Alkami Technology, a leading cloud-based digital banking solutions provider for financial institutions in the U.S., has officially published its latest findings that document the distinct perspectives on artificial intelligence (AI) held by regional and community financial institutions (RCFIs), compared to consumers. Boasting a specific focus on the technology’s potential, use cases, and adoption, Alkami’s research revealed a clear disparity between the stated two groups, highlighting the dual task that financial institutions encounter when adopting and leveraging AI to enhance operational efficiencies and account holder satisfaction. It also touches on all that occurs for an institution when navigating the complexities of data security, privacy concerns, and ethical considerations. More on the same would reveal how, for this study, Alkami surveyed RCFIs to gauge the way they are currently using or planning to use AI across various digital banking use cases, their attitudes towards the opportunities and challenges AI brings, as well as their outlook on its potential future impact for their business. Markedly enough, in parallel to the study in question, Alkami also conducted a separate research, with The Center for Generational Kinetics, a research where digital banking consumers were asked to compare and contrast their attitudes, perceptions and beliefs to the RCFIs that serve them.
Anyway, talk about the published results on a slightly deeper level, we begin from the study discovered that, even though 96% of financial institutions foresee AI playing a critical role in the next five years, only 61% of consumers expect the technology to significantly influence their banking interactions. Next up, the report introduced the readers to those 78 of institutions who see AI as a catalyst for uncovering new business opportunities, On top of that, we would get to know that augmented benefits from the technology are expected in areas, such as time savings for employees (77%), reducing operational costs (59%), and revenue growth (56%). Moving on, the research also reveals how no more than 21% of RCFIs, with more than $5 billion in assets, are successfully leveraging AI across at least a few key areas today, as compared to 19% of those institutions with less than $1 billion in assets.
“Many financial institutions are beginning to understand the potential for AI across the range of their operations, and as they navigate an internal strategy for implementation and use cases, we want to provide the broader industry with benchmarks directly from market research in various areas of AI,” said Allison Cerra, chief marketing officer at Alkami. “The study reveals the more common applications for AI today and where RCFIs believe AI will have the biggest impact in banking, both of which can prove useful to RCFIs benchmarking their own AI progress.”
Among other things, the report informs us on how millennials are, by far, the most comfortable with their data being used by AI to deliver a better digital banking experience. Backed by the agreement of well over 51% participants, the stated contingent bested all other generations, including Generation Z (Gen Z), Generation X (Gen X), and baby boomers. Then, there is the younger generations (Millennials and Gen Z) citing financial wellness as one of the areas where they would be most comfortable with AI. Having said so, the technology remains least popular for RCFIs in terms of AI application or planned experimentation. Not just that, the study also discovered that a significant majority of financial institutions continue to be in the foundational stages of understanding and implementing AI. However, if we focus on those who have meaningfully experimented with AI, their results are reflected in the word of more than 88% RCFIs, who say that their AI initiatives across customer service, data insights, marketing, and/or security and fraud protection have been mostly or very successful.
“As the study outlines, a key part of the path forward for RCFIs is education, and we hope this study encourages banks and credit unions to delve deeper into AI literacy and adopt a structured and strategic framework to maximize potential and navigate the inherent complexities,” said Jason Dorsey, president of The Center for Generational Kinetics.
