How BECU’s AI Financial Advisor is Moving Beyond Product Answers to Customer Handholding

By Steve Cocheo, Senior Executive Editor at The Financial Brand

Published on March 2nd, 2026 in Banking Technology

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For as long as there have been smart phones, digital banking enthusiasts have dreamt of a “banker in your pocket” that could provide in the moment financial advice, tailored precisely to each user’s individual circumstances.

Nadim Homsany, head of AI strategy and innovation at BECU, thinks today’s technology will finally make this concept feasible, and he wants his credit union to bring it to the people who need advice the most.

The key problem: Many Americans lack access to financial advice from humans, yet many seriously need it. Research indicates that efforts to inculcate financial literacy in school tend to wear off over time, Homsany says: “The half-life of financial education is one or two years.”

Homsany adds that frequently financial institutions don’t go out of their way to provide one-on-one financial advice because it can be human-intensive and expensive, and often there isn’t a perceived return.

Homsany believes artificial intelligence can make one-on-one financial counseling practical and readily available.

Need to Know:

Homsany co-founded EarnUp, a fintech focused on financial wellness.
In mid-2025, he moved to BECU, taking on all things AI there, when EarnUp spun out its AI Advisor technology to the credit union.
Homsany chairs the BECU AI Council, a cross-functional body that coordinates how the credit union develops and implements AI in all its types.

When he thinks of who needs AI guidance most, Homsany pictures a confused customer sweating to figure out which debts to pay when funds are tight, with their bills spread over their bed late at night.

“If you have a financial decision to make, wouldn’t it be great if you could just go onto your phone in the same way you might call a financial advisor, and get that advice?” says Homsany.

Large language models aren’t the answer. Many consumers are already leaning on ChatGPT and other large language models for financial advice. But Homsany says that large language models, as they exist, can’t collect all of a consumer’s personal financial data for the analysis they need to make a good decision. And even if the models could imbibe and retain all that data, he says, could privacy and confidentiality be assured?

Homsany and his team are developing an AI advisor, currently called “Becca,” to be a purpose-built tool that BECU members can bank on.

Building the ‘Self-Driving Car of Finance’

Homsany’s job at BECU includes coordinating staff adoption of AI, turning rote work over to technology, and funding selected individual employees’ proposals for AI implementation. What really excites him, however, is development of what he likes to call the “self-driving car of finance.”

BECU’s target users. He notes that many institutions are developing AI tools for affluent customers. But he thinks the many Americans who lack essential financial resources need this kind of assistance more urgently. He has in mind the consumer who has trouble mustering emergency savings and other essential financial needs.

“We’re a credit union,” Homsany explains. “We’re very focused on working on the segment that lives paycheck-to-paycheck.”

At the same time, Washington-based BECU, the employee credit union for the Boeing Company, has a long history of technological innovation, being among the first to offer phone checking and digital check deposits. It’s now the largest credit union in Washington and the fifth-largest in the U.S., with 1.5 million members.

Homsany says when EarnUp’s technology first came to BECU, it was used for an internal tool to help staff provide better member service. Now, he says, BECU is developing the technology into an externally facing app.

Becca is currently in pilot with a group of 150 employee-members of the credit union, in part to determine the types of data Becca will need to have useful conversations with BECU members.

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Taking AI Beyond Product Knowledge into Financial Advice Conversations

What BECU is working on represents much more than a souped-up product recommendation engine. Homsany wants the technology to be more like a counselor.

BECU’s goal: “The intention here is to create a very human-like experience, a conversation with a financial advisor,” says Homsany.

In practice, he says, this will entail multiple layers, much as a human conversation would.

The starting point: “Financial health and wellness will be the first use case that we focus on,” says Homsany. “This entails letting the AI take in your budget, assess what your goals are, determine what your credit score is, and how to help you get to better financial health.”

In time, deeper conversations will become possible.

Creating a Give and Take with Members About Their Finances

Homsany wants Becca’s advice to go beyond the generic.

Tailoring responses. “If you want to improve your credit score, then the advice it’s going to give you will be different than if you say that you have a poor credit score, but that what you need right then is a way to put a down payment on a house,” says Homsany.

The conversations will enable members to learn more about the reasoning behind the advice. Homsany says members will be able to ask, “Why did you tell me that?” A reaction from the advisor might be, he says, “Well, you told me your goal was to save $100 a month. Do you want to adjust that?”

Homsany hopes to achieve human-like conversations that demonstrate the equivalent of empathy.

“Money is super taboo,” he says, “Many people are ashamed of their monetary situation, especially folks that are living paycheck to paycheck.”

He envisions a member with poor credit seeking help being encouraged by the AI, saying things like, “You’re not alone. A lot of people have this challenge, and I understand what you’re going through. Let me help you through this. You can overcome it.”

The bottom line: “The member not feeling judged and feeling affirmed is a critical piece of the tool.”

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Data’s Role in Providing AI-Driven Tailored Advice

The greater Becca’s understanding of a member’s finances, the better and more personalized the advice it renders.

A role for open banking. “If you do all of your banking with BECU, that makes it really easy,” says Homsany. “If you do some of your banking with BECU and some with other institutions, that’s fine too.” The AI will go out, grab all of the information to make the experience hyperpersonalized. The intent is that the advisor will even obtain and incorporate the member’s credit reports, to have the full picture.

Homsany points out that while consumers often dislike their financial providers, there remains a sense of trust that banks and credit unions engender in people that he believes will encourage them to share data with Becca. Giving the AI a holistic picture of what’s going on in one’s personal financial life is critical to getting good advice.

The Guts of the Advisory Software

Homsany explains that the core of Becca is GenAI. When asked if the advisor includes agentic AI, he gives a nuanced answer.

“Agentic AI is a loaded term,” he says. “It means lot of different things to different people.”

The advisor uses elements of agentic AI to carry out getting data and providing advice. However, actions to implement much of the advice at this point must come from the human member.

“We’re pretty deep on the advice side and early on the action side,” says Homsany. He says there are low-risk transactions and higher-risk transactions and that developers will take things step by step as the AI evolves.

Giving Becca the ability to wire significant funds out of a member’s accounts “is not something that we’re going to enable anytime soon,” says Homsany. “But an action that says, ‘Hey, you have a shortfall in your checking account,’ to ensure that you have enough money for a transaction, we’ll have an action that can automatically move money from a savings account into a checking account to cover the difference.”

Becca will be a continuing work in progress. As the pilot continues, Homsany anticipates adding some small groups of non-employee members to the mix over the next six months or so. Making it widely available to members will come in the next 12-18 months.