Just 30% of Financial Firms Use AI for Customer Retention
Just 30% of Financial Firms Use AI for Customer Retention
Publish Date: 2026-06-18 04:03:00
Source Domain: www.pymnts.com
Enterprise artificial intelligence has moved past the pilot stage, but there are some challenges when it comes to gaining wider acceptance.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Financial Services Pulls Ahead in the Enterprise AI Race” was based on a survey of 60 senior technology executives at enterprises in the United States with at least $1 billion in annual revenue. It found that financial services, healthcare and media firms are all using AI across core business functions. The difference is where they are using it, what they expect from it and what still stands in the way.
The headline finding is that financial services has scaled AI on more tasks than healthcare or media. But the more useful story is what each sector has not yet solved. AI is spreading, but its next phase may depend less on models and more on data, systems and management discipline.
Among the findings:
- Financial firms were spending, but customer growth lagged. Financial services and insurance firms were the most aggressive AI spenders, with 85% planning to increase AI budgets over the next 12 months. Their strongest investment case was productivity and competitive positioning, each cited by 65% of these firms.
- Lower use cases showed a gap at the customer layer. Only 30% of financial firms used AI for churn prediction and retention targeting, 20% used it for know your customer/know your business and identity verification, and just 10% used it for A/B testing and experimentation. The sector has pushed AI deep into revenue, risk and forecasting, but less so into customer growth and experience.
- Healthcare was using AI for relief, not reinvention. Healthcare’s top AI use case was customer service chatbots and virtual agents, at 60%. Workforce planning and model risk management followed at 55%. That pattern pointed to a sector using AI to ease operational pressure, not yet to redesign the patient or customer journey. Only 5% of healthcare firms used AI for…
