Just 30% Of Financial Firms Use Ai For Customer Retention

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Financial Services Pulls Ahead in the Enterprise AI Race” was based on a survey of 60 senior technology executives at enterprises in the United States with at least $1 billion in annual revenue. It found that financial services, healthcare and media firms are all using AI across core business functions. The difference is where they are using it, what they expect from it and what still stands in the way.

The headline finding is that financial services has scaled AI on more tasks than healthcare or media. But the more useful story is what each sector has not yet solved. AI is spreading, but its next phase may depend less on models and more on data, systems and management discipline.

Among the findings:

• Financial firms were spending, but customer growth lagged. Financial services and insurance firms were the most aggressive AI spenders, with 85% planning to increase AI budgets over the next 12 months. Their strongest investment case was productivity and competitive positioning, each cited by 65% of these firms.

• Lower use cases showed a gap at the customer layer. Only 30% of financial firms used AI for churn prediction and retention targeting, 20% used it for know your customer/know your business and identity verification, and just 10% used it for A/B testing and experimentation. The sector has pushed AI deep into revenue, risk and forecasting, but less so into customer growth and experience.

• Healthcare was using AI for relief, not reinvention. Healthcare’s top AI use case was customer service chatbots and virtual agents, at 60%. Workforce planning and model risk management followed at 55%. That pattern pointed to a sector using AI to ease operational pressure, not yet to redesign the patient or customer journey. Only 5% of healthcare firms used AI for customer journey orchestration, and just 30% used it for regulatory compliance monitoring. That is notable because healthcare is highly regulated and operationally complex.

• Media is strong on audience signals, weak on experience infrastructure. Media and advertising firms led in audience retention, with 55% using AI for churn prediction and retention targeting. They also showed strong adoption in content and operational tasks, including 60% for quality assurance and call analysis.

• Only 10% of media firms used AI for user experience personalization and adaptive interfaces, the lowest rate in the survey. That suggested media firms were using AI to understand and protect the audience, while still underinvesting in the systems that personalize the audience experience in real time.

Other findings showed why AI progress was uneven. Financial services firms cited data quality and fragmentation as their top barrier, at 30%. Healthcare firms cited system integration and data quality at 30% each. Media firms did not have one dominant blocker; instead, they cited internal skills, governance, leadership alignment and integration as separate constraints.

Generally speaking, enterprises agreed on where AI should go. Across all three sectors, 80% to 85% of leaders said their five-year vision is AI that helps people make decisions, not AI that replaces them. Getting there will require different fixes by sector. Financial services needs cleaner data. Healthcare needs connected systems. Media needs stronger organizational alignment. AI adoption is no longer the hard part. Scaling it well is.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.