Plaid and Fin Deliver AI-Powered Support for Bank Account Linking

Plaid and Fin have partnered to enable FinTechs and financial institutions to help their end users connect or reconnect their bank accounts securely within Fin Messenger chat.

This capability is enabled by Plaid’s account linking service Plaid Link and Fin’s artificial intelligence agent for customer service. It is available to the companies’ joint customers, and it is in open beta, they said in a Thursday (June 4) blog post.

“Fin on average drops first response times from ~38 minutes to ~2 minutes once reaching active usage,” Plaid GTM AI Lead Kathleen McGuirk and Partnerships Lead, Financial Management Bruno Werneck said in the post. “We expect the Plaid x Fin partnership to further reduce first response times and resolution turnarounds to seconds.”

For FinTechs, lenders, banks and credit unions, bank connectivity is central to the customer experience. When customers can’t complete a connection during onboarding, payouts or purchases, they are likely to abandon the task if can’t be quickly resolved, according to the post.

The Fin AI Agent integration with Plaid is designed to surface the right action at the right moment, without the customer leaving the conversation, the post said.

The first release focuses on helping an end user link their bank account, such as when a new user applies for a personal loan and gets stuck trying to connect their bank account, or when a customer asks about setting up direct deposit for a payout they’re expecting.

Future releases will include restoring disconnected bank connections, completing identity verifications, and troubleshooting account funding or payout instructions, per the post.

“Plaid is the trusted standard for financial connectivity, and Fin brings trust to AI-powered support,” Fin Senior Vice President of Sales Michael Carpenter said in the post. “Together, we’re helping FinTechs and financial institutions deliver instant and reliable customer experiences.”

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Consumer Sentiment About Open Banking Payments” found that 46% of consumers are highly willing to use open banking payments for at least one product or service. Among millennials, that share rises to 66%.

The report also found that Generation Z consumers connect their bank accounts to an average of six websites or apps.