and back-office teams to scale. Automation often came at the cost of customer satisfaction. But AI is set to change this—starting by streamlining back and mid-office operations like reconciliation while enabling personalised, customer-centric front-office experiences.
“Specifically, AI can scour hundreds or thousands of application documents in seconds—which would normally take human agents days or weeks. AI agents can also copilot a book of business—to proactively monitor the health of client accounts and offer simple ways to help customers get more from your fintech service. That’s something that CS teams previous had to do manually, and took real diligence and effort. Today, we can be alerted immediately to accounts that need attention, and can step in right away if required.
“These kinds of improvements result directly in lower operational costs, improved cost-to-income ratios, and higher customer satisfaction.”
Providing answers to simple questions
There are a variety of ways in which consumers can directly experience the benefits of AI agents but for Dom Couldwell, head of field engineering EMEA at DataStax, the AI-as-a-Platform service provider, there are also ways in which they can benefit through back-office implementations too.
“Improvements in co-pilot style solutions could provide your staff with automated and context-aware material for interactions with customers around financial products and how to support them effectively. Would this turn more conversations into ways to upsell, or to provide that necessary advice around financial products in ways that customers want to get, rather than how banks think about their operations internally? Those steps could cut costs and keep staff more productive.
“While the customer service side will get the attention, there will be multiple opportunities around back-office processes where GenAI will also come to the fore. These areas might not be as visible to customers as AI-powered agents, but those AI agents will support more opportunities to reduce costs and improve service within the bank.
“For example, how would the chief risk officer feel about being able to log in each morning and ask their AI assistant what the bank’s exposure was across different markets and how well they were hedging their top 10 credit derivative positions? At its heart, the most powerful application of Gen AI is around combining natural language with the ability to analyse vast amounts of data and provide answers to simple questions.”
A natural progression for the financial sector
There are a variety of perks for a business using AI that a consumer will get to enjoy: a more streamlined, personalised service. However, if the onboarding process is challenging in any way, consumers will be easily put off from joining a company. For Adam Pettman, head of innovation and AI at 2i, the software development firm, this is where AI agents can be especially beneficial.
“Alongside open banking, I see AI agents as an enabler of customer onboarding for banks and products. Lowering barriers to entry increases competition, which reduces margins and fosters industry innovation. Using AI in the financial sector is a natural progression rather than a revolution.
“AI can help clients develop new product offerings. Traditionally, the costs associated with AI and machine learning have limited its deployment to large-scale problem-solving, such as trading in global markets. As the cost of computing and the effectiveness of models increases, these resources could be redirected towards developing new customer-facing offerings—although the return on investment for this would need to be closely scrutinised.”
