Conversational AI has enabled financial services providers to support customers 24/7 at a scale that would be impossible with live agents, and has become a ubiquitous part of the digital banking landscape. Yet significant opportunities remain for this technology to better engage customers, particularly customers living on low-to-moderate incomes (LMI), and to provide financial support that can unlock new financial security and wealth-building opportunities.

One key channel for building this engagement through stronger customer relationships is earned trust, by which we mean trust that develops through adding value to customers’ financial lives. 

With support from the Capital One Insights Center, this report provides insights from Commonwealth’s national survey and field tests in 2025 with credit union members focused on understanding trust in financial institutions and conversational AI. These findings contribute to an earned trust framework that breaks down the different aspects of trust that influence a customer’s overall experience with banking and emerging technologies. Finally, this report explores new opportunities to build trust and provide banking resources at scale, as well as new opportunities and risks to customer trust that are associated with the rise of generative AI technologies.