Banks Need to Reconsider their Role in an AI-Driven Future

AI is emerging as the most significant technological shift since the Internet, reshaping industries, redefining business models and fundamentally changing where value is created. As intelligent software becomes embedded in everyday products and services, competitive advantage is shifting away from traditional ownership modes toward those who control customer relationships, data, and decision-making.

Banking is no exception.

The traditional universal banking model is being challenged by embedded finance, AI-powered financial services and intelligent digital agents that increasingly sit between banks and their customers. Consumers are also beginning to expect a fundamentally different baking experience, one where AI delivers more personalized advice, automates routine financial decisions and simplifies increasingly complex financial lives.

As a result, banks need to reconsider their role within an increasingly AI-driven financial ecosystem. Below, we outline four options for banks in the financial landscape of 2030 and beyond, with each option reflecting a distinct role within the ecosystem.

Product Provider for Financing

In this model, the bank becomes a specialized financing engine, delivering high-quality, scalable, and efficiently priced financing products through third-party agents and platforms rather than its own customer channels.

Loans, leasing products and embedded credit capabilities are integrated directly into merchants, fintechs, digital marketplaces and even AI agents that recommend or initiate financial transactions on behalf of customers.

The value lies in combining lending expertise, strong risk management, and efficient capital deployment with scalable distribution. Revenue comes from scalable lending products, white-label banking capabilities, and embedded financial services delivered through ecosystem partners.

Most importantly, this model allows banks to maintain a defensible position even as customer relationships increasingly migrate toward platforms, merchants, or AI agents.

To succeed, banks should expand B2B partnerships, deepen relationships with fintechs and merchants, and develop modular, API-based financing products for ecosystem integration.

Digital Agent for the Customer

Rather than surrendering the customer relationship to external AI platforms, banks can become the customer’s primary digital financing agent.

In this role, the bank serves as the central interface for managing, optimizing, and coordinating a customer’s entire financial life. AI shifts from being a tool to becoming a full-fledged trusted advisor, proactively identifying opportunities, recommending financial products, automating routine decisions, and even evaluating offerings from competing institutions when they better meet customer needs.

The strategic advantage comes from becoming the customer’s trusted financial operating system. By orchestrating financial decisions across multiple providers, the bank strengthens customer loyalty while remaining central to increasingly AI-driven experiences.

Delivering this vision requires expanding fintech partnerships, creating multi-bank financial dashboards, deploying intelligent AI agents for proactive financial guidance, and selectively extending into adjacent lifestyle services that reinforce customer engagement.

Infrastructure Provider

Some banks will compete by becoming the infrastructure that powers the financial ecosystem rather than the brands customers interact with directly.

These institutions provide the underlying banking capabilities that enable financial services, including account management, payments, settlement, liquidity management, regulatory compliance, and banking-as-a-service offerings.

As AI systems and digital agents increasingly transact directly with one another, reliable infrastructure becomes even more valuable. Banks in this role enable secure machine-to-machine transactions, real-time financial coordination and automated workflows across ecosystems.

Their competitive advantage comes from scale, operational efficiency, and regulatory expertise. Revenue is generated through banking-as-a-service offerings, transaction fees, and platform services, creating recurring income while reinforcing their position as critical infrastructure for financial innovation.

Niche Provider for Non-Digital Customers

Not every customer will embrace AI-driven banking. Some customers will continue to value personal relationships, trusted advisors, and human judgement, particularly for significant financial decisions such as retirement planning, wealth management, or complex lending.

Rather than competing on digital convenience, banks adopting this strategy differentiate themselves through high-touch service, deep expertise, and long-standing customer relationships. AI may still support internal operations, but the customer experience remains intentionally human.

These banks generate revenue through premium pricing for a personal touch, stable customer relationships, and long-term deposits. As digital interactions become increasingly automated, trusted human advice may become a scarcer and more valuable offering.

This strategy is unlikely to maximize scale, but it could create meaningful differentiation among customers who prioritize trust, personal service, and expert guidance over automation.

Overall, banks need to answer a key question: where do they want to play in the financial ecosystem of the future? The answer does not require them to change everything at once. It should, however, guide how they shape current initiatives and focus investment behind the requirements of their chosen strategic option. A practical first step is to test whether today's digital and AI initiatives support that target position, or whether they are still optimized mainly for efficiency within the existing model.

Authors:

Victoria Danzer, Marcus Hartmann, and Simon Kuhn, Roland Berger