From curiosity to confidence: What 4,000 consumers want from AI-powered banking

Few words have ever captured the banking zeitgeist as accurately as AI.

Since the end of 2022, when OpenAI made ChatGPT available to the public and officially fired the starting gun on the AI arms race, banks have been investing increasingly large amounts into AI technologies.

As of 2026, up to 5% of banks' overall budgets are being allocated to AI, and improving the customer experience is one of the key outcomes they're hoping to achieve. But, beyond the hype, what does success really look like?

At Solaris, we think the only way to accurately answer this question is to go straight to the source. So we asked 4,000 German consumers aged 18 to 65 how they currently use AI in banking, what's keeping them from using it more, and, most importantly, how they want banks to incorporate it into their products.

Here are the three key takeaways from our research.

1. AI is already part of how Germans bank, and curiosity is a key driver

If there was any doubt about how entrenched AI use has become, our research puts it to rest. 55.5% of our survey respondents use AI at least once a week, with 22.1% using it daily. Only 13.5% of respondents say they've never used it.

As is often the case with new technologies, adoption is strongest among younger respondents: 80% of 18 to 29 year-olds use it at least once a week.

But the numbers are strikingly high across the board. 67.2% of over 30s, 54.2% of over 40s, and 40.1% of over 50s use AI at least once a week.

Consumers overwhelmingly use AI because they think it saves time, with a small but significant segment also believing it helps them gain a better understanding of their findings. But the third most common reason for using AI is much more simple: curiosity.

This finding is significant for any business thinking about offering AI-powered financial services products, for two reasons.

First, because it ranked ahead of out-of-hours support, saving money, and making more informed financial decisions.

One would have expected these latter arguments to carry more weight, especially at a time of economic uncertainty. They're also the most frequently-promoted benefits of AI, which lays bare just how much of a disconnect there can be between brands' perception of consumer expectations and the reality on the ground.

Second, the weight consumers give to this finding suggests that brands' AI value propositions aren't cutting through. In the absence of such clarity, consumers are taking matters into their own hands and running their own AI experiments.

2. The trust gap is real

While AI has gone mainstream – and in spite of the high level of curiosity around what it can do – consumers maintain a healthy skepticism.

The biggest worry around AI, shared by 45.6% of respondents, is the risk of data leaks. 42.5% also fear losing access to human support, and 40.9% fear the consequences should AI's advice turn out to be wrong.

The more surprising finding, however, is the disconnect between consumer trust and AI usage.

Asked who they trust most to implement AI in a way that treats their data responsibly, consumers ranked banks first, with Big Tech coming next-to-last.

And yet, the banking task respondents use AI most for is to explain transactions. And the majority don't use their bank's AI tools for this – they outsource to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other third-party AI tools.

According to McKinsey's German Retail Banking Snapshot 2025, only around 9% of German banks have integrated AI into their mobile apps. This dearth of native AI capabilities might explain why so many consumers use third-party AI tools despite their misgivings.

More to the point, it highlights the sheer size of the opportunity.

BCG suggests AI could help banks collectively unlock $370 billion in profits through both cost-savings and revenue from new products by 2030. And if consumers turn to third-party AI tools, even when they don't fully trust them, banks with well-thought-out AI-powered products – an in-app financial coach that categorizes and explains transactions and gives customers smart suggestions to make their money go further, for instance – could gain a powerful competitive advantage.

3. Banks' perceived trustworthiness is a competitive advantage… with important caveats

As the organizations consumers trust most to use their data responsibly, banks are the obvious partner for both financial and non-financial brands looking to enhance their offerings with AI-powered accounts, cards, and credit products.

The catch? Consumers have very clear ideas about what they want – and don't want – from AI-powered banking products. Get it right, and you gain a first-mover advantage. Get it wrong, and consumers simply won't use those features.

So what does "right" look like?

According to our research, it's about ensuring consumers always feel they're in control.

84.7% of survey respondents want to be able to download and delete their data at any time, 84.2% want full transparency about how their data will be used, and 82.4% want to be able to turn AI on and off at will.

Privacy is also an important factor. 81.2% want their data to stay in the EU, suggesting GDPR is more trusted than overseas online privacy regulations.

Crucially, whether it's accounts, cards, or credit products, consumers want AI in the background, not in the driver's seat. While they're happy for it to do the spadework, having a human in the loop acting as the ultimate decision-maker is non-negotiable.

AI is an enhancement, not a replacement

All too often, the discourse around AI is disproportionately skewed towards scaling efficiencies. But while time-savings are an important benefit not just for firms, but also for customers, it cannot become the be-all-end-all of AI in banking.

Our research is clear. Consumers have an appetite for AI in banking. But only if it genuinely improves outcomes and certainly not if it's foisted upon them.

At the end of the day, people want to feel empowered and in control. And the only way to ensure this is to give them the choice of when (and how) to use AI, and the option of speaking to an actual person whenever they need it.