As inflationary and wartime pressures rise, consumers are likely to seek value-based rewards and credit products to weather the storm.

Digital engagement should go beyond retail and small business.

At Bank of America’s (BofA) investor day, its first in over a decade, the bank said it spent more than $118 billion on technology in the last 10 years. In 2025, its annual spending on new technology initiatives will reach $4 billion out of a total of $12.7 billion. In the AI race, banks that aren’t already ahead will fall even further behind. Increasingly sophisticated automation as well as an AI-assisted jump in employee productivity mean AI investments quickly compound on themselves. Last month, JPMorgan said it had already broken even on its $2 billion AI investments.

Virtual banking assistants like Bank of America’s Erica are taking design cues from ChatGPT and Google Gemini as banks look into adding conversational AI.

Consumers’ adoption of AI banking chatbots varies by country. Though the US and UK promote their tech-friendly banking environments, the geographically concentrated, Big-Six-focused Canadian market has taken the lead in embracing this much-hyped tech.

The CFPB signaled it’s taking a more proactive stance in policing banks’ AI chatbots, including dishing out penalties.

One year on, we review what we got right, what we sort of called, and what we got horribly wrong.

Bank of America is giving consumers the capability to seamlessly switch between its AI-powered chatbot and a human agent.

Chatbots that use more advanced AI algorithms could give customers a seamless experience transitioning between technology and humans.

The bank’s plans to overhaul its mobile app and AI assistant could help it gain customers and offer an improved user experience.

BofA digital engagement surges: The US-based bank disclosed that users are turning to digital channels more frequently, even as adoption slows. With adoption now approaching saturation, engagement will become the next frontier for banks.

Bank of America’s digital channels and technologies such as Erica saw a significant rise in customer usage in Q1 2021—and the bank could augment the heightened interaction by providing more access to human representatives.