I asked 10 bank executives to name a Conversational AI vendor... here are the (shocking?) results

I've been mixing with a lot of senior executives in the financial services industry recently and I have been doing a lot of discussion around AI.

I'm an external faculty member at the London Institute of Banking and Finance, focusing on digital banking, digital transformation, FinTech, and AI.

Through this, as a speaker and advisor, and through this website, I regularly come into contact with senior executives from the financial industry.

As an experiment, throughout the various events and activities I have been doing recently, I informally asked 10 senior executives in banking if they could name any Conversational AI vendors.

By senior, I mean Chief, Executive or Managing Director level.

I introduced the concept by explaining I run Conversational AI News. Each executive was keen to play along but I obviously won't name them or their banks.

Each executive represents a bank that you would report in your monthly update to the board. In my mind, each bank is at least €1M in revenue per year, IF they were using Conversational AI – most of them, to my surprise, were not.

Here is the list of vendors that were mentioned (in alphabetical order):

• Accenture - I think this was a 'stab in the dark' as I did prompt them. I am absolutely sure that Accenture could do Conversational AI - but probably through a relationship with one of their partners.
• Druid AI - mentioned by one executive so remembered the brand, but couldn't remember how.
• IBM - if in doubt, IBM probably do it! I pressed the executives who mentioned IBM and it was my feeling that they were guessing. Correctly, as it happens. Go WatsonX!
• Kore.ai - mentioned by two executives. I was impressed: Each executive indicated they'd had some sort of outreach from Kore.
• McKinsey - again, I felt this was a bit of a stab in the dark. I pressed the executive and they said they remembered McKinsey telling them they could do it. Again, they absolutely can - probably with a partner.

And that's it.

Read it and weep.

Well, actually, don't weep. This list is, as we like to say in financial services, non-exhaustive and totally non-scientific. So take this with a big, big pinch of salt.

You wouldn't necessarily expect senior executives to have Conversational AI vendors on the tip of their lips... but then, the team at Druid and Kore seem to be doing something right, even if it was a 1/10 or 2/10 hit rate. That's better than a lot of other vendors.

Which reminds me. I need to do a better job of improving my vendor list in the Marketplace. If your company is missing, please send me a note and I'll add it (it's free to be listed).