Every year, Accenture Song puts together a “Life Trends” report from a global network of “designers, creatives, technologists, sociologists, and anthropologists across 50+ design studios and creative agencies.”
In-depth interviews then corroborate and verify the trends data being highlighted by tens of thousands of people.
Perhaps it’s no surprise in this era of “information chaos” that online trust is declining. Or is being obliterated? It looks pretty bad any way you slice it.
We are entering an uncertain new era. Financial sector organizations need to adapt or they will struggle to maintain relevance, traffic, and online trust with their audience, customers, and stakeholders.
In this article, we look more closely at the implications for financial sector organizations, and how you can maintain and build trust with customers and stakeholders, online and offline.
TL;DR:
Accenture Song’s global network of 24,295 people across 22 markets contributes to a Life Trends report every year. This is what Accenture Song is predicting for 2025:
- AI tools, bad actors, and deepfakes are causing a loss of trust and increasing the “cost of hesitations” because of the amount of fake content online.
- “Our survey found that 59.9% of people are questioning the authenticity of online content more than before.”
- Your customers want real, authentic, in-person experiences. Basically, everything the financial sector used to do before digitization.
- Except, you need to use online marketing to bring people to events, or branches/offices for these experiences.
- Re-building and maintaining trust is more important than ever.
- Give your customers more of an authentic experience. Considering the trends we are seeing, you will be rewarded with enhanced levels of trust, more customers, and more loyal brand advocates than others in your sector.
Read on for more details 👇
Life Trends 2025 That Could Impact The Financial Sector
Let’s take a look at some of the trends that Accenture Song is reporting that could, and, in many ways, already are impacting the financial sector.
Online Trust Declining
AI tools, bad actors, and deepfakes are causing a loss of trust and amplifying the “cost of hesitations” because of the amount of fake content online.
Even on platforms that were once trusted sources, especially Twitter (X): “It’s now incredibly easy to create all kinds of digital content, so a flood of scams is blurring the lines between what’s real and what’s deceptive, making it harder for people to tell them apart.”
Here is why trust is rapidly eroding on social platforms:
- 59.9% of people are questioning the authenticity of online content more than before.
- 52% of people have seen fake news or articles
- 38.8% have seen fraudulent product reviews online
- 52.8% often or always question the authenticity of product reviews when they see them
- In 2022, TripAdvisor identified 1.3 million fake reviews, and in 2021, TrustPilot removed 2.7 million. This trend is only getting worse thanks to generative AI
- A Getty Images report found that 87% of people value image authenticity, and prefer them to AI-generated images
- 52% have experienced deep-fake attacks or scams for personal information and/or money
- A Google Deepmind report has found that “the Asia-Pacific region saw a 1530% rise in deep-fake cases from 2022 to 2023—the second largest rise in the world, behind North America.”
In the financial sector, maintaining trust is even more important because scammers are going to attempt to go after people’s money. If deepfake and AI-generated adverts, articles, reviews, videos, emails, and messages are published and sent to customers using your brand – that could seriously damage your reputation and online trust.
Even if your brand isn’t targeted this way, maintaining trust online and offline is more important now than ever. Hence a lot of brands moving away from Twitter (X) to new platforms like Bluesky, and Meta-owned Threads.
Bots Are Now 50%+ World’s Web Traffic
People are eager to return to some parts of pre-digital existence, or at the very least, rely on digital less and experience the real world a lot more.
Here’s what the report is saying people are doing more of in the last 12 months:
- 48% Spending time outdoors/in nature
- 47% Hanging out with friends in real life
- 46.9% Shopping in physical grocery stores
- 36% Shopping in other retail stores (non-grocery)
- 30.1% Reading physical books or magazines
If the last 10 years has shown us hyper-digital-connectivity and hyper-digitalisation, then the next 10 years could see an unbundling of that.
Digital will always remain part of our lives, businesses, personal, and professional interactions; but perhaps, in-person interactions are going to make a 90s-style comeback.
One of the reasons for this ⏤ alongside the erosion of online trust ⏤ is the fact that 50% of web traffic is AI/bots, according to the the 2024 Imperva Bad Bot Report.
The report says that: “For the fifth consecutive year, the proportion of web traffic associated with bad bots grew to 32% in 2023, up from 30.2% in 2022, while traffic from human users decreased to 50.4%.”
As we can see, human traffic has been steadily declining, following a peak of 61.3% in 2016: Down to 50.4% in 2023, with Bad Bots rising to 32%
Generative AI is, obviously, fueling the extreme growth in bots: “Rapid adoption of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) resulted in the volume of simple bots increasing to 39.6% in 2023, up from 33.4% in 2022.”
We haven’t seen a report for 2025 published yet. However, it’s safe to assume AI bots are continuing to account for even more web traffic.
With that in mind, getting people to attend in-person events is an even more powerful marketing, sales, and customer experience (CX) strategy than sticking to 100% online content.
Especially when 50% of the eyeballs viewing that traffic are going to be AI-powered bots.
5 Actions Financial, Alternative Asset & FinTech Organizations Can Take in 2025
Based on the Accenture Song report, here are five actions that financial services, alternative assets, and FinTech organizations can take in 2025.
