Walk into any bank branch, insurer’s office, NBFC service center, or contact hub, and you’ll see the same challenge playing out: frontline teams juggling conversations, systems, and expectations in an environment where customers expect answers now - and on the channel of their choice.
Consumers today benchmark BFSI service not against competitors, but against the best digital experiences they see anywhere. The organisations that succeed in 2026 won’t simply add more tools, they will blend human advice with smart, invisible technology, so their advisors, agents, relationship managers, and service reps can engage faster, personalize better, and build trust at scale.

Customers want digital convenience, but they also want expert human guidance for financial decisions that carry risk:

• Choosing an insurance plan
• Applying for a loan
• Completing KYC
• Making investment decisions
• Resolving service or dispute issues

McKinsey’s customer-experience research across financial services shows why this matters:

CX leaders achieve stronger revenue growth, lower costs, and higher employee engagement than their peers - and generate meaningfully higher shareholder returns.

But many journeys across BFSI remain fragmented.

Customers begin online, switch to chat, walk into a branch or connect with an advisor, only to repeat themselves at every step. Follow-ups may be inconsistent, and context often gets lost between channels.

Yet the human element remains critical: across financial services, trusted advisors and relationship managers consistently rank as the most valued touchpoint, so much so that switching behaviour rises when advisors leave or service becomes inconsistent.

The message is universal across BFSI:

Customers don’t want to choose between people and technology. They want both, seamlessly connected.

Customer experience and employee experience are inseparable.

When advisors and agents spend time hunting for information, switching screens, or re-entering data, customers feel the friction immediately.

McKinsey finds that organizations that engage frontline teams as co-creators in CX transformation see:

• Higher customer satisfaction
• 20% improvement in employee satisfaction
• Faster Turn Around Time (TAT)
• Stronger cross-sell and retention

In BFSI, this link is especially clear:

• A banker who has instant access to a customer’s full financial picture can advise better.
• A field officer with mobile access reduces turnaround times.
• An insurance advisor with contextual prompts can personalize without delay.
• A contact center agent with unified history avoids escalations.

Technology doesn’t replace expertise - it amplifies it.

Accenture’s latest research reinforces the urgency: customers increasingly report difficulty reaching a human when needed, or navigating service journeys. In a landscape where attrition is high and expectations are rising, BFSI organizations must remove friction, not add new layers of complexity.

AI’s role is not to automate away financial conversations - it is to shorten the distance between a customer question and a confident, compliant answer.

IBM’s Institute for Business Value notes that:

75% of financial services executives believe AI will improve personalization and CX, but warn that fragmented systems and weak data foundations remain barriers.

The promise of AI becomes real when paired with clean data, integrated workflows, and empowered frontline teams.

In BFSI, this looks like:

1. Advisor / agent assist
   Real-time summaries, next-best-actions, explanations of product rules, contextual prompts - helping frontline teams spend more time advising and less time searching.


2. Smarter routing
   AI triages inbound requests to the right channel:
   • Self-service for simple tasks
   • Human support for complex or high-value conversations


3. Proactive engagement
   Detecting repayment cycles, renewal windows, eligibility changes, life events, and portfolio gaps - then nudging advisors with timely reasons to reach out.


4. Faster, cleaner onboarding
   AI-assisted KYC checks, document classification, real-time validation, multilingual support, especially important for banks, insurers, NBFCs, and MFIs.

To make this transformation real, BFSI leaders are anchoring around a few core principles:

Human-led, tech-accelerated journeys

Map the moments where customers need reassurance (loan approvals, investments, claims, disputes). Then use tech to handle the rest - context-gathering, data prep, routing, and follow-ups.

Modernize the service core

Accenture’s “Service on the Brink” findings highlight a striking gap: customers don’t feel technology has meaningfully improved service quality yet.

That gap closes only when:

• Data is unified
• Systems are connected
• AI is grounded in real rules
• Handoffs are seamless

Measure what matters

Beyond cost KPIs, leading BFSI organizations track:

• Advisor time saved
• First-contact resolution
• Customer effort scores
• Quality and consistency of advice
• Employee adoption and satisfaction

AI and automation must serve people, not distract them.

Picture a loan customer messaging a query.

A virtual assistant validates identity, surfaces repayment options, and flags eligibility for a top-up offer.

The customer asks a nuanced question; within seconds a relationship manager joins, armed with a clean summary of past interactions, risk profile, and suggested talking points.

The conversation finishes quickly, the customer feels understood, and the advisor moves confidently to their next engagement.

This is where BFSI is heading:

Frontline expertise supported, not overshadowed, by technology.

When AI, automation, and connected systems fade into the background, advisors and agents can lead every interaction with clarity, empathy, and insight.

That’s the real frontier:

Not replacing human connection, but amplifying it so financial organizations can deliver trust at scale.