AI visibility for financial services

Money decisions start with a question, and more of those questions now go to an AI engine first. A small business owner asks ChatGPT which lender suits a young company. A first-time buyer asks Perplexity to explain offset mortgages. A finance director asks Google AI Overviews to compare treasury platforms.

The answer that comes back is a recommendation. The engine reads across regulated guidance, comparison sites, trade press, review platforms and your own pages, then names a handful of firms and explains why. Most people never scroll past that summary. Similarweb found that 69% of Google searches end without a click, so the answer is often the whole journey.

The firms that appear are rarely the biggest. They are the ones the engine can read clearly, verify against trusted sources and match to the exact question asked. A regional wealth manager can outrank a national brand for a precise query if its evidence is stronger and its pages are easier for a machine to parse.

With 94% of B2B buyers now using AI as part of their purchasing research, this is no longer a consumer-only shift. The corporate and intermediary side of financial services is being shaped by the same engines.

AI engines weigh three things when they decide which firms to name. The AI Visibility Strategy scores each of them. In financial services, regulation and trust raise the bar on every one.

• AI Visibility. Whether the engines surface you at all for the questions your clients ask, from pension transfers to invoice finance. This dimension is worth 40% of your score because if you are not mentioned, nothing else matters. A firm can be excellent and still be invisible to the model.
• Source Quality. Whether the evidence behind your name is strong enough for a money topic. Engines lean on regulated guidance, established trade press, professional bodies and credible third parties. A firm cited by the FT or a recognised adviser directory carries more weight than one citing only its own marketing. This dimension is worth 30%.
• Narrative Fit. Whether the story the engine tells about you matches what a buyer actually needs, such as the right client type, the right product and the right level of caution on a regulated topic. A clear, accurate narrative wins; a vague one gets passed over. This dimension is worth 30%.

Get all three right and the engines describe your firm the way you would describe it yourself. Get them wrong and the model invents a version of you, or names a competitor instead.

We test your firm across the three engines that matter: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. We do not guess. We run the questions your clients and intermediaries genuinely ask, then record what each engine says back.

For financial services we build sector-specific prompt sets covering your products and personas, from mortgages and protection to commercial lending, wealth, pensions and platforms. We ask the engines to recommend, compare and explain, and we capture every name they cite and every source they lean on.

Each run produces a score from 0 to 100 and places you in one of five bands: Ghost (0 to 10), Whisper (11 to 30), Emerging (31 to 50), Cited (51 to 75), or Known and Cited (76 to 100). The score is built from our 12-pillar framework across the three dimensions, so you can see exactly where the gaps sit and what to fix first. Read the full methodology to see how the pillars combine.

You start with a free Exec Brief. It shows where your firm stands today across the three engines, your score and band, and the few moves that would shift the answer fastest. It is yours to keep whether or not you go further.

If you want the full programme, the AVS run gives you the complete 12-pillar picture: the prompts you appear in, the prompts you miss, the sources the engines trust, the competitors named ahead of you, and a prioritised plan to close the gaps. For a regulated firm we flag where the engines describe your products inaccurately, which carries real compliance weight.

From there you choose a cadence that fits how fast your market moves: Annual, Bi-Annual or Quarterly, each bespoke priced. Engines update constantly and so do your competitors, so most financial services firms track on a regular rhythm rather than checking once. Start with the free Exec Brief and see your firm through the eyes of the engines.