While You Debate Policy, Your Customers Are Already Connecting Their Accounts to AI
By Ben Udell, Founder of Ben Udell Consulting
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While banks and credit unions debate whether customer or member data can be entered into Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, or other GenAI tools, consumers have already done it. They have tools that are more powerful than your bankers’ ability to provide financial advice, or your online or mobile solution’s ability to provide real planning and answers. While you debate what’s next, consumers are already doing it.
In this two-part series, I am going to explore what’s available to consumers right now and what impact this could have on how you provide financial guidance.
In this part, I’ll explore this changing dynamic from the perspective of the consumer. Consumers can connect ChatGPT, through Plaid, to your bank or credit union data. Consumers can now receive detailed account insight with the aid of GenAI.
Next week, in part two, I’ll explore this perspective on the impact to your bank or credit union. Most banks and credit unions are still working through hard internal questions on how to adopt artificial intelligence, what they’re not considering is how they need to meet the evolving needs of consumers, and where they’re losing relevance.
Key takeaway:The conversations around GenAI adoption and usage of private data are vitally important and need to continue. But while you’ve had endless internal conversations, likely with high anxiety about the use of data, consumers have jumped past you and are taking matters into their own hands.
Personal Financial Guidance with GenAI
In May 2026, OpenAI launched a personal finance experience inside ChatGPT. It connects to more than 12,000 banks, credit unions, credit card issuers, brokerages and other financial institutions (FIs) through Plaid. Your institution is very likely on that list, and you were not asked.
It’s simple to make this connection and even easier with the help of GenAI.
Prompt: “Walk me through the steps to connect my bank accounts to ChatGPT.”
You’ll be prompted to connect your accounts through Plaid through a recognizable sign in and approval process. A consumer can create this connection in just a few minutes.
Once accounts are connected the consumer has a super intelligent banker, MBA level data analyst, financial guru, and savings and budgeting coach available 24 hours a day. The traditional banker will push back on this development in a few ways.
- AI gets things wrong. It does. So do your employees for reasons that aren’t their fault. Your banker can only see the accounts held with you. They’re working from memory, a CRM screen, and whatever info was volunteered in the last ten minutes. They have a few hundred relationships assigned to them and a few days of product training.
- Consumers trust us. Not like you think. Do the math, how many deep financial relationships can each frontline employee have relative to how many are assigned to them? How many are strong with financial guidance? Plus, consumers are insecure about sharing personal financial insights with strangers.
- People don’t trust AI. True, some people don’t. But there’s been an explosion in the everyday usage of GenAI. While there are real concerns and challenges, a few prompts open the door to amazing insights and solutions consumers just can’t get quickly, or at all, with their current FIs.
These concerns are valid but are often shared by individuals who have not tried to use GenAI with their financial situation.
What Can Consumers Do with GenAI Today
These are simple powerful starting points which illustrate what a consumer can do today. Here are some prompts you can use in ChatGPT’s Finances mode connected to their financial accounts.
- “Review my transactions from the past 12 months. What subscriptions and recurring expenses am I paying for, what looks like potential duplicates, rank them in order of cost, and tell me how long I’ve been paying for them, and give me advice on which ones could be an overlap.”
- “Review my checking accounts, I need to make a decision about how much I should keep as a cushion so I can move the excess to an account that pays me more interest. Do this assessment and give me your recommendation with a rationale.”
- “Do a review of my accounts and tell me what my current interest rate is, what other options exist at the financial they’re at, and give me recommendations for alternatives in Madison, WI that would pay more money based on the balances I carry.”
- “Look at the accounts and products I am using. Where am I paying unnecessary fees, earning below market returns, or carrying excess cash? Then write an email to them asking them to refund my excess fees or I’ll leave while letting them know I’m open to alternatives. Your email should compare direct competitors, so I have a strong basis to show I’ve done research while highlighting more competitive options.”
Three things you need to know about these prompts.
- They’re easy, and they start a “discussion” with ChatGPT that can evolve into follow up options, ideas, and outcomes. They can write a script to interact with a banker to help them get what they want.
- These are great questions which have very meaningful outcomes to a consumer, and your bankers would struggle, at best, to do this for the consumer. If they attempted to do it, how long would it take them? It takes ChatGPT a couple of minutes.
- They all prompt deeper insights, and that’s important for educating and creating real outcomes that are positive for consumers. But they will put your relationships at risk.
Here’s a prompt that is easy and accessible for any ChatGPT user who’s using Plus or Pro and has connected their financial accounts.
“I want to do an assessment of my spending categories. The goal is to have an awesome infographic that is more helpful and dynamic than the simple charts I’m given in my online account. It would be even better if you created a one-page website that allowed me to see the impact on savings by deleting certain subscriptions and/or getting rid of some spending in certain categories. Then, you can show me that impact over 1 and 3 years to my net savings.”
ChatGPT did this, exceptionally well. In a couple of minutes, ChatGPT can create a personalized spending assessment tool that models real savings impact. Your banker and bank or credit union can’t provide a personalized website that’s this engaging to consumers.
ChatGPT isn’t the only solution available to help your customers or members with their financial situation. Microsoft Copilot has made amazing progress in Excel, and Claude is available as an Excel Plugin. You can take your personal financial statement and use this prompt in Excel.
“Build me a Second Home Affordability tab that shows if I can afford a second house and what it would cost me each month. Lay it out in numbered sections: income, current monthly budget and cash available, second home carrying cost assumptions, funding sources, then a maximum purchase price solved both on cash flow and on cash at closing. Add a target-price test showing P&I and total monthly carrying cost, an updated budget with the second home included, back-end and front-end DTI against a lender maximum. Put every assumption in its own labeled input cell with formulas downstream and color-code blue for inputs.”
Your personal banker and online tools can’t do this. GenAI can in minutes. We have spent years telling consumers to bring questions like these to a trusted financial advisor. Now picture the consumer, after a full day of work, cooking dinner, getting the kids together, and watching their favorite show, thinking more critically about any of these topics. No banker is available, but ChatGPT and other GenAI tools are ready to help. The math is done in seconds, they have unlimited follow-up without feeling stupid and it’s tailored to their needs.
The answers will not always be right, OpenAI states plainly that ChatGPT is not a fiduciary, adviser or tax preparer. Those warnings are not going to stop consumers, nor does it invalidate the huge positives. And GenAI is only getting better.
Two Things to Do in the Next 90 Days
GenAI is now able to provide financial advice, model and create budgets and plans, do real research on a financial situation, and share the information in the format that resonates the best for the user. There is real risk that your value to a consumer is simply safely holding deposits and making a loan.
- First, figure out how your own employees can use GenAI with appropriate institutional and customer data under real governance. They need to be on the same playing field as your customers or members. This opens the door to your employees using the prompts above to benefit who they serve.
- Second, go use it yourself. Connect your own accounts if you are comfortable doing that. Run the prompts above, dive into a conversation, ask follow ups and challenge what it tells you. Take steps to understand how your customers or members will interact with your accounts.
Bottom line: You cannot build strategy around a customer experience your leadership team doesn’t understand. If GenAI can analyze a financial situation, model decisions and recommend what to do, then we have to revisit our beliefs about how we service customers and members. That is part two.
