As disruption continues, financial services providers can double down on AI engagement

Disruption has become the norm for financial services providers. The rise of a new generation of fast-paced, personalization-focused fintech startups kicked off an era of change in the space, capturing the attention of younger consumers and forcing legacy brands to rethink their traditional marketing methods. But while brands work to leverage technology in order to catch up, consumers are growing impatient for the kinds of relevant, responsive marketing they've come to expect. The 2026 Braze Global Customer Engagement Review found that 93% of marketing leaders believe AI helps them better understand customer intentions, yet only 53% of consumers say they feel understood by brands.

This major gap may represent the struggles many brands face translating data into action. And it comes at an inflection point for global finance. Over the next five years, a nearly $100 trillion wealth transfer will take place from the Baby Boomers and older generations to their heirs. The next generation of financial customers are tech savvy, and to meet their instant expectations, marketers will need to leverage new, AI-first strategies.

Here’s how brands can leverage AI to help bridge the gap and create relevant engagement for every customer.

How to win the digital competition for primacy

The battle for the wallet is over—and banks lost to their customers, not their competitors. The change occurred gradually, as technology made it easier for banking and payments customers to make decisions without loyalty. Rarely do consumers take out a wallet and reach for their favorite bank or credit card, opting instead to rifle through the payment options on their smart phone.

This has created new ways of banking, and loyalty has eroded as a result. Consumers are no longer using one form of payment, with 60% opting for split-payment methods to complete purchases in 2025. The shift means brands can no longer rely on name recognition alone. In this climate, personalization and real-time engagement matter more. The brands that can leverage AI to read digital signals and deliver real-time financial utility can overcome most consumers’ new way of making decisions without loyalty.

Insurers and financial planners are not immune to the new way consumers make decisions. Standalone insurance policies are moving to the wayside, and 62% of people under 55 prefer advisors who can address their holistic needs, including investments, insurance, and tax. The generational divide will soon be a concern for wealth managers as well, as 81% of inheritors plan on switching wealth firms within a year of receiving their inheritance. Both industries will need to adapt to younger, more digital-native consumers who expect advanced personalization and may rely less on in-person expertise.

The coming age of AI intermediaries

Financial consumers are turning to AI agents to help create financial goals, find the best credit card, or create a better retirement plan. And 2026 may be the year of large-scale agent adoption for consumers. According to McKinsey, 29% of Generative AI application users already use such applications for financial advice, not just research. Braze survey data found that the number of consumers who use AI to mediate their interactions with brands could increase to nearly half by the end of the year, as users grow more comfortable interacting with AI intermediaries.

Many financial brands are growing anxious over the future of AI intermediaries and how they may impact their direct customer relationships. When LLM agents choose an optimal payment method for a customer’s transactions, how are banks and payments brands expected to show up at the moment of checkout? Will agents choose insurance and financial products based on robust plan options or will they choose the lower fee?

The agentic future doesn’t have to spell doom and gloom. Financial services brands can prepare by shifting focus to helping agentic intermediaries and customers find their products. Modern CRMs can create a connected approach to financial management, one focused on lifetime value and long-term relationships. Brands can leverage agents of their own to audit and clean customer data, add intelligent, human-like services to their chatbots, and better prepare intermediaries with all the data they need to make the right choices for consumers.

AI can create stronger relationships

While there’s a lot of uncertainty during times of technological change, AI should be considered a relationship-building tool. Many financial consumers are awash in meaningless marketing messages as many brands still rely on batch-and-blast email, text, and app notifications. Disruptive marketing technologies such as AI decisioning make it possible to ultimately break through the noise by tailoring every aspect of a campaign to the unique desires of individual customers.

AI decisioning uses reinforcement learning to test and retest content, offers, send time, channel, and more, and to do so for each individual customer. Marketers start with a campaign like onboarding fulfillment, give AI agents a business metric to optimize, and AI decisioning analyzes first-party data and customer actions to offer the right message at the right time. That can boost performance while also giving consumers the information they want and need, supporting stronger relationships over time.

Final thoughts

AI is rapidly changing the relationship between financial services brands and their customers. But that change doesn’t have to be for the worse. Marketers can leverage AI to meet new, instant expectations and strengthen customer bonds. The new agentic era will require a modern CRM and an AI strategy that puts customers and their needs front and center.

Want to know how? Check out the Braze Customer Engagement Review today.