"I'm sorry, I can't help you with that."

This project was a little different from my usual fare as it was solely research and it didn't have a single client. I was asked to give a 30 minute breakfast briefing at Salesforce World Tour to a room full of financial services execs. The obvious topic was AI, and I wanted to break execs out of their bubbles and hear how people were really feeling.

I often use video in projects as a way to get clients closer to their customers, to package up insights, to share project stories with a wider audience, or as product explainers. This video teed up the session and was a lot of fun to make.

For the research I conducted a literature review to inform a round of quant research, then I followed up with 12 respondents for in depth interviews conducted remotely via dscout. One surprising finding was that, while respondents said they were comfortable using AI to improve financial behaviours, and even though I asked people to write a prompt for an LLM which would help with a financial decision, none of the participants I followed up with had tried to use an LLM for their finances. It never crossed anyone's mind.

I also found that finances is a place where efficiency isn't necessarily a person's goal. People gain confidence and feel in control by spending time on their finances and doing things manually (I once spoke to someone in a separate study who spent every Friday evening copying the transactions from their banking app into a notebook).

I framed our insights as recommendations to encourage AI adoption in financial services.

This project attracted execs from several key Salesforce accounts and brought several million of pipeline into the room. We positioned Salesforce as a thought leader in AI in financial services and drove immediate follow-ons with our Ignite team.