- Authenticate Your Online Content
The loss of online trust, caused by things like AI generating content, more adverts than ever, and AI within search engine algorithms, means that earning trust is more important than ever before. And it’s harder.
According to the survey: “62% of respondents say trust is an important factor to them when choosing to engage with a brand, (up from 56% last year).”
Earning and maintaining trust is more important than ever. Accenture recommends that: “The most important move now is for every brand, platform, business, and government to prioritize trust in channels and digital experiences. Leaders’ goal should be to make it easy for people to trust in their brand, such that engaging with it is a hesitation-free choice.”
In this era of online content people can’t trust, your customers need a quick, easy way to know that whatever piece of content they’re seeing is authentic:
“Brands need to establish and communicate clear methods for customers to verify their authenticity. Reassure customers by creating beacons of trust in communications, and commerce and baked into the product. This is a marketing, digital, and security collaboration to ensure channels are trusted and customers are retained.”
- Think Twice Before Using AI for Content & Images
Creating content with AI might not worth the loss of trust.
The cost of the loss of trust isn’t worth the money you might save by not working with in-house or outsourced designers, writers, and marketing professionals.
AI-generated content erodes trust. Whether it’s written, images, or video, if financial sector organisations use this type of content there’s a risk going to reduce trust amongst an already skeptical public.
PerAccenture’s report: “For organizations dabbling with AI-generated content, it will be critical to monitor how that content is received by customers. There are emerging risks to brand trust and perception based on the use of AI content, which must be carefully managed.”
- Create Authentic Video Content
The finance sector ⏤ especially traditional finance (banks, insurance, investments, pensions) ⏤ has been slower than other sectors when it comes to embracing video and social media content.
And yet, now is the crucial time to get into video content.
Video is going to become a bigger and bigger focus for finance brands going forward because it’s a much more personal way to build connections with people in a low-trust, bot-infested online environment.
Take a look at this excellent series by global investment firm, The Carlyle Group: “‘Navigating Leadership,’ a limited-edition series of articles and videos by Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret), Vice Chair of Global Affairs at Carlyle.
In the first edition, the Admiral shares his “4 R’s” of leadership, as well as some of his favorite novels that offer leadership lessons.
You can see more of their eight-part series here: https://lnkd.in/ejJdf3Hu.
Like the example above, if you’re going to invest in video content in 2025, they will need:
- Decent production value.
- A real person, not an AI or a voiceover, but a real person talking authentically to a brand’s audience.
- Branding within the video or other ways to authenticate it being a genuine video (to combat deep-fakes and AI-generated erosion of trust).
- Host More In Real Life (IRL) Events
People want more in-person (IRL) experiences. Accenture calls this “social rewilding”, with an emphasis on “depth, authenticity, and sensory richness in their experiences.”
Hence a move towards pre-digital nostalgia, simple technology ⏤ like “dumb phones” (devices that aren’t smartphones), disposable cameras ⏤ and in-person events.
The data suggests that putting on in-person events is going to be appreciated by the people you’re trying to connect with.
You might want to think about talks, trade shows, anything that can leverage what people are craving: real, human experiences. Eye-to-eye conversations. Water cooler chat. You get me.
- Human Customer Experience (CX) More Valuable Than Ever
Following on from the above, businesses in the financial sector need to remember that in-person customer experience looks like it’s becoming more important.
If you’ve got branches, offices, or call centers, make sure your staff are delivering the best possible customer service or client-facing meetings.
People want to get offline and interact in the real world, even if it’s simply calling someone on the phone instead of speaking to an AI-powered bot on their smartphones.
Give your customers more of an authentic experience. Considering the trends we are seeing, you will be rewarded with enhanced levels of trust, more customers, and more loyal brand advocates than others in your sector.
Key Takeaways for Alternative Asset, Financial Services & FinTech in 2025
Accenture Song’s Life Trends 2025 report has unearthed some things that the financial sector needs to think seriously about:
- Online trust levels are declining
- AI bots everywhere (over 50% of web traffic)
- AI content everywhere (customers don’t trust it)
- Social networks becoming misinformation sewers
- Your customers, stakeholders, and potential customers want human, real-life, in-person events and high-quality (clearly real, authentic) content, like video interviews and reports A LOT more than cheap, AI-generated social media posts, or other pieces of content.
Succeeding in 2025 means giving your customers and audience what they want and need:
- An easy way to verify that anything online using your name/logo is authentic and genuine
- A reason to trust and keep trusting your brand
- In-person events and high levels of customer service
- Video interviews and more in-depth content.
- Humanity
Want to see how we can help you build and maintain trust ⏤ online, with videos, and in-person ⏤ contact us today.
Accenture Song, Life Trends 2025. Research snapshot:
“Accenture Song’s global network of designers, creatives, technologists, sociologists, and anthropologists across 50+ design studios and creative agencies watch out for signals in their countries. We synthesize their thoughts, discuss them with futurists and academics and shape them into trends. External, in-depth interviews with people in eight countries tell us whether and how the trends are manifesting, in their own words. We combine these insights with an extensive online survey of 24,295 people across 22 markets to shape these final trends.”
Read the full report: Download it here.