Banking roadmap to 2030

Within just a few years, banks will be using AI to ensure that you get the most value from your money – and your data – from the cradle to the grave.

Banks are already embedding AI and data analytics into almost every line of business to allow them to deliver services more effectively and efficiently.

Already, AI is helping banks prevent fraud and money laundering, is incorporated into chat-bots as part of the customer-bank interface, used by robo-advisers to recommend products and by marketing departments to personalise services. Last year, financial groups spent some $5.1bn on AI applications.

This investment is just the start. Where today chat-bots are being used to answer customer queries and robo-advisers match products with a customer’s risk profile, in just a few years, AI will enable banks to offer a comprehensive and sophisticated money-management service. They will use it to maximise the value you can get from both your data and your money.

Apps such as BBVA’s Valora are already doing this. If you’re buying a flat, it will check out the area, assess similar property prices, advise on a realistic offer and can help find the best insurance, as well as advise on renovation costs. But AI will soon go further.

Within three years, an AI-powered robo-adviser will have such a deep and broad knowledge of your finances and savings goals that it will be able to help you decide how to finance your purchases. Want a new sofa? It will know whether you’re better off taking out a loan, paying cash, dipping into savings or using a credit card. It’s a valuable money-management service.  

As AI develops and touches more aspects of everyday life, so banks will partner with more data collectors, building a 360-degree picture of each customer. Nest – the home-management system owned by Google – collects household data. By combining this with information about your financial situation – and using AI to compare your profile against others in similar circumstances – banks will be able to recommend better household insurance, cheaper utilities and car finance and help you manage your bills, savings and investments.

A little further out – perhaps in seven years – banks will have fundamentally changed. Customers will no longer have to juggle finances and choose between products and services themselves. Banks will take care of it all, bundling groups of similar customers together and packaging up services appropriate to them. The package for HENRYs – high earners, not rich yet – might include savings plans for school fees and inheritance planning. For DINKIEs – double income, no kids – the focus will be short-term goals.

By 2030, banking will have changed again. Banks won’t need to bundle customers into market segments – each will be treated as an individual. It will be the age of the Bank of Me. Banks will effectively be offering highly personalised services.

They will know so much about each customer that chat-bots will become more like personal assistants – finding the cheapest ticket, highlighting upcoming events, such as birthdays, and recommending presents that fit with your budget and past habits, relaying relevant financial or geopolitical news, automatically rebalancing investment portfolios, monitoring spending against income and savings goals and more. Money management by customers will be pretty passive – unless you opt to be actively in control.

By this time, banks will know so much about their customers that they will probably be able to predict all kinds of life events. Don’t be surprised if a bank will have an idea of how far you’ll get in your career, whether you’ll get married and even how many children you’re likely to have. Not because they care, but because this level of modelling will help them help customers make the most of their money over the course of their lifetimes.

The banks have got this. And consumers are about to get a whole lot better services.