Driving Top-Line Growth in Financial Services Using GenAI

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) continues to deliver transformational gains in business efficiency and customer or employee experiences across industries. These advantages were so impressive that they led companies like Klarna and Duolingo to reduce headcount and institute AI-first hiring strategies. While some of those plans have since been walked back because of public backlash, there is no denying the reductions in operational expenses possible through GenAI. 

Now, new technologies and learnings are unlocking the even larger potential of GenAI to drive top-line growth. Real-time AI tools are improving sales performance, while AI-enabled servicing and operations are enhancing customer experience and engagement — all contributing to significant revenue gains. Unfortunately, according to BCG, only the top GenAI adopters are focused on using it for top-line growth today. This is rarer still in the financial services industry where regulatory concerns, customer expectations, and resistance to change have all slowed adoption.  

But to remain competitive and capture new market share amidst shifting macroeconomic conditions, financial services providers must rethink their use of GenAI and move beyond just cost-savings measures. Here are four ways that providers can deploy GenAI today to boost revenue and contribute to top-line growth.  

Use Cases for Deploying GenAI as a Revenue Multiplier  

GenAI can do more than squeeze efficiencies out of tasks traditionally performed by humans.  By shifting their mindset, financial providers can build on GenAI cost-savings applications to maximize top-level revenue growth and overall business performance.  

1. Sales coaching and productivity support. AI enabled coaching tools can leverage customer conversations to benchmark sales agents against top performers to provide supervisors with tailored recommendations on how agents can improve future sales performance. This can effectively reduce variances in agent performances and help bridge the gap between top and bottom performers much faster. In addition, tools like AI agent further enhance productivity by performing routine tasks like filling out forms so that human agents can focus on the more nuanced aspects of sales that require human touch.   
2. Improvements in servicing and collections. Beyond bringing in new customers, lenders must also work with current customers who are delinquent or in danger of default to ensure a viable and cost-effective path to repayment. Traditionally, customers may be hesitant to engage with humans in these scenarios out of embarrassment or a resistance to disclosing personal hardships. GenAI helps improve this recovery effort by increasing engagement and resolution rates among delinquent customers, turning potential losses into retained revenue. Increasingly sophisticated AI agents can help reduce abandonment and boost resolution efficiency so that organizations can collect more, faster. And by using AI to ensure personalize at scale, organizations can increase customer receptiveness and loyalty, especially in sensitive financial situations. At a high level, this enhanced customer experience in the collections process helps preserve brand trust and long-term value, critical for future cross-sell and upsell opportunities.  
3. Productivity in backend operations. GenAI can also turn backend functions that are typically considered cost drivers into higher productivity executions that contribute to growth. For example, instead of relying on cumbersome manual processes, GenAI-based OCR tools can digest, sort, and disseminate physical documents across an enterprise. Chat GPT-like tools can also help employees get answers to business-critical questions like standard processes or the location of key resources within seconds, contributing to significant boosts in productivity. While these tools certainly reduce costs, they also free employees from routine, repetitive, or administrative tasks so they can focus on innovation, customer value, and increased sales. 

The Future of AI-Empowered Finance   

Broadly, the shift in using AI to empower rather than replace humans is already well underway in many industries. By unlocking growth opportunities, fostering innovation, and widening a competitive advantage, GenAI is proving it can drive significant revenue gains and deliver far more impactful business outcomes than just reducing operational expenses. 

But for financial providers, the writing is on the wall. Innovative fintechs and large financial institutions alike must begin exploring how GenAI can enhance sales effectiveness, accelerate collections, and transform back-office operations into revenue enablers in order to unleash their full revenue-contributing potential. Because what is today an emerging trend in other industries will soon become table stakes in financial services.