All over the world, traditional banking models are being disrupted by changing customer experience expectations. For example, by 2028, nearly 80 million Americans are expected to be using digital banking services - that’s nearly a quarter of the entire population.
The growth of digital banking adoption has fundamentally changed what customers want and expect from their banking providers. They expect personalization and instant service delivery as standard, including 24/7 on-demand self-service, seamless omnichannel experiences and rapid customer service response.
In this blog, we’ll look at the five biggest banking trends for 2025 that traditional banks and FinTechs alike must embrace, in order to successfully transform and meet the ever-rising demands of their customers, whilst maintaining security and regulatory compliance.
Even though artificial intelligence is relatively new technology in the mainstream, AI-driven personalization is fast becoming a core expectation, not a luxury.
According to The Financial Brand, over 60% of banking customers now expect their banks to understand their specific needs - and more than half would consider looking for a new provider if they don’t get the personalization they expect. Many organizations in the sector have responded: the same research indicates that 44% of finance firms are already using it to tailor customer experiences and improve loyalty and engagement accordingly.
This is part of a wider shift towards proactive service models that focus on long-term customer care rather than dealing with their immediate needs. In practice, this means reacting to certain actions with personalized suggestions that can make those actions more convenient for the customer, such as turning one-off payments to charities into monthly subscriptions.
Key to making this possible is customer data orchestration and analysis that will drive personalized product offerings, especially in light of the growth of regulatory initiatives such as PSD2 and PSD3. These European Union regulations are designed to make the finance landscape more open and competitive, while keeping payments and consumers safe. In a more competitive environment, standing out with personalized offerings is now even more important than it was before.
How AI is transforming banking experiences is becoming increasingly evident as AI-powered customer service adoption accelerates rapidly. By 2025, global banking investments into generative AI are projected to reach $1.68 billion, signaling a significant transformation in customer engagement technologies.
Intelligent assistants are evolving quickly and moving far beyond the handling of the most basic and repetitive of queries. For example, AI-driven chatbots can recognize when certain requests need the help of a staff member, and automatically reroute the request to the right person, so that the customer gets the help they need quickly and effectively. AI can also support customer service agents with natural language-based guidance on how to handle particular problems or especially complex transactions.
All this points to many banks developing hybrid service models combining AI and human expertise. This enables the delivery of proactive, personalized customer experiences where AI takes care of the areas where speed and accuracy is most important, and staff focus on the issues where a human touch is more appreciated and helpful.
Bringing together people, generative AI, predictive analytics, and Natural Language Processing represents the impact of AI on customer engagement in banking, driving greater satisfaction and loyalty by meeting customer demands more effectively.
Open Banking adoption is transforming financial services, and breaking down many of the barriers to the integration and convenience that customers are looking for. In particular, APIs are enabling seamless integration of third-party services such as accounting software, expense management tools and e-commerce platforms.
With more than 10% of digitally enabled consumers now active users of at least one Open Banking service, traditional banks are responding to the change. Many are now forging strategic Fintech partnerships to enhance their service offerings, combining bank stability and market reach with FinTech agility and quick innovation.
As an example of what’s possible through these partnerships, HSBC has launched SemFi, a joint venture with Tradeshift, which has embedded HSBC’s payment technologies, trade, and financing solutions into various e-commerce and marketplace platforms. This is helping them boost their customer experience through greater financial inclusion, and supports better efficiency in operations along the way.
With cybercrime on the rise, and with customers more aware of the risks to their data and funds, the latest security technologies are essential for maintaining customer trust and driving their confidence in the long-term.
The evolution of biometric security in banking is driving biometric authentication as the new standard for app login, payment authorization, identity verification, and ATM access without physical cards. This is underlined by a projected expansion of the global biometric ATO market to over $46 billion by 2032.
Alongside this, zero-trust architecture is reshaping security in banking, where every user, device, and transaction has to be authenticated, regardless of location. Technologies including identity management, access management, encryption and multi-factor authentication (MFA) combine in this area, alongside analytics and machine learning that can quickly identify anomalous or suspicious patterns of behavior.
Finally, the ways in which customers pay for goods and services and conduct their transactions is changing on a number of different fronts simultaneously, including:
Also gaining real traction among consumers will be voice-activated payments and blockchain-based payment systems, delivering new levels of convenience, efficiency, flexibility and cost effectiveness. In the case of the latter, it also facilitates greater use and adoption of cryptocurrencies, NFTs and blockchain payment gateways in the long-term.
Want to know more about the changing face of customer experience in the banking sector? Read our latest eBook: Banking on Customer Experience: A New Era for Financial Services Firms.