5 Emerging Trends in Personalization and CX for 2025

In 2025, financial institutions must aim to personalize financial products, predict customer needs and create smoother experiences — without compromising trust —as customers expect more tailored services.

By Liz Froment

Published on January 16th, 2025 in Personalization

As banks gear up for 2025, personalization and customer experience (CX) are no longer nice to have; they’re necessities, driving customer retention and growth. At the same time, consumers expect banks and financial institutions to anticipate their needs, deliver seamless omnichannel experiences, and personalize interactions at every touchpoint. In fact, a study from MX found that 53% of consumers expect their financial provider to leverage the data they have about them to personalize their experience.

However, scaling personalization while balancing privacy, compliance, and operational efficiency is challenging. Banks must manage rising consumer expectations around personalized products and services without crossing the line and compromising trust. Experts increasingly turn to Artificial intelligence (AI) as a way for banks to create better, more personalized experiences to meet customer’s needs.

Here are five trends that will shape personalization and CX strategies in the year ahead.

1. Dynamic Micro-Personalization

AI-driven personalization changes how banks engage with customers. Instead of broad segmentation, consumers expect individualized, real-time experiences from their financial institutions. AI can analyze customer’s transaction patterns, behaviors, and preferences, which helps banks anticipate needs and offer targeted solutions at critical moments.

"Moving forward into 2025, I see AI enabling advanced personalization by dynamically categorizing client segments based on real-time data, rather than static parameters like demographics or spend patterns," Ram Khizamboor, senior vice president and chief delivery officer – BFS&I at LTIMindtree, a global technology consulting and digital solutions company told The Financial Brand. "This represents true personalization in a micro-sense, allowing us to design products on the fly and combine solutions that meet individual client needs, creating significant business impact."

This shift means banks can react and adapt instantly to customer signals, creating more intuitive experiences that align with a customer’s financial goals and life stages. Blending machine-driven insights with human expertise can help banks personalize at scale while delivering tailored products, predictive guidance, and frictionless experiences.

2. Omnichannel Personalization

Personalization and customer experience are no longer an either/or option for digital and in-branch interactions. Customers are increasingly frustrated by disjointed experiences like repeating information across channels or not receiving consistent personalization when switching between online and in-person banking.

Salesforce’s The State of the Connected Customer study found that 79% of customers expect consistent interactions with companies across departments. Yet 55% feel they’re communicating with separate departments, not one company.

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"With the right AI-driven bots, a financial institution can follow a customer interaction across channels, ensuring a connected and personalized experience," Jackie Hudson, global vice president and general manager, branch workforce solutions s at Verint, an enterprise CX automation company, told The Financial Brand.

"For instance, a customer starts their journey online via chat and wants to speak to an agent. The customer is automatically transferred to an agent who receives a summary of the relevant chat information using GenAI, avoiding the need to ask the customer for context. With the assistance of a bot, the agent can quickly book a face-to-face appointment with an available specialist for the customer in their preferred branch. The content of the conversation is automatically summarized and passed directly to the bank’s CRM system, so the customer won’t need to repeat themselves."

Hudson shares blending customer experiences using integrated appointment scheduling that syncs customer data for a more personalized in-branch experience can drive revenue. "Our research found that banker interactions with pre-booked appointments had a 24% higher sales conversion rate than walk-ins," Hudson says.

Key Findings from MX

– Nearly half of consumers (46%) agree they expect greater levels of personalization from mobile banking apps than what they receive today
– 43% of consumers say they do not trust the use of AI to help them track and manage their finances, while another 28% said they aren’t sure
– 49% of consumers agree they expect their financial provider to know them
– 56% of consumers agree they expect financial institutions to use the data they have about them to provide them with actionable and clear insights about their finances
– 53% of consumers agree they expect their financial provider to leverage the data they have about them to personalize their experience
– 46% of consumers agree they would give their financial provider access to more of their data if they knew it would result in a better experience

3. Predictive Engagement for Real-Time CX

Predictive engagement allows banks and financial institutions to anticipate customer needs and deliver real-time personalized solutions. This represents a shift from reactive to proactive CX. It can also help redefine how banks approach everything from product recommendations to financial advice.

