Everyone is either all in or completely against AI, and I think we've moved past both of these sides of the spectrum.
Everyone is either all in or completely against AI, and I think we've moved past both of these sides of the spectrum.
I've watched this play out in financial services for the last few years. The institutions that dismissed AI early are scrambling to catch up. The ones that went all in without a plan are realizing the technology alone didn't fix hardly anything at all.
The truth lives somewhere in the middle.
AI is genuinely useful for tracking, budgeting, pattern recognition, and getting someone curious enough to take a first step. It can meet a member at 11pm when no one is in the office. It can surface a pattern a human might miss. That's real value and it's worth building on.
Here's what it can't do: It can't sit with a member who is ashamed of their debt and help them believe they deserve to get out of it. It can't rebuild trust after a financial setback. It can't read the hesitation in someone's voice when they say "I'm fine" but clearly aren't.
The clients who made real progress were the ones who finally had someone walking alongside them.
That's still a human job.
The question worth asking isn't whether to use AI. It's how do we leverage AI to give our team the time, the training, and the support to do the human work that AI will never replace.
That's where I'd start.