Although a consumer’s choice between financial brands was once seen as a rational decision-making process, these brands now compete on emotion, trying to prove how human, understanding, and trusted they can be. Fintech innovation has accelerated, and AI is promising to reshape service delivery and support, but consumers seem to crave emotional reassurance as much as performance. Beyond balancing books, managing assets, and building value, these companies are striving to build emotional bonds. The brands that succeed will be able to bring a sense of purpose to financial performance and remain visible and relevant even as finance for most consumers fades into the transactional background noise of everyday life.
Proof Over Promises: How Finance Builds Connection in Real Time
Financial services ranks nineteenth among all industries in this year’s Brand Intimacy Study. PayPal takes the top spot, displacing long-time leader USAA, while Mastercard and Chase follow in second and third. Although the category’s Brand Intimacy Quotient (BIQ) has declined significantly since our last study, the percentage of users engaged across all three stages—sharing, bonding, and fusing—has increased, suggesting a wider but shallower emotional reach.
At the heart of that connection lies enhancement, the industry’s dominant archetype, reflecting how financial brands help consumers feel smarter, more capable, and more connected. Chase leads in enhancement, with products and experiences designed to make money management feel intuitive and empowering. American Express retains a similar bond through its ecosystem of rewards, travel, and lifestyle benefits that communicate dependability and prestige. Together, these brands prove that in a volatile economy, reassurance can be as valuable as returns.
After years of digital disruption, financial services has entered an age of real-time accountability. Consumers now expect proof of reliability, not promises: instant transfers, frictionless apps, and transparent communication. They reward brands that deliver seamless experiences with loyalty and forgiveness, even when broader economic confidence falters.
At the same time, emotional connection increasingly depends on how well brands know their customers—not just their credit scores, but their aspirations. Capital One, for instance, evolved its iconic “What’s in your wallet?” platform into a conversational experience built around coaching, advice, and support.1 This shift signals a new kind of intimacy: one that soothes anxiety and aligns with customers’ goals in life as much as it simplifies life’s financial processes.
A growing number of financial brands are also extending their reach beyond profit toward purpose. Ethical finance and sustainability have evolved into broader expressions of emotional responsibility. Younger consumers evaluate brands by how they treat people and the planet, expecting transparency in lending, investing, and inclusion. Mastercard’s Priceless Planet Coalition, for example, links payments to tangible environmental action, reframing transactions as contributions to a shared good.2 In a category often associated with self-interest, such efforts help brands build resonance by reflecting consumers’ values and ideals.
Trusted but Not Loved: Why Finance Struggles to Feel Human
Yet even as financial brands connect emotionally with more customers and through a broader range of intimacy archetypes, they still underperform when compared to other industries. The category’s average BIQ of 20.6 falls below the cross-industry average of 25.1. With three brands appearing in the bottom twenty of the 2025 study, the sector is struggling to forge lasting emotional bonds. Rising interest rates and economic uncertainty have heightened consumer caution, whereas trust, once finance’s greatest strength, has become conditional.
Traditional institutions such as Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo continue to dominate the industry’s top ten, but their scale often undermines warmth. The sector consistently scores higher in sharing, the initial stage of Brand Intimacy, and lower in bonding and fusing, revealing a persistent inability to turn tentative and transactional interactions into deep and long-lasting relationships.
Despite vast data capabilities built up over years of industry digitization, many brands still underdeliver on genuine personalization. Interfaces may seem transactional rather than transformative, recommendations can feel generic, and loyalty programs often reward activity rather than emotional impact. The automation that streamlines service also strips away the human touch. Chatbots and digital-only branches make problem-solving faster but impersonal. In moments of emotional weight, whether dealing with debt, mortgages, or other financial stress, consumers crave empathy and understanding.
Fragmentation compounds the problem. Most people manage multiple providers: a bank for checking, a card for rewards, a fintech app for transfers, and an insurer for protection. Someone might love Amex’s benefits but resent their bank’s fees, or use Venmo daily without knowing who underwrites it. The result is a dispersed emotional landscape, where no single brand “owns” the relationship. Further industry consolidation and the emergence of monopolistic players in multiple spaces, from online shopping to payment processing, could further reshape these relationships.
Invisible Banking, Visible Emotion
From rideshares to shopping apps, finance now operates invisibly, woven into the background of every purchase, payment, and plan. This evolution creates convenience but also anonymity. As embedded finance grows, consumers form connections with the experience rather than the institution. For legacy banks, that means fighting to stay emotionally visible in a world where “banking” happens everywhere but the bank.
In this context, brands such as PayPal demonstrate the new frontier of intimacy, anchoring emotional trust at the point of purchase. By positioning itself as both facilitator and protector, PayPal bridges the gap between transaction and emotion, offering security and simplicity in a single gesture. In today’s age of invisible finance, the brands that win hearts may be those that make the intangible feel tangible again.
From Managing Money to Managing Meaning
The financial services industry stands at another inflection point in the crux of changing technology, consumer sentiment, and economic winds. Its legacy of trust, once its greatest asset, is no longer strong enough to sustain emotional connections. As tech dissolves old boundaries and redefines convenience, the next wave of leadership will belong to brands that show up in the right moments and with the right attitudes and that humanize efficiency and make people feel seen, safe, and supported in moments that matter.
The future of finance isn’t just about managing money. It’s about managing emotion—turning transactions into trust, data into empathy, and performance into purpose.
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Sources
1 Strategic Objectives. (2022, August 25). Capital One Looks Beyond “What’s in your wallet?” Strategy Online. https://strategyonline.ca/2022/08/25/capital-one-looks-beyond-whats-in-your-wallet/
2 Mastercard. (n.d.). Priceless Planet Coalition: Restoring 100 Million Trees. Mastercard for the World. https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/for-the-world/planet/priceless-planet.html