Financial institution platforms were built in a pre-AI era and now must be reconfigured to ensure they are seen by AI searches. 

A recent PwC report found that 50% of consumers have used an AI tool in their financial product search process, with 67% expecting to use AI to inform their next lending decision, Peter Pollini, PwC’s U.S. financial services industry leader, told FinAi News.

“Jumping all the way to 67% to inform their next lending decision is pretty significant,” Pollini said.  

As consumer use of AI prompting increases, FIs want to ensure their products come up as responses within those AI platforms — on Claude or ChatGPT, for example. 

Banks may not need an entire rebuild of their digital infrastructure, but they do need to make their sites agent-readable, Tomas Campos, chief executive of AI credit data and analytics company Spinwheel, told FinAi News. 

“How do you take your existing websites and your existing properties that you’ve got out there, and make them agentic-responsive, just like you did when you made it mobile-responsive” a decade ago, he said. 

The update 

To be agentic-ready, financial institutions must update their code. 

For example, instead of just having the default robots.txt files for crawlers, FIs must add llms.txt files to inform agents that the site is AI agent-accessible, Campos said.  

From there, an agent can download that llms.txt file outlining steps, processes and brand-specific instructions on how the agent should present that information to a consumer, Campos said.  

Making the shift 

Many FIs are already moving to make their operations more discoverable on AI searches. 

Online SMB lender National Funding, for one, is evaluating tech providers that can increase its reach to more customers, be it through traditional searches or AI searches, founder and Chief Executive David Gilbert told FinAi News.

Gilbert explained that while the AI search might showcase the company trying to service a client, what sets them apart to get the customer through the door must be more specific.

“The shift to AI is already here and we need to move accordingly,” he said. “We need to not only deploy it internally but make our digital store front accessible to customers’ agents.”

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