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Two Key Consumer Concerns: Investments and Fraud

J.D. Power’s study dug into two specific areas of interest in guidance and advice.

• Investments, wealth management and retirement: Some consumers reported low awareness of whether their banks even provide such services. McAdam says low awareness may be the result of the large institutions aiming such advice strictly to people who are already affluent.

Three important needs for advice are long-term planning, generational wealth transfer and retirement planning.

Even where advisors do exist, consumer sentiment is mixed. Some customers are pleased with what’s available and rely on the expertise. However, “some call out poor advisor availability, limited expertise or inconsistent guidance, which erodes their trust.”

Another negative: Some bank customers complain about poor returns in bank investment products.

• Fraud: A key finding is that banks make or break their reputation in “the moment of fraud response.” How well their bank explains an issue, the quality of their guidance, and how quickly they provide remediation determine if they earn the consumer’s trust.

Banks also score points for providing proactive guidance on how to avoid fraud in the future.

Read more: Four Ways Banks Can Turn Fraud Into a Loyalty Play

Virtual Assistants Boost Satisfaction. But They Aren’t a Panacea

Overall, advice and guidance metrics have helped improve national bank satisfaction ratings over the last three years, McAdam says.

But there’s a twist.

Many of the nine large banks covered in the study — including Chase, Bank of America, PNC and Wells Fargo to varying degrees — have been leaning into branching, expanding coverage while optimizing their networks.

Reality check: Yet, overall, J.D. Power found that satisfaction with branch and call center staff performance have been falling over the last five years. Branch representatives remain the primary point where consumers begin their search for advice, with 28% of queries starting in that channel.

Virtual assistants are moving in. At the same time, six of the banks studied offer virtual assistants — Bank of America’s Erica, U.S. Bank’s Smart Assistant, Capital One’s Eno, Chase Digital Assistant, Wells Fargo’s Fargo, and Truist Assist. These tools can guide, suggest and provide some in-the-moment advice, depending on their sophistication.

Over the years, J.D. Power has asked consumers about their usage of these automated forms of advice and guidance to retail banking services. The firm has uncovered trends that should concern institutions that don’t offer virtual assistants.

Use of virtual assistants has expanded beyond “innovators” and “early adopters,” according to the research, and is now being adopted by “early majority” consumers.

The payoff: Nearly one in five consumers banking with the six banks offering virtual assistants use them, versus 13% in 2021. Importantly, overall satisfaction among consumers who use the banks’ virtual assistants is 35 points higher (698 total) versus consumers who don’t use them (663 total).

McAdam says this is a significant statistical difference. J.D. Power likewise found that use of virtual assistants improves net promoter scores.

Nearly a third of virtual assistant users rely on them to obtain information about their bank accounts without having to deal with humans in the contact center. And 26% use the assistants to address account problems.

During Bank of America’s 2025 investor day, officials said that 60% of Erica’s interactions with customers were proactive outreach, and that nearly all queries to Erica resolve without human intervention. The bank has also implemented a form of Erica to help employees answer customer queries more quickly.

Read more: More Banking Apps Offer Predictive Insights, But Many Alerts Arrive Too Late