Irish users trust bank-built AI nearly twice as much as generic chatbots, as demand grows for fraud-focused financial AI
Monday, 23rd March 2026 – Irish users increasingly expect artificial intelligence to play a central role in protecting their finances from fraud, according to new research by bunq, Europe’s second largest neobank.
The study found that fraud prevention is the single most important capability consumers want from AI in banking, ranking ahead of financial insights, personalisation or wealth-building tools.
Security concerns also shape how consumers evaluate automated decision-making in banking. The research found that 58 per cent of Irish consumers say it would be worse for an AI system to miss a genuine scam than to block a legitimate payment, suggesting consumers favour safety and reliability even if it occasionally creates inconvenience.
The study also highlights the importance of trust when introducing AI within financial services. 66 per cent of users say they trust AI tools developed by their bank more than generic AI chatbots, indicating that regulated financial institutions retain a strong credibility advantage when deploying new technologies. These findings reflect the real-world usage of Finn, bunq's AI assistant, which is built directly into the bank's app, and for which demand has grown sharply. In the most recent year-over-year comparison, the number of users actively interacting with Finn has grown by 71 per cent.
The appetite Irish consumers report for AI-powered financial management mirrors what bunq already sees daily across its user base. Among the most common questions Finn receives globally are queries such as "How much did I spend on groceries this month?" and "How much did I spend on household expenses last week?", reflecting the day-to-day money management that Irish consumers say they want AI to help them with, with 41% Irish people citing time saving as the main benefit.
bunq has been developing Finn since the early days of conversational AI in banking. Today, Finn handles 97 per cent of all customer support interactions, nearly double the industry average of 50 to 80 per cent, and fully resolves 84 per cent of queries without any human intervention, up from 70 per cent in August 2025, with a 90 per cent approval rating. Average response time stands at 47 seconds, approximately 20 per cent faster than the industry norm, and Finn operates across 38 languages, compared to around five for most high-performing digital banks.
The research suggests that as banks continue investing in automation, fraud detection and intelligent financial tools, AI will increasingly form part of the core infrastructure underpinning digital banking services.
“AI is already a part of people's lives and how they make decisions, so it follows that helping them with their finances is part of that,” said Joe Wilson, Chief Evangelist at bunq. “People need their bank to stay ahead of the pace of the world and provide cutting edge tools that help them understand and manage their money. In other words, to make their lives easy. It's not about AI managing people's money for them, but about empowering them in a way that fits their lives.”