AI’s impact on banking, part 2: Using AI to drive personalization

Personalization in banking has moved beyond being a nice-to-have—it’s now a strategic imperative. Fueled by evolving customer expectations and powered by artificial intelligence (AI), personalization is reshaping how banks engage customers, deliver value, and foster long-term relationships.

Through personalization, banks can tailor services and offers, interact in real time, offer more self-service, enable proactive fraud alerts, and improve the customer and employee experience, but achieving the right level is not easy. It requires investment in data, modernization and, now more than ever, AI.

Based on recent CGI Voice of the Customer (VOC) insights, I share in this blog key priorities for personalization in financial services, the transformative role of AI, and practical recommendations for banks looking to scale their capabilities.

Where personalization matters most across banking sectors

Our latest VOC analysis reveals that personalization priorities vary significantly across banking segments. Retail banking scored highest for real-time engagement—driven by high customer volumes and the need for swift, relevant interactions. In contrast, asset and wealth management ranked higher for hyper-personalized advice due to the higher return on investment per client. Corporate transaction banking and capital markets, while valuing personalization, place less emphasis on real-time offers, focusing instead on operational efficiency and risk management.

Key takeaways from this analysis include the following:

• A holistic data strategy is foundational. Personalization isn’t possible without it. You need to know each customer’s preferences and behaviors.
• Real-time engagement is essential even for high-volume, low-value customer interactions. You want to be able to serve each customer via their preferred channel as quickly as possible and keep them in that channel, rather than redirecting them to another.
• Yield-focused personalization in wealth management delivers outsized returns.
• Legacy system modernization remains a barrier to personalization across sectors.

Why AI is the key enabler for personalization

AI takes personalization from broad customer segmentation to the elusive “market of one.” Customers expect 24/7 service in their preferred channel, tailored financial advice, and seamless digital experiences. AI enables banks to meet these demands by integrating behavioral data, preferences, and financial patterns into tailored offerings.

Examples include the following:

• Hyper-personalized investment portfolios
• Tailored credit decisions
• Intelligent virtual assistants for rapid query resolution
• Behavioral anomaly detection for proactive fraud prevention
• Personalized and faster onboarding

Cloud adoption and system modernization amplify AI’s impact, enabling real-time analytics and breaking down data silos. Through these investments, banks can significantly speed up personalization.

Recommendations for banks to achieve ROI from AI

Many banks struggle to realize ROI from AI due to unclear measurement strategies. The path forward starts small and scales fast:

1. Start with a targeted proof of concept. Pick one product, campaign, or region. Our banking experts used this approach to enable a new challenger bank to quickly scale from 11,000 to 600,000 customers through AI-driven personalization.
2. Measure, iterate, expand. Use A/B testing to refine personalization strategies.
3. Modernize for speed. Invest in cloud and API-first architectures to enable agility.
4. Choose the right partner. Look for expertise in AI, data strategy, and customer journey mapping.

The benefits are clear: improved engagement, higher retention, better cross-sell opportunities, and reduced service costs.

The future of banking is hyper-personalized

Personalization is the destination, but AI is the vehicle. With the right data foundation, AI capabilities, and modernization strategy, banks can deliver tailored experiences that drive both customer satisfaction and sustainable revenue growth. The time to act is now—because in the era of hyper-personalization, customers expect nothing less.

CGI is working with banks to drive personalization through AI. To learn more about our work, feel free to contact me, or visit cgi.com to explore our banking and AI capabilities.