"In 2025, AI is poised to bring marketers closer to achieving the holy grail of intercepting customers at the exact moment of need with hyper-targeted, personalized content," Allison Cerra, chief marketing officer at Alkami, a digital banking solutions provider, told The Financial Brand. "Financial marketers, for instance, will see advancements that allow account holders to receive even more precisely tailored offers through digital banking channels, delivered in real-time."

With predictive engagement, banks can leverage AI to analyze spending patterns, behavioral and psychographic data, and even life events to offer timely and relevant solutions to customers. AI’s ability to pick up shifts in transaction data or engagement patterns could let banks proactively recommend products or flag potential risks. According to CMSWire, predictive analytics can improve engagement by 20%.

"The combination of predictive and generative AI can create a future of marketing where both the offer and the asset are dynamically created and delivered just when customers need them, regardless of where the interaction occurs," Cerra says.

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4. Privacy-Focused Personalization

If there’s one significant concern for bank executives around AI and data-driven personalization, it’s transparency and privacy concerns. Data misuse can break trust, so privacy-first personalization and explainable AI (XAI) allow banks to show how decisions are made and help deliver tailored experiences while ensuring customers understand and consent to how their data is used.

"The line between helpful and creepy is a tightrope," Jon Tvrdik, CEO and founder at WaveCX, a provider of CX training, feedback, and marketing tools for financial institutions, told The Financial Brand. "Study your customers to learn their pain points and where they drop off. Use personalization to solve frictions, not to flex how much you know about customers. And draw hard boundaries. If your team feels like they’re tiptoeing into creepy — stop."

At the same time, new regulations related to consumer financial data will force financial providers to reconsider how they leverage data responsibly and ethically to deliver better experiences. But privacy-first principles aren’t just a regulatory checkbox. Banks that communicate data usage, ensure privacy, and offer customers control over their information can build more trust and long-term loyalty.

"Consumers expect their financial providers to know them but they, in turn, want to know who has access to their data and how it’s being used. It’s their data and they should have control over it," said Jane Barratt, chief advocacy officer at MX. "The institutions who recognize this by leading with privacy-first principles and open banking will be in a better position to deliver on consumer expectations in a way that builds trust and doesn’t cross the line."

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5. Personalization Expands Across Products and Services

Personalization no longer only lives in the marketing department. As banks move away from static, one-size-fits-all solutions, AI and data analytics drive the development of customizable products and designs.

"Personalization is no longer just a marketing tool; it’s becoming the backbone of the entire customer experience," Leo Patching, co-founder and CEO at Kompliant, an automation and solutions platform for financial compliance, told The Financial Brand. "In customer service, AI-powered tools can now predict needs and suggest next-best actions, enabling support teams to provide solutions before customers even realize they need help. This level of proactive engagement should be the norm, not the exception."

AI-backed product customization can also align financial products with life milestones and shifting goals. Anticipating consumers’ personalization needs boosts engagement while simplifying complexity, making banking feel more intuitive and tailored.

"Beyond marketing, I’d love to see greater personalization in product design within the financial space (in both B2B and consumer-facing products) to help streamline workflows and support users’ decision-making processes," Tiffany Johnson, chief product officer at NMI, and embedded payments solution told The Financial Brand. "Decisions around money can be emotional and a source of stress and uncertainty. There is a huge opportunity to proactively address these concerns by anticipating user needs and delivering relevant information at just the right moment for users to make a decision."

MX’s research not only shows an expectation by consumers for financial providers to use data to deliver more personalized experiences, but also that consumers will share even more data if they knew it would result in a better experience.

Balancing Personalization with Privacy

Banks that prioritize personalization while respecting customer privacy concerns and ensuring more seamless experiences are better positioned to meet evolving customer expectations, improve efficiency, and keep a competitive edge.

The key to success is balancing innovation with transparency, blending AI-driven insights with human touchpoints. Banks that get it right can build deeper loyalty, engagement, and growth.

About the Author

Liz Froment is a financial services writer based in Boston. She specializes in banking, lending and wealth management with an interest in technology. Her work has appeared in Business Insider and The Motley Fool, among others.

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