Bank Executive: "Forget apps. In 3 years, we'll be using agentic interfaces to do banking"

I was in a meeting recently with a handful of senior bank executives discussing the somewhat broad topic of 'Digital Transformation'.

Unprompted, there was a lot of dialogue about AI - somewhat naturally, as you might expect.

While a lot of executives were discussing their challenges with some traditional issues (e.g. core banking, middleware, whether to bother with implementing Scaled Agile Frameworks), one executive took things in an entirely different direction.

I had just presented on the topic of Conversational AI and illustrated some of the fantastic results that quite a few banks are already achieving with the technology.

The executive silenced the room by explaining that in about 3-or-so years, he fully expected the majority of his customers to be using agentic interfaces to manage their banking needs.

Some colleagues were blown away by this statement.

Some were surprised, some were a little confused.

I found the contrast between discussing 18-24-month software implementations and the prospect of agentic interfaces dominating banking quite a compelling plot point!

I picked up with the individual afterwards and he was deadly serious, setting out the strategy his bank is already taking to actively prepare for this future, whilst managing the day-to-day demands of updating the mobile app with some new features.

I wanted to document this here on Conversational AI News to indicate that while some organisations aren't even thinking about this, quite a few are already getting prepared. (I wrote my first high-level 'Preparing for Agentic Interfaces in Banking' report on this topic last week for a client!)

My message to Conversational AI vendors reading is to do your level best to begin preparing (and possibly building) support for this across your infrastructure stack. It could be as simple as envisioning how customers might 'do everything' through a WhatsApp-style interface, or how customers might use Google's Gemini on their Android phone to support their banking needs.

But whilst infrastructure is one thing, make sure you're also upskilling your teams, testing and learning with new technologies regularly and engaging in the wider ecosystem constantly. Start the discussions with your most forward-thinking customers today, if you haven't already.