Consumer adoption of artificial intelligence for financial tasks has climbed sharply over the past 18 months but continues to trail general AI use, according to research published by RFI Global.
Seventy-nine percent of US consumers now use at least one AI tool, general or financial. Among Gen Z and millennials, 80% use AI for at least one banking task. Among boomers, that figure is 28%.
The research contrasted current adoption with survey work conducted 18 months earlier, when 17% of consumers said they were very comfortable using AI for banking tasks.
No single application has separated from the field. General information or research ranked highest overall at 49%, followed by work or productivity tasks at 30%. Within financial services, understanding financial terms or documents led at 21%. The nine financial activities measured clustered between 16% and 21%, with 61% of the overall population reporting at least one. In every category except writing or debugging computer code, everyday use exceeded financial services use.
Age remains the sharpest dividing line. Fifty-seven percent of adults over 60 use an AI tool of any kind. Thirty-nine percent of Gen X consumers and 72% of boomers have not used AI for financial services. By comparison, 16% of Gen Z consumers and 24% of millennials have not used AI at all.
The report grouped the nine financial tasks into research and action categories and reported a small gap between the two, indicating that consumers who begin using AI to understand concepts or explore options also use it for planning and decision-making.
Consumer reservations remain. MacroMonitor data cited in the research identified privacy and data security, accuracy, and lack of human interaction as the leading concerns, at 55%, 54% and 53% respectively. Fifty-four percent said they were concerned about the accuracy of AI-based decision-making, and 32% said regular audits would make them more comfortable with AI-powered financial services.
The research offered three recommendations to financial institutions: recognize that AI will affect the full customer lifecycle whether or not the institution participates, since consumers will use outside tools to research and plan; disclose institutional AI use, particularly in areas such as fraud detection; and adapt to prompt-driven interaction as consumers grow accustomed to querying AI rather than completing questionnaires.
