Competing for Recommendations: The AI Midyear Pulse Check

About this episode

We're halfway through 2026, and the fintech landscape is moving faster than anyone can track. In this new episode of One Vision Podcast, Theo brings back three fan favorites — Jennifer White (J.D. Power), Tiffani Montez (Insider Intelligence / EMARKETER), and Julie Muhn (Finovate) — for a midyear roundtable that covers it all.

What did the recent Finovate Spring reveal about where AI is actually landing in financial services? Tiffani shares the latest from the AI Visibility Leadership Board — why banks are no longer competing for attention, they're competing for recommendations, and why the rules of discovery have completely changed. Jennifer brings the data that captures our attention: 53% of consumers used AI in the last 3 months to ask a personal finance question. While awareness of bank-provided PFM tools runs 70–90%, adoption sits at 17–22%. Soft churn is now the real primacy threat. And Julie calls out one of the hardest questions in fintech: what's real, and what's just marketing?

This episode covers AI as infrastructure, the trust paradox, agentic payments, GEO vs. SEO, and why the money leaving your primary bank might be the most important signal nobody's watching closely enough.

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Keywords: AI, Fintech, GenerativeAI, AI Agents, AI Visibility, LLM

📍 “AI is no longer being just tacked on to existing platforms, like customer service chatbot. It's now being integrated into solutions.” ~ Julie Muhn

📍 “For decades banks spend billions of dollars competing for attention, and they're now competing for recommendations.” ~ Tiffani Montez

📍  ”You being the center of how the consumer manages where their money flows is a potential new definition for primacy.” ~ Jennifer White

📍 “ Would we all have a little agent that's running around trying to look for the best product for us and move money for us?” ~ Theodora Lau

Timestamps

02:35 AI Gets Practical

05:25 Consumers Using AI

07:04 AI Visibility Leaderboard

14:26 Trust Paradox 

19:53 Primacy and Soft Churn

25:38 What to Watch Next

More about our guests 

🌐Jennifer White on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-white-57257424/ 

🌐Julie Muhn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julieschicktanz/ 

🌐Tiffany Montez on LinkedIn: <a hr