Discover how GenAI is helping banks move from rigid systems to conversational, intuitive customer experiences while driving speed, insight, and fraud detection.
“Did I eat at Wendy’s twice last week?” is the kind of question we might ask ourselves while scrolling through bank statements. Now, thanks to generative AI (GenAI), banks can more effectively understand and answer such human questions, understanding the intent behind the question and quickly providing an answer.
At a recent Elastic FSI Summit session, Steve Mayzak, senior director of solutions architecture at Elastic, sat down with the event moderator, Emma Crossby, to examine how banks are putting GenAI to work. The discussion revealed a shift from rigid, keyword-based systems to something far more intuitive: technology that grasps context and intent. The old way was to type exact phrases and hope for matches. The new way is to simply ask what’s on your mind, like “Show me any strange charges from last month,” or “Have I ever bought anything from this store before?”
Why banks are moving fast on GenAI
As Mayzak points out, the pressure is on. Banks that drag their feet on AI adoption risk falling behind their competitors. Gartner projects that by 2026, over 80% of banks will embrace GenAI, up from just 5% today. Capgemini’s research backs this up, finding that 80% of retail bank executives see GenAI as a quantum leap beyond traditional AI capabilities. They find banks can potentially optimize up to 66% of time spent on operations, documentation, and compliance activities. KPMG suggests productivity gains of up to 500% are possible.
It’s not just about doing things faster — it’s about doing things that were previously impossible, especially when it comes to analyzing unstructured data and spotting anomalies in real time.
GenAI use cases transforming financial services
Mayzak outlines three important use cases where GenAI is making its mark in banking:
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In customer support, GenAI is replacing traditional chatbots that were limited to answering specific question pathways. It can handle natural conversations and complex queries by drawing on customer data and banking knowledge.
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Financial report analysis is transforming. You can ask, “Compare reports and look for anything that doesn’t kind of make sense, doesn’t coalesce, look for outliers,” Mayzak explains. The speed is remarkable: Tasks that once took “days, weeks, or even months with a whole team of people” now take minutes.
- Fraud detection has become more sophisticated through GenAI’s ability to analyze patterns in real time. As Mayzak explains, “Every single data point coming in is being analyzed in real time by the machines rather than by human beings.” Banks can now rely on GenAI to analyze spending patterns, locations, and transaction amounts simultaneously, flagging only the most suspicious activities for human review.
Customer spotlight: EY
EY partnered with Elastic to deliver responsible, high-performance generative AI solutions for financial services firms. By leveraging retrieval augmented generation (RAG), EY enabled financial institutions to extract insights from unstructured data like ESG reports and financial documents — increasing accuracy by 10%–15% and delivering results 3x faster than native RAG setups. The solution also helped accelerate development, improve compliance, and scale innovation across teams and data formats. Read the full story.
Elastic’s role in secure, conversational banking AI
Mayzak explains that Elastic’s Search AI Platform serves as “the database of choice when it comes to trying to search through your data,” acting as a crucial security layer between private company data and large language models (LLMs). Through retrieval augmented generation, Elastic helps banks bring their private data to GenAI systems while maintaining security controls. “LLMs don’t understand what data should be shown and what shouldn’t, based on your role at an organization, but Elastic does.” The platform also offers capabilities like geospatial understanding and scalability that help banks manage terabytes of customer data while maintaining millisecond response times.
Watch the full session: GenAI in action for banking
Generative AI is already transforming how banks operate, from personalized support to real-time anomaly detection. But the real power lies in secure, scalable platforms that protect customer data while enabling innovation.
Watch the full session now to hear from Steve Mayzak and learn how banks are using Elastic to bring GenAI to life, securely and responsibly.
The release and timing of any features or functionality described in this post remain at Elastic’s sole discretion. Any features or functionality not currently available may not be delivered on time or at all.
In this blog post, we may have used or referred to third party generative AI tools, which are owned and operated by their respective owners. Elastic does not have any control over the third party tools and we have no responsibility or liability for their content, operation or use, nor for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of such tools. Please exercise caution when using AI tools with personal, sensitive or confidential information. Any data you submit may be used for AI training or other purposes. There is no guarantee that information you provide will be kept secure or confidential. You should familiarize yourself with the privacy practices and terms of use of any generative AI tools prior to use.
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