Generative AI is moving fast — and so are Financial Institutions

What was once viewed as experimental is now becoming essential. In just two years, banks and financial institutions have shifted from curiosity to conviction, with investment in AI tools accelerating across the board. The mindset has evolved: this is no longer a one-off initiative for innovation teams, but rather a strategic initiative with implications for productivity, risk, customer experience, and long-term competitiveness.

Yet, despite this momentum, challenges remain. Scaling AI in a highly regulated, risk-sensitive industry is no small task. Decision-making is becoming more cross-functional. Pilots still outpace full-scale deployments. And the builder-to-buyer gap and sales cycles remain as some of the biggest friction points in getting powerful tools into the hands of institutions that need them.

That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the launch of Canapi’s Generative AI Council, an extension of our initiatives designed to accelerate AI adoption across the financial services landscape. Through our GenAI Council, we will leverage our extensive relationships to bring the most innovative AI startups with the key stakeholders inside banks and financial institutions who are responsible for evaluating and implementing these technologies. As strategic investors with exclusive access to many financial services companies, we’ll host webinars, demo series, and private events that help founders reach the right buyer and help financial services companies stay ahead of the curve in understanding what’s possible with AI.

As investors, ecosystem builders, and insiders with deep relationships in financial services, we see a unique opportunity to catalyze progress. Our vantage point of partnering deeply with banks, while backing the next generation of fintech and enterprise software companies, puts us in a unique position to foster collaboration, reduce friction, and accelerate the adoption of responsible, high-impact AI across the industry.

To better understand how generative AI is being adopted across the financial services landscape, we surveyed our Canapi Alliance, comprised of over 70 of our banks, financial services companies, and fintech partners in the ecosystem. This follows a similar survey that we conducted in 2023. The results are clear: AI is no longer a future state consideration; it’s reshaping priorities across the financial services landscape.

Banks and Financial Services Companies are Prioritizing AI in a Big Way.

In 2023, 43% of respondents viewed AI as a low priority. Fast forward two years and that hesitation has meaningfully disappeared. In 2025, 96% of participants rank AI adoption as a medium or high priority – a dramatic shift in conviction that signals the technology has moved from the fringes to the forefront of financial innovation.

This isn’t just about keeping up with the hype cycle. Banks are beginning to internalize that AI isn’t a siloed tech experiment, but rather an enabler of core business transformation. The focus has shifted from speculative use cases to tangible outcomes: smarter customer interactions, faster credit decisioning, more agile compliance, and leaner operations. What was once an emerging trend is now seen as foundational to staying competitive in a market where speed, personalization, and data-driven decision-making are defining winners.

In a sector often characterized by caution and regulation, this level of urgency is telling. AI is no longer a future bet; it’s becoming a present-day imperative.

Adoption of GenAI has Surged.

In the span of two years, generative AI has gone from pilot projects to production at scale. Usage among banks has jumped from just 26% in 2023 to an impressive 83% today — a signal that the industry is no longer testing the waters, but actively swimming in them.

What’s most notable is how quickly generative AI has evolved from an experiment to a business tool that employees across the organization are actually using. Much of this early adoption has centered around familiar, high-ROI use cases that increase operational efficiency and optimize costs. As the infrastructure improves, risk teams are beginning to set guardrails, and cross-functional collaboration is emerging — all signs that banks are maturing in their approach and preparing for broader, more transformative applications.

The Base of Decision-Makers is Broadening.

As AI moves deeper into the enterprise, the way banks govern and evaluate these tools is evolving. What was once the domain of a single executive, typically the CIO, CTO, or CISO, is now becoming a cross-functional mandate. Increasingly, banks are setting up AI steering committees that bring together leaders from technology, risk, compliance, legal, operations, and business units to collectively shape AI strategy and oversee deployment.

This shift reflects a growing awareness that AI is not just a technical initiative — it’s a strategic one, with implications for every corner of the organization. Questions of model risk, data governance, vendor selection, and employee enablement can no longer be addressed in silos. Institutions are recognizing the need for shared accountability and cross-disciplinary expertise to guide adoption thoughtfully and at scale.

Key Buyers Prefer to Buy vs Build.

These cross-functional steering committees are choosing to partner rather than to build. At the onset of the AI revolution, the prevailing mindset among banks was to collect in-house expertise and build in-house tools to stand up their own models or AI capabilities. That sentiment has shifted dramatically. Today, the vast majority of banks are choosing to partner with third-party tools rather than build in-house.

Via conversations, we learn that such a shift isn’t about giving up control; it’s about accelerating impact. The AI ecosystem is moving too fast and the technical barriers are too high for most banks to go about it alone. Instead, they’re increasingly turning to external vendors, specialized startups, API-native platforms, and, frankly, our team at Canapi. Such partnerships allow financial services companies to move faster, reduce infrastructure overhead, and focus internal teams to evaluate applicability, governance, compliance, and safety.  

The Next Wave of Use Cases is Coming into View.

While early adoption has centered around productivity and support tools, banks are beginning to think more strategically about where generative AI can drive broader business value. The most anticipated use cases today span three key themes: employee productivity and internal process optimization, customer service and support, and internal knowledge management. These are natural entry points where AI can plug into existing workflows, reduce manual effort, and deliver clear ROI without deep system overhauls or significant risk exposure.

Risk and compliance continue to be  high-value use cases for AI. Banks are actively exploring AI for anti-money laundering (AML), know-your-customer/business (KYC/KYB) checks, and fraud detection, where large volumes of unstructured data and the need for real-time analysis play to the strengths of LLMs. Similarly, there’s growing interest in using AI to streamline loan underwriting and credit scoring to augment traditional underwriting workflows with richer contextual data.

Interestingly, use cases in sales and marketing, legal and regulatory, and core finance functions ranked lowest in current adoption, not because they lack potential, but because they require individual functional teams to adopt their own respective tools. In our view, that signals a substantial opportunity. The barriers to getting to the right buyer persona is real, but so is the upside, and companies that crack the buyers could define the next generation of AI-native tooling.  

As such, at Canapi, we aim to facilitate key buyer introductions and serve as the conduit between AI founders and AI buyers within the financial services ecosystem. We’re actively looking for AI tools that banks and financial services companies can adopt across the organization.  

Launch of Generative AI Council

In response to this AI revolution, we’re proud to launch Canapi’s inaugural Generative AI Council, an extension of our dedicated AI initiatives designed to bridge the gap between innovative AI founders and the complex landscape within financial services. By leveraging our deep relationships across financial services, we will organize highly curated webinars, demo series, and closed-door events, with the goal of bringing together forward-thinking banks and financial institutions with the most promising AI companies in the market.

For founders, this means direct access to the stakeholders who matter most: the decision-makers inside financial organizations who are now tasked with evaluating and purchasing AI tools. For our bank partners, it’s a front-row seat to the technologies shaping the future of our industry. We’re thrilled to help accelerate the dialogue between builders and buyers, and to support responsible, enterprise-grade adoption of AI across the financial ecosystem.

If you're building in this space and want to engage with and serve some of the most forward-thinking buyers within financial services, we’d love to hear from you! Reach out to kristie@canapi.com with any thoughts or questions on how to partner with Canapi or get involved with the Council.