Most consumers are not fully satisfied with what they’re receiving from financial services institutions (FSIs), according to a new survey of more than 6,000 people from Salesforce, which concluded that ineffective digital experiences are a major culprit.
Among bank customers, for example, only about 1 in 5 are happy with what they’re getting. A quarter of people switched banks in the past few years, and about half of those who did cited poor digital experience as a reason.
“The majority of banking customers want to apply for credit and debit cards and open accounts online,” Salesforce notes in “The Connected Financial Services Report,” published in February. “By a sizable margin, poorly integrated non-intelligent chatbots are the most commonly reported area of digital friction.”
Yet banks seem to be doing a better job of satisfying customers than other financial services sectors. More than a third of insurance and financial services customers had switched providers recently, with digital experience again cited as a major factor in each case.
Eran Agrios, senior vice president and general manager of financial services at Salesforce, argues that the right approach to artificial intelligence, especially effective deployment of generative AI agents that can provide advanced assistance, is a critical factor for organizations striving to create a better digital experience.
“Imagine FSIs that provide a personal digital banker, adviser or agent to every one of their customers, 24/7, to answer questions like, ‘Am I saving enough for retirement?’ or ‘Can I afford this trip?’ without waiting,” Agrios said in a blog post. With agentic AI, “that’s the scale that’s possible.”
23%
The share of all cyberattacks that were launched against financial services organizations in 2024, up from 18% the year prior and second only to manufacturing among targeted industries
Source: IBM, IBM X-Force 2025 Threat Intelligence Index, April 2025
What Is The Greatest Source of AI ROI in Finance?
Financial services institutions are investing in a range of artificial intelligence projects, including those boosting customer service and fraud detection. But no use case is delivering more ROI than trading and portfolio optimization, according to the latest State of AI in Financial Services report by AI chipmaker NVIDIA.
About a quarter of respondents to the company’s survey of FSI leaders cited trading as the most profitable use of the technology, followed by customer service, which 21% of respondents cited. Interestingly, document processing, which 11% said delivered the best ROI, was not being done by enough FSIs to register as an AI use case in NVIDIA’s survey last year. Today, 53% of FSIs use AI to process documents.
Click the banner below to keep reading stories from our new publication, BizTech: Financial Services.
