How Agentic AI Will Transform the Banking UX (and What Credit Unions Should Do Now)

Guest Editorial by Derik Krauss, Co-Founder, MetriFi

Artificial intelligence (AI) has spent the last few years helping consumers think: answering questions, summarizing information, and supporting planning. Now, a more consequential shift is underway: AI is beginning to act.

Derik Krauss

With the rise of agentic AI (systems that can complete tasks on a user’s behalf), the way consumers interact with digital banking is approaching a major inflection point. New AI-native tools, including OpenAI’s Atlas browser and ChatGPT’s Agent Mode, offer an early look at how AI agents will soon navigate websites, fill out forms, and complete workflows with minimal human involvement.

For banks and credit unions, this shift has deep implications for digital experience, competitiveness, and long-term relevance.

From Advice to Action

Until recently, AI lived in a separate window. Users asked questions, received answers, then returned to do the work themselves. Agentic AI removes that separation.

When AI is embedded directly into the browsing experience and given the ability to interact with websites, users no longer need to personally execute every step. They describe what they want done, and the AI handles how it gets done, pausing only when human judgment or approval is required.

This transition from “AI as advisor” to “AI as operator” is subtle, but it fundamentally changes expectations for digital experiences.

Why This Changes the Banking UX

Digital banking has long focused on making interfaces easier for humans to navigate. Agentic AI introduces a new reality: Digital channels must now work for both humans and machines.

In live testing, AI agents have already demonstrated the ability to navigate complex web applications, execute repetitive actions, and complete workflows that normally require several minutes of manual effort. Applied to banking, this creates new possibilities, including AI agents that can:

• Complete loan applications on behalf of members

• Shop rates across institutions in real time

• Prepare account openings or transfers for approval

• Identify broken or inefficient digital journeys automatically

As AI agents take on more of the “doing,” friction that once felt tolerable becomes unacceptable. When a delegated task stalls, the frustration is attributed to the institution, not the AI.

Introducing AI Experience (AIX)

For years, financial institutions have measured usability through human testing: time on task, drop-off rates, misclicks, and satisfaction surveys.

Agentic AI introduces a parallel concept: AI Experience (AIX).

If an AI agent struggles to navigate a website (i.e., misidentifying buttons, failing to submit forms, or getting stuck in unclear flows), that friction matters. Not because the AI is frustrated, but because the member expected the task to be completed without effort.

In an agent-driven future, usability failures don’t just reduce conversions; they delay or prevent work that members expected the AI to handle for them. Institutions that begin testing their digital journeys with AI agents today may uncover issues long before traditional analytics or A/B testing reveal them.

AI Is Already Entering Online Banking

One underappreciated reality is that AI agents are already accessing online banking environments—albeit with guardrails.

While current safeguards prevent agents from completing sensitive financial transactions end-to-end, they can already analyze transaction histories, identify subscriptions, flag inefficiencies, and surface opportunities for optimization.

The next logical step is human-in-the-loop banking, where AI prepares actions and humans approve them. Examples include drafting internal transfers for review, recommending savings or CD products based on idle balances, or identifying yield improvements across accounts.

For most institutions, this doesn’t mean deploying agents tomorrow. Rather, it means understanding how today’s AI tools already interact with existing digital channels.

Fintech Threat or Credit Union Opportunity?

Much of fintech’s advantage over the past decade has come from superior user experience. Fintechs simplified complex processes and made money management feel effortless.

Agentic AI changes that dynamic.

If AI agents can successfully navigate even poorly designed systems, then sleek interfaces alone become less decisive. In that environment, institutions with strong fundamentals, such as competitive rates, trust, and member relationships, may regain ground if their systems are accessible to agents.

As AI increasingly acts as an intermediary between members and financial institutions, digital experience will no longer be judged solely by humans, but by machines acting on their behalf.

This creates an opportunity for credit unions and community banks to disrupt their disruptors, rather than simply react to them.

The Hidden Risk: Falling Behind Invisibly

One of the greatest risks facing financial institutions today isn’t resistance to innovation, it’s restricted exposure. Many teams cannot experiment with modern AI tools at work due to security controls, leaving them unaware of how quickly consumer behavior is changing.

Meanwhile, members are experimenting freely at home.

Institutions that don’t understand how AI agents discover products, evaluate options, and complete tasks risk becoming less visible—not just in search engines, but in AI-driven product discovery and recommendation workflows.

Preparing for the Agentic Future

Credit unions don’t need to deploy full agentic systems immediately, but they do need to prepare now.

That preparation includes:

• Testing key digital journeys (such as account opening, loan applications, and contact forms) with AI agents.

• Evaluating AI usability alongside human usability, including whether agents can complete tasks as easily as people.

• Ensuring critical flows are easy for AI agents to navigate (so agents can reliably complete tasks such as applications, form submissions, and account setup without errors or interruptions).

• Rethinking security models so trusted AI agents can operate with appropriate human approval.

• Monitoring how AI tools decide which financial brands to surface or recommend to consumers.

Agentic AI isn’t a distant possibility. It’s already shaping expectations.

The institutions that engage early will help define how this future unfolds. Those that wait may find themselves less visible when AI tools help members decide where to bank.

Want to understand how AI agents experience your institution today? Email me to request an AI visibility analysis and see how your brand appears inside modern AI-driven workflows.

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Derik Krauss is the co-founder of MetriFi (metrifi.com). He didn’t set out to disrupt the status quo—his heart just led him to seek the truth. That passion has fueled over 100 A/B tests and helped credit unions generate ~$143M in new loans and deposits. Now, he’s building MetriFi and Paraloom to harness analytics and AI for measurable growth. He’s a family man who loves Jesus, liberty, basketball, fly fishing, and delicious food. He can be reached at dk@metrifi.com.