Dive Brief:
- Consumers are using AI tools at a greater rate and becoming more comfortable with the technology in banking, according to a T.D. Bank survey of over 2,500 consumers released Tuesday.
- Last year, only 10% of consumers said they used AI to help manage their personal finances. In 2026, 55% of consumers reported using AI to aid their financial management decisions.
- Consumer comfort with AI tools is reaching an “inflection point,” according to Ted Paris, head of analytics, intelligence and AI at TD Bank. Customers have gone from experimenting with AI to having expectations on how banks will AI use it.
Dive Insight:
Despite growing comfort with AI, human involvement remains essential for continued trust in financial institutions.
“Banks are particularly high in that trust category,” Paris told CX Dive. “But you have got to maintain that. Being consistent with that, being able to meet our clients where they are on their journey, means we will continue to have that basis of human interaction.”
More than three-quarters of U.S. adults use AI tools in their daily lives, and 62% trust AI to provide honest and reliable information — up from roughly half last year.
Consumers show the most comfort with AI being used behind the scenes: About two-thirds are comfortable with AI-powered product or service recommendations and fraud detection as well as using AI to track spending and calculate credit scores.
Nearly half are open to AI banking assistants that help with proactive tasks, from paying bills to setting alerts. But when it comes to calling the bank for support, 81% would prefer some level of human involvement.
Less than 1 in 5 would trust AI to make financial recommendations independently.
Clients want humans to check AI to make sure the answer they are provided is correct, Paris said. A majority of consumers said they would prefer for a bank to take longer and have humans check over a recommended action than to have it provided immediately with no human oversight.
“As people, we're social creatures,” Paris said. “We get comfort, not just in somebody telling me it's right, but sometimes, especially for things that are very personal, going through the process of hearing it, having the opportunity to ask a question, having somebody confirm, and getting that validation. And so that's another reason I think they want people who are in the loop.”
Done well, AI can enhance colleagues' ability to offer personal, sympathetic support, Paris said.
“What that means is, then for our colleagues in their roles, we want to minimize the amount of repetitive, simple servicing of redundant tasks that they're engaged in,” Paris said. “We're going to make their jobs easier. We want to make their life easier.”
Most support staff would prefer to offer meaningful advice over resetting a password, Paris said.
“I spent time watching some of our agents in our call centers utilizing some of these capabilities — our knowledge management solution — and I was so impressed with their ability to navigate multiple aspects of calls and the range of calls that you get in the different types of needs,” he said. “What makes their life easier is when they're actually thinking about the conversation and where that person is and meeting them on the journey, versus trying to think through, what are the policies and procedures I need to follow in order to execute this?”
