Banks and fintech ranked artificial intelligence and machine learning as their top innovation priority, according to a Bank Innovation survey.

Bank Innovation asked people in the banking and fintech community to list what’s top on their innovation wish list. Of the 294 people that took the survey, 32% listed ML and AI as their institution’s top priority,

This doesn’t come as a surprise. A year ago, Bank Innovation predicted that AI would replace the much talked about blockchain technology in 2018 as the technology that would take over the industry. And indeed, from exploring AI’s application in chatbots and virtual assistants like Bank of America‘s Erica or Capital One‘s Eno to using the technology to streamline certain tasks in order to free bank employees for more complicated endeavors as in the case of French bank Crédit Mutuel’s partnership with IBM Watson, AI, and ML has been a recurring a theme in the conversation on banking innovation. For fintechs this year, AI has found a lot of applications in alternative lending and alternative credit scoring with more fintechs like alternative debit card company Petal or Greenlight Financial Technology surfacing the markets every day.

It is true that unlike blockchain technology, AI has seen practical implementations in a number of areas. But there is still a lot to explore when it comes to artificial intelligence. Bank Innovation previously reported that the next iteration of the technology for the banking world will be computer vision, a type of deep learning technology that could let banks use live cameras to better serve customers by being able to predict a customer’s mood or sentiments when they visit bank branches (more on this here).

But even without computer vision, it seems like the use-cases for AI and ML are endless in the banking world…at least for now. This is not to say other technologies are forgotten. Bank Innovation‘s survey found that 21% of respondents said focusing on fintech partnerships was at the top of their priority list, followed by realtime payments, blockchain and biometrics.

See the full results below.

Bank Innovation’s poll was conducted on its site between August and early September.

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