The AI Tipping Point: How Banks Will Drive Real Results in 2025
As this year draws to a close, AI's momentum continues to build as early adopters see tangible results from their investments. Four key trends will drive gen AI adoption for banking in 2025: intuitive search, AI agents, customer experience, and security. Here's how — and why.
By Zac Maufe, Global Head of Regulated Industries at Google Cloud
As we approach 2025, the financial services industry is undergoing a significant transformation fueled in part by generative AI (gen AI) advancements. Throughout 2024, many gen AI pilot projects shifted from the experimental phase into full-scale production, and the momentum continues to build as early adopters see tangible results from their investments.
2025 will serve as an industry tipping point for AI innovation with global scale-up in gen AI deployments across the sector. This shift comes at a critical time for the industry, which faces multiple challenges, including an increasingly competitive environment, a skills and talent shortage, and increasing consumer expectations. Financial institutions have a unique opportunity to embrace gen AI to tackle these challenges head-on, and drive greater efficiency, security, and customer satisfaction.
Four key trends will drive gen AI adoption for banking in 2025: intuitive search, AI agents, customer experience, and security. Let’s explore each trend and its anticipated impact on the industry in the coming year.
Intuitive Search Will Supercharge Productivity
In 2025, gen AI will redefine knowledge management for financial institutions. Today, the unfortunate truth is that while most financial services organizations are rich in data, they are unable to convert that data into actionable insights without manual intervention.
For example, market analysts and compliance officers often spend significant time and effort sifting through information dispersed across various documents and departments. AI-powered intuitive search and advanced summarization capabilities will allow employees to locate and analyze information faster and more effectively. Rather than data wrangling, they can focus on higher-level analysis and decision-making.
These tools will provide instant access to essential insights, streamline workflows, and improve productivity. While subject matter experts will still play a crucial role in validating and interpreting information, new search capabilities will allow them to spend less time gathering data and more time deriving value from it.
The Rise of the AI Agent
AI agents are no longer a futuristic fantasy; they’re here, and they’re ready to work. These digital assistants are poised to support many routine tasks, such as underwriting loans, adjusting claims, and generating risk reports. This will not only boost efficiency but also free employees to focus on more complex and strategic work, adding value where only human expertise can.
But it’s not just about cost savings. AI agents will also play a key role in driving revenue growth. By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI can build a deep understanding of each customer’s financial situation, goals, and preferences. This will enable banks to offer hyperpersonalized experiences, such as recommending the right products, providing timely financial advice, and even anticipating future needs. The experience would extend across all touchpoints with the customer, creating truly personalized and connected omnichannel banking.
Multimodal AI Ushers in a New Era of Customer Service
Banking apps have become increasingly complex, but AI can simplify the user experience. Multimodal AI, with its ability to process various data types like text, images, and audio, takes this simplification a step further. By understanding the nuances of human communication, multimodal AI can provide a more personalized and intuitive customer experience.
Natural language interfaces allow customers to interact with their bank in a more human way but have often been too brittle to solve more complex questions. Imagine being able to ask your banking app: "How much did I spend on coffee last month?" The AI, analyzing your transaction history and even recognizing images of receipts, can quickly identify and provide the answer. This seamless integration of information and intuitive understanding of customer requests is the future that multimodal AI offers the banking industry.
Dig deeper:
AI Will Emerge as Crucial Defense Against Fraud
The threat landscape is evolving, with bad actors using gen AI to create new attacks and exploit vulnerabilities in banking systems. But financial institutions are fighting back with their own AI-powered defenses. Our recent ROI of Gen AI survey found that 3 in 5 financial institutions are seeing measurable improvement in their cyber security posture by using gen AI.
Today’s fraudsters often rely on unstructured data sources like forged documents or suspicious online activity — things that are incredibly difficult to monitor manually. At the same time, fraud monitoring systems generate extensive alerts, leaving security operations centers often overloaded. AI’s capabilities in prioritizing alerts, analyzing unstructured data, and identifying complex patterns can increase fraud detection and protect customers against threats.
This AI-driven vigilance will help financial services institutions stay ahead, turning a potential vulnerability into a strength as they actively counter AI-powered fraud with equally advanced defenses.
Conclusion: The Data Imperative
Looking ahead, the success of these AI initiatives hinges on one critical factor: data. Banks that have invested in building robust data platforms will be the ones that reap the rewards of AI. These platforms enable banks to aggregate data from various sources, ensure data quality, and make it readily available for AI applications to scale.
In this rapidly evolving landscape, the ability to innovate and harness generative AI will determine which companies thrive — and which are left behind.
