How emerging expectations help guide banks in transforming customer expectations
By: Jeff Chan, Senior Manager, Enterprise Innovation, TD Bank Group
The question every organization asks: what will consumers want next? As consumer expectations evolve, organizations must be better able to anticipate these shifts to stay ahead. How do we do that? For starters, understanding and applying consumer trends as part of decision making can increase confidence that an idea will resonate with modern consumers. These trends are not predictions or definitive answers. Instead, they may help innovative organizations ask different questions when brainstorming the next great experience. Here are three emerging trends to consider:
Trust and Transparency goes both ways
“Is this real?” This question is becoming more common when customers receive an electronic communication from their financial institution. As technology blurs the line between authenticity and deception, trust must be a core focus. The rise of low-cost Generative AI tools can have both a positive impact for good businesses and usher us into a new era of concern when it is in the hands of bad actors. Scams and fake content have become so prevalent that consumers are being pushed to go directly to the source for truth. As such, banks not only need to continue protecting their services, but also need to prove to consumers that they are who they say they are. One example of this type of service are the AI-powered anti-scam measures introduced by Commonwealth Bank in Australia. The result? Customer scam losses were cut in half. Some have features to re-assure customers they are, in fact, talking to their bank. For example, Barclays in the United Kingdom introduced an in-app call verification feature to help confirm that an inbound call from them was legitimate. In January, Revolut, a leading global fintech, rolled out in-app calls to their customers. The purpose of this new security measure helps customers know that Revolut will only call them through the app, which allows them to more easily identify potential impersonation scams via traditional phone lines.
Seeking balance in a digital world
Many consumers are growing weary of a digital-first lifestyle and yearn for balance. Accenture’s 2025 Life Trends Report found that 42% of global respondents said, “their most enjoyable experience in the previous week was a physical one, while only 15% said it was digital”. To me the data suggests that consumers could be seeking balance, perhaps using tools that take care of repetitive tasks so they can free up much needed time for real-life experiences. In the future, as consumer adoption increases with smarter AI, it could mean adopting AI to help make certain decisions on consumers’ behalf. For financial services, this could mean introducing a true hybrid human/AI experience where intelligent virtual assistants, powered by agentic AI, could perform tasks that include optimizing a client’s trading portfolio to executing trades on their behalf. By doing so, the AI frees up a client’s time so they can spend more time connecting with their financial advisor to better understand additional needs that only a human can.
Navigating the unknown
In 2022, Collins Dictionary declared ‘permacrisis’ the Word of The Year. The term reflected an extended period of instability and insecurity. With so much uncertainty, could consumers be looking for help navigating a chaotic world with greater confidence? Generative AI could play an important role in giving banks predictive capabilities that could help their customers map out multiple financial scenarios to help make better choices. Today’s personalization efforts, looking at key transactional or web browsing attributes, may give way to more advanced ‘digital twins’, once only accessible to big tech, to reshape decision making. In a world of new possibilities, we could imagine a model is trained against a client’s persona to better predict how external forces and anticipated decision making could alter their financial future.
These trends are not full answers to where industries could go next. They can help us ask better questions, so our colleagues land at an idea that could set us up for success. Our people play a critical role in helping TD transform.
Through TD Invent, the Bank’s approach to innovation, we are encouraged to imagine the art of the possible and bring it to life through specialized processes. Our recent Gen AI virtual assistant to support our Canadian Contact Centre and virtual reality training pilot in branches were developed through the TD Invent approach.
We believe the possibilities are endless. The trust our TD customers place in us is central to our innovation philosophy, and our goal is to drive positive outcomes for our colleagues, customers and the communities we serve, that are fair, safe and transparent.
Learn more about how TD Bank Group is re-imagining the banking experience.
