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.
While AI remains the hottest topic in fintech, it seems as though every single firm in the sector is currently experimenting with how they can make strides in development using the emerging technology. However, in many cases, you could question whether AI has been shoe-horned in for marketing purposes, rather than using it for transformative change.
But at all levels of the financial industry, it still seems certain that AI will change the way we interact with money, and how banks and fintechs operate. To try and understand what the fintech industry will look like once the AI dust has settled, we reached out to industry experts. Here’s what they had to say on what the future holds for AI in fintech:
Embracing a methodical approach
“We are entering the age of ‘vertical AI integration’, where businesses are starting to take a more methodical approach to implementing AI,” says Immy Spence, VP of sales, EMEA at Airwallex. “Organisations are now thinking about how AI specifically applies to them, and they are leveraging these benefits across their operations and customer-facing services to address challenges specific to their workflows, industry and end users – not just joining the ‘AI hype’ because it’s trending.
“AI will also radically change the job description of many professions, which also means that product builders must consider how this impacts their offering. The role of the CFO, for example, will be transformed over the next decade, thanks to AI. The technology will help automate data entry, reconciliation and financial reporting, freeing up time for strategic priorities.
“Across the tech industry, we need to approach AI as a means for helping our end users to automate in ways that make them more efficient, so they’re empowered to do more interesting and impactful work. The products that do this successfully will stand out.”
A ‘once-in-a-lifetime moment’
Nicole Valentine, fintech director at the Milken Institute, comments: “Fintech is an industry that is leveraging AI and has historically embraced advanced technologies like machine learning, and automation to make financial services more accessible, affordable, and customer-centric.
“What’s next for fintech is a future where the experience is more personalised based upon the many data points that are gathered to create a profile that is authentic to the user. Customisation will make financial services more sticky and ultimately more valuable for the end user.
“We can have all of the financial services and products in the world, but they only increase in value when you have financial education and access to capital that can reach everyone no matter where they are born.
“It is my hope that we build and leverage AI with the intention of it being a catalyst for more financial literacy and education. I see a future where AI is leveraged to bank the 1.4 billion adults that remain unbanked. I see a future where AI is leveraged to deliver a financial plan to two-thirds of people worldwide who currently do not have a plan in place. And I see a future where AI can be an agent for financial literacy to over 67 per cent of people who lack knowledge and skills in financial matters.
“We are experiencing a groundbreaking, once-in-a-lifetime moment. As more data is being collected, AI engines become more valuable and useful to us. My biggest takeaway regarding AI and fintech is that what we experienced in the last 30 years as fintech developed will be exponentially valuable to us in just another three years because of AI – how we invest, make financial decisions, and consume financial information will be completely transformed.”
The rise of chatbots
Ilya Smirnov, head of the AI and ML department at Usetech, explains how chatbots are set to become a common sight both for employees and customers of fintech firms.
“With the increasing digitalisation in the financial sector, chatbots are becoming one of the most actively adopted technologies. Chatbots can be divided into two categories: internal chatbots as part of the internal microclimate and chatbots for working with customers.
“The first ones help employees in solving some organisational processes like booking a meeting room for a call or booking a time for a meeting, and the second ones are aimed at working with customers: initial assistance, answering a typical question or advice. The advantages of such bots are as follows: round-the-clock support (which cannot be done by an employee), implementation of personalised banking services and offers, as a chatbot can send individual offers to each customer, thus improving the customer experience. Also, one of the advantages is the automation of routine processes. We can also talk about cost reduction.
“According to statistics, chatbots help to serve the majority of customers and speed up the process by 67 per cent. Quality service reduces time costs, as well as financial costs associated with the need to pay for human labour.
“I see the future of chatbots in the following functionality: it is possible to work with documents and photos using complex algorithms and technology of optical character recognition. The client can send documents via chatbots, and a high level of security should be ensured.
“It is also possible to help the client in formulating requests: when typing, pop-up prompts with possible formulations of the question or problem may appear.”
Powered by generative AI
Nageswar Cherukupalli, senior vice president of financial services at Cognizant, believes the future of fintech will be shaped by generative AI. “In 2025, many firms will focus on upskilling staff and securing the right data foundation to lay the groundwork for generative AI,” he explains.
“Generative AI will be used to augment banking roles to make them more productive and to achieve this, firms need to upskill workers. Financial firms will focus on ensuring the workforce has the right skills to truly make use of generative AI. For example, strong soft skills like critical thinking, creativity and communication will become vital to identify new problems and use cases where generative AI can add value.
“Generative AI also needs access to the right data if it is to work effectively. By creating a strong structure, firms will ensure data is stored and accessed in the right way to be useful. In this process, firms must also offer transparency around how AI systems are using this data to reach decisions.
“Firms will also make greater use of different forms of data than before. Structured data only makes up around 10 per cent of data within firms, with the other 90 per cent including items like pictures, videos, and emails. With generative AI, more information can be pulled from these sources, enriching companies’ capabilities.”
AI powering humans
“Forget everything you thought you knew about front-office teams,” adds Gaurav Passi, founder and CEO of Zingly.ai. “In 2025, the notion of these departments being mere cost centres is over. We will witness a fundamental shift in how businesses create value — one where marketing, sales, and support in the contact centre converge into a unified force for revenue generation.
“Companies clinging on to siloed structures will be bested by competitors who understand that every interaction is a chance to grow. In this new era, AI isn’t replacing human talent — it’s turning them into super-agents capable of driving profitability.
“The winners will be those who can unlock the goldmine of data they’re already sitting on, using AI to turn decades of customer interactions into revenue-generating insights. This will be true even for companies in highly regulated industries like banking or insurance, who can harness AI within defined guardrails, protecting sensitive data while unlocking new opportunities – and taking share from competitors because of it.”
AI agents taking over
Conversational and agenic AI will have the largest impact on fintech in the coming years, says Magnus Revang, chief product officer at Openstream.AI.
“Two areas that will rapidly evolve for fintech will be the fidelity of customer experiences that are possible for clients and users by embracing multi-modal conversational AI and the efficiencies gained when combined with collaborative agentic AI.
“For example, envision clients or employees interacting with conversational AI avatars that can observe them by not only hearing and understanding the utterance of the words spoken but also how they are spoken (tone). High-fidelity multi-modal AI avatars use that information in combination with other non-verbal cues like eye position (are they focusing on the conversation or something else?), the musculature of their face (do they look happy, sad, or angry?), the tilt of their head, hand gestures and more in combination with the actual words spoken to truly understand what is being conveyed. High-fidelity AI avatars ingest these inputs and convey back an appropriate empathetic, multi-modal response in real-time for very natural human-like discussions.
“Internally, expert employees can use a similar high-fidelity interface to interact with an AI collaborator while multiple semi-autonomous AI agents help to gather information or perform discrete functions in the background such as a research agent, a report writing agent, a new account agent, etc.
“Those AI agents can collaborate with each other or the human expert. The human can provide feedback and say things like, ‘That number in that report looks wrong, where did you get that from?’ The AI agent can respond and iterate with the employee and the other agents until the goal is achieved. Processes that might have taken days or weeks can be executed in hours or minutes.”
