The financial services sector is facing a "critical strategy-action gap" that puts many firms at risk of losing market share because they are becoming invisible in the AI answers consumers are using to make decisions, TrustPilot has stated.

The open customer feedback platform’s latest research found that 92% of financial services leaders say their organisation has a strategy focused on when and how their brand appears in answers from AI tools including ChatGPT or Google AI Mode, which is known as an "AI visibility strategy".

However, 47% are not collecting feedback through platforms like TrustPilot, which are often cited by AI when consumers are looking for products. This is estimated to impact 16,450 businesses across the UK.

TrustPilot found that this is despite 85% of businesses being aware that feedback collected on open platforms directly impacts how their brand appears in AI answers.

It said this signals a gap between strategy and action in businesses executing their AI visibility strategies, putting many of them at risk of invisibility.

The platform stated that in recent analysis of over 800,000 AI answers, review and trust sites are now the second most popular citation source for AI systems, behind general brand websites.

It added that brands that proactively collect and respond to online feedback get 75 times more AI citations than their inactive competitors.

Chief customer officer at TrustPilot, Alicia Skubick, said: "Financial services leaders are preparing for the era of AI discovery, but there is a critical disconnect between ambition and action. Having an AI strategy on paper means very little if AI systems can’t find or trust your brand.

"Private internal surveys might help you understand your customers behind closed doors, but they do nothing to train the AI models that modern consumers use to decide where they will bank, invest, or borrow. To get the most out of feedback and make sure they are showing up where it matters for their customers, businesses must ensure open feedback forms the foundation of their AI visibility strategy."

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