The data: More than half (55%) of US consumers used AI for financial tasks in the last 12 months, according to a Plaid study.

Digging into the data: AI is becoming part of the norm for financial tasks, and consumer uses are expanding. It is not just a research tool: 30% are using AI for recommendations and 33% for budgeting, investing advice, or to solve customer service issues. Half (52%) of consumers expect fintech apps to use AI, and 50% say managing money without AI would feel outdated.

Trendspotting: Large AI companies have made big moves in personal finance: Perplexity recently added support for connections through Plaid to checking, savings, credit card, and loan accounts. And OpenAI recently acquired Hiro, a personal finance startup that built tools to model users’ financial decisions. In 2025, OpenAI also acquired AI finance startup Roi.

Banks and neobanks are implementing a new generation of virtual assistants that live within proprietary banking portals, instead of outsourcing financial management to general-purpose AI tools. Revolut is debuting an in-app assistant for UK customers developed in-house. In addition, Starling Bank launched a Gemini-powered virtual assistant in March, and Lloyds plans to do the same.

Implications for banks: The pitch for modern, AI-driven financial assistance is uniform across the market: helping consumers better understand their finances, make informed financial decisions, and effectively budget. But software development in the banking industry cannot compare to the pace of evolution of AI tools.

With new personal finance tools, banks risk losing a huge part of their data advantage. But they have two advantages that AI cannot beat—yet:

• The next frontier of consumer finance AI tools is to complete banking tasks on the customer’s behalf—something tools using only a data connection cannot do.
• In at least one study, consumers said they trust their bank substantially more than AI as a source of information.

The dynamic is changing, but banks are not yet at severe risk of losing their place in consumers' financial lives.