A few weeks ago, I had strong words for conversational finance:
“…people have better things to do than think about the questions they might ask of a new tool…The response to ‘make this easier for me’ should not be a more complicated product.”
Conversational finance works when it avoids a conversation.
Recap
A copilot, the quintessential embedded conversational AI tool, simplifies and shortens what clicks and keystrokes would make more complex, time consuming, or error-prone.
For a consumer, it should solve for effort and angst; for a business, it should solve for time and cost. Cut the term “copilot” and the design principles are universal. Conversational AI should make proven features better and faster.
Blank-slate, open-ended, chat-first or chat-only AI does not; it reinvents a round wheel as a square one.
This article is the third of three in a series. Missed part two? Read it here.
Easy prompts, quick answers
Consumers want a product that just works. Businesses want a product that just works and helps make or save money. Conversational AI frequently augments or adapts proven tools that are tuned to customer needs. Easier. Faster. Better. Less thinking, more doing, unless thinking is the point:
The user of conversational anything needs context for the tool as much as the tool needs the user’s context to add material value.
The output must be focused on what the user will want to know or do without failing because a predetermined prompt-and-response pair doesn’t exist.
The user of conversational anything needs context for the tool as much as the tool needs the user’s context…
The most common type of prompt to ChatGPT is to ask for specific information, perhaps expecting it to return specific information. “Embedded” chat gives users context for their prompts. They need answers to specific problems in front of them. The chat box guides users toward the best prompts, and if it needs to clarify, it prompts the user with helpful answers.
Then, it produces results that are quick to digest and act upon with a click or a one-line response.
📘 Customer-facing copilots
B2B: Business software that launched AI products between 2023 and 2025. Each began with a conversational Q&A interface and has since evolved toward agentic automation (e.g., expense management for managers and employees; accounting workflows).
Intuit: Intuit Intelligence in 2025, powering Intuit Assist (2024)
Ramp: Ramp Intelligence and accounting copilot (2023)
Brex: Brex Assistant (2023)
B2B2C: Infrastructure vendors that build white-labeled conversational AI for financial institutions to deploy to end customers. These are prompt-driven assistants that surface actions, data summaries, and recommendations. MX's chatbot is for digital banking; KAI supports both customers and employees.
MX Conversational AI Assistant (2026)
Kasisto (acquired by Backbase in June): KAI Answers with KAI-GPT (2023)
B2C: Direct-to-consumer finance apps with AI assistants, progressing from a Q&A or support bot toward an agentic tool capable of retaining conversational context and completing tasks. Cleo 3.0 offers financial coaching; Monzo's and Starling are both UK neobanks.
Cleo: Cleo 3.0 (2025)
Monzo: Ops Agent (2026)
Starling Bank: Starling Assistant (2026)
Semiautonomous banking
The Erica-style chatbot, built upon a library of countless prompt-and-response pairs, is obsolete. Agentic AI supersedes that mechanism; the interactions, responses, and actions it enables vastly surpass what was possible in 2022.
The Erica-style chatbot, built upon a library of countless prompt-and-response pairs, is obsolete.
Monzo’s development process for its Ops Agent is an interesting case study: start with a Q&A tool, automate guardrails, and then enable actions (e.g., internal money movement, goal-setting) that are completed semiautonomously from within the chat. Assuming the agentic AI customer safety and compliance nightmare is solved, and the bot works as advertised:
Banking will have a copilot that does everything the traditional app can do. Sometimes better. Sometimes worse. But distinct from any interface that’s been seen before.
Resources
Thanks for reading Fintech Notebook: Weekly intelligence read by fintech operators, strategists, and investors. Published by Tyler Brown. Connect on LinkedIn or visit my website @ tylerbrown.co.