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.
The ‘human touch’ is important as organisations implement AI into their infrastructure. While firms must remember to provide consumers with empathy and personalised services that AI cannot provide, undoubtedly the tech can streamline operations and improve the customer experience provided. The benefit of AI may be obvious for a merchant, but from a customer standpoint, what are the perks? We reached out to industry experts to find out.
Understanding your consumer
Kathy Stares, executive vice president of North America, Provenir, the AI decisioning platform for credit risk, fraud, and compliance, analyses how AI can help firms engage with their customers better, providing a better service tailored to the customers’ needs.
“AI provides financial institutions with the ability to power decision-making innovation across the full customer lifecycle, driving improvements in the overall customer experience.
“From a customer standpoint, AI enables financial institutions to proactively engage them with upsell/cross-sell opportunities using AI-powered batch and event-triggered decisioning to identify when and what personalised offers or products to provide the customer.
“This is especially true as the rapid increase in financial services competition has led to financial institutions needing to look beyond onboarding to maximise the lifetime value of their customer base. Research has shown that upselling increases revenue by 10 – 30 per cent on average, and the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70 per cent – provided that the customer is happy with the support and service.
“AI can also aide financial institutions on how best to engage with its customers who are delinquent with their account by knowing what message to send to which customer, which channel to use and how to best reach the customer and finally, understanding the most appropriate time to engage the customer.”
Personalisation in a world demanding everything now
We live in a world where customers expect everything immediately. It is near on impossible for an organisation to achieve this a human employee’s efforts alone. According to Dan Wagner, CEO of Rezolve Ai, a platform that uses AI to automate employee and customer service requests, firms that are integrating AI will see the best response from their customers as the tech will enable them to respond to personalised instant demands.
“Customers are just beginning to understand the benefits that AI can provide their shopping experience. The most obvious benefit is personalisation. AI can provide a personalised shopping experience by working alongside you to find the right product, at the right price, from the right retailers. A 2024 Hyken State of Customer Service survey found that 81 per cent of consumers prefer companies that offer personalised experiences, and the best way to do that is with an AI-powered shopping assistant.
“Beyond that, whether they are aware of it or not, customers are demanding a consistent shopping experience across channels, from their phone to a computer and back again.
“A recent Harvard Business Review study found that 73 per cent of consumers are using multiple channels for their shopping journey and in our experience, the omnichannel AI like we’ve developed at Rezolve Ai is the best way to address this demand in the market, providing a seamless experience across every device, while increasing customer engagement by providing ongoing support with things like product care, shipping options, returns, and more.
‘Let us help you now’
Jean-Louis Quéguiner, CEO and co-founder, Gladia, the audio AI infrastructure provider, also explores how in a world of instant gratification, AI can be used to reduce customer wait times when they want an answer from a company they’re dealing with. Patience has largely gone out of the window and many customers are no longer happy with the wait time to speak to someone when they come across a problem. This is where AI can help.
“AI technologies, such as speech-to-text, large language models (LLMs) and retrieval augmented generation (RAG), are critical to customer service in fintech to process large data sets and provide accurate, real-time information. AI bots and virtual assistants powered by LLMs expedite high volumes of customer inquiries, reducing customer wait times, improving call resolution, and providing 24/7 access to critical information.
“Service time can be cut by 30 per cent when AI-powered automation helps agents focus on complex queries and deliver more efficient customer support.”
Caution needed
Quéguiner warns, however: “While speed and efficiency are paramount to the customer experience, accurate and error-free transmission of information is vital in any financial transaction.
“For example, bots’ inconsistent speech rhythms can create numerical transcription errors during transcription processing. Real-time AI transcription that is trained and fine-tuned to address speech cadence is essential to ensure that bots deliver error-free transcription of numeric values. This way, users calling financial institutions won’t have transactions misdirected or loan payments delayed due to faulty numerical values.
“Real-time speech AI tools, such as speech recognition and sentiment analysis, also elevate the customer experience. By tapping into AI sentiment analysis, agents can quickly tune into customer emotions and deliver personalised recommendations that resonate with customers. Multilingual translation and transcription can respond to over a hundred languages in real-time, ensuring seamless and accurate communication between customers and agents, regardless of their geographic location.”
A clear understanding
One of the most frustrating things a customer can experience is talking to someone from customer service and they don’t seem to understand the issue. Olly Downs, chief technology and AI officer at Curinos, the firm helping clients identify emerging opportunities and make informed decisions, explains that AI can reduce this frustration and make customer service simple.
“One of the main advantages for customers is that AI helps reduce ambiguity. Advances in AI have enhanced its ability to handle ambiguity and interpret customer intent more flexibly, whether through spoken or written dialogue. AI-driven automation also allows for faster issue resolution and streamlines backend processes which reduces reliance on human intervention. However, even though generative AI has improved significantly in managing unstructured dialogue and customer-specific interactions, recognising when to transitionLibrary to a human representative remains important.”
Listening to the voice of the customer
In a similar vein, Jochem van der Veer, CEO and co-founder, TheyDo, the journey management platform, explores how AI can offer true customisation at scale, working with customers to understand their desires.
“Banking and fintech are waking up to the fact that AI isn’t just about replacing humans with AI bots – it offers a data-heavy industry means to better mine and utilise customer insights that constantly enrich the customer experience. AI offers consumers true personalisation at scale, delivering more relevant and meaningful interactions by anticipating needs and resolving issues before they arise.
“When integrated with customer journey management, it enhances the entire experience – from seamless onboarding to proactive problem-solving and troubleshooting.
AI also brings speed and automation to routine tasks and fraud detection. Ultimately, it empowers brands to listen and act on the ‘voice of the customer,’ offering support that’s more seamless and thoughtful.”
