CX50 2025 - Financial Services

As Marketing Week’s latest CX50 list demonstrates, the financial sector’s top customer experience professionals juggle what technology can deliver with what their customers can trust.

For financial services brands, delivering a customer experience involves both sensitive data and potential risk by the nature of the business. Consequently, CX expectations are high and the possible fallout from any misstep is severe. Members of Marketing Week’s CX50 2025 – our list of the UK’s top 50 CX professionals compiled in partnership with Cognizant, Google Cloud and Salesforce – have found a way to walk this tightrope while retaining customers’ trust and simplifying their lives. Here, we name our 10 chosen individuals from banking, financial services and insurance, followed by a look at the sector’s key CX trends with help from three of them – Aviva’s Phoebe Barter, Zurich’s Richard Pash and Mastercard’s Kerry Elsdon.

Top financial brands on the search for AI customers can trust

The Marketing Week CX50, in partnership with Cognizant, Google Cloud and Salesforce, is the pre-eminent annual list of the UK’s top 50 customer experience professionals. In 2025, we are repeating the sector-focused approach to choosing the list’s members first adopted in 2024, representing the variety of customer experiences provided by B2C, B2B and public sector organisations. The CX50 2025 is divided into the following five sectors, each featuring 10 professionals:

Suresh Phoebe Kerry James Jagpal Margaret Gemma Catherine Richard Jayne

Chief Marketing Officer Group Brand Director Senior Vice-President, Global Head of Digital Marketing and Martech Sales and Marketing Director Chief Product Officer Chief Marketing Officer Director of Growth and Marketing Operations Chief Customer, Brand and Engagement Officer Chief Customer Officer, UK and EMEA Group Chief Information and Digital Officer

The CX50 2025

Balaji Barter Elsdon Henderson Jheeta Jobling Johnson Kehoe Pash Showell

Lloyds Banking Group Aviva Mastercard Simplyhealth Financial Conduct Authority NatWest Group Starling Bank Nationwide Zurich Coventry Building Society

FINANcial services

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Making customers comfortable with technology From simplifying insurance claims to streamlining banking communications and detecting fraud, the financial services industry has already begun to deploy AI across various touchpoints in CX. So, how are the sector’s leading CX professionals embedding AI while also ensuring they don’t erode customer trust? It’s clear that financial services brands – and their customers – are increasingly comfortable with a tech-enabled experience. According to Cognizant’s ‘New Minds, New Markets’ report, for example, 52% of people are comfortable accessing banking services on their smartphone – higher even than the 44% that happily use it for booking travel. “It’s tremendously exciting,” Aviva group brand director Phoebe Barter says of the potential in AI. “We’re at that point where we can see the real value-add as long as we're mindful and cautious with its application.” The development of an AI strategy at Aviva is a shared effort, she explains, led and executed by its information technology (IT) departments but in close collaboration with customer experience teams, “all with the same brand experience as our north star”. Via that process, the brand has already deployed generative AI to summarise parts of its motor claims process, enabling contact centre staff to spend more time liaising with customers rather than inputting data or switching between systems. The change has reduced call handling times by 10%, says Barter. It has also provided its IT developer teams with tools that enable faster and more reliable code development, reducing system downtime and errors.

At Zurich UK, too, chief customer officer Richard Pash says: “We’re using AI in lots of small ways, which I think are sometimes the most impactful.” These include the use of a conversational AI platform that seamlessly automates customer service, sales and marketing processes via chat to ensure a consistent tone of voice across channels. Another example is a generative AI solution for risk assessment designed to boost accuracy, efficiency and transparency in the underwriting process by creating a summary of everything teams need to know to make a decision. But for all this AI-based experimentation, CX professionals in financial services are aware that the margin for error in their technology deployment is narrower than in other sectors. “Within financial services the expectation of customers is rightly high,” says Barter. “We hold their data and their information; therefore, we should be using it flawlessly in order to serve them best.” It’s why the use of AI in speeding up motor claims calls at Aviva has worked so well, she adds. “It helps us resolve your challenge in a way that shows that we know you, that we understand you, and that lets you get on with whatever's next in your day. You don't have to spend 60 minutes on the phone.”

Our criteria and methodology for determining the CX50’s members remain the same as in previous years. In order to create a pool of candidates, we combine nominations from Marketing Week and Cognizant’s professional networks with research into independent measures of organisations that perform highly on CX. To select the final list, we then assess individuals’ achievements in the past year and over the course of their careers against the three criteria of impact, innovation and influence. The CX50 members possess an eclectic set of skills and responsibilities, all crucial in the effort to deliver exceptional customer experience.

To maintain existing CX standards – and avoid frustration – it’s also important that human customer service teams remain in place, no matter how sophisticated generative AI becomes. At Zurich, for example, the team has tried chatbots but found that live chat is often the preference for customers. “The first thing that customers want is to talk to a human being, they don’t want to talk to AI,” says Pash. Interestingly, that desire becomes even more pronounced depending on the seriousness of a query or claim. “It’s inversely proportional to the level of risk for the customer,” he adds. Simple, transactional queries may be easily facilitated by automated chat functions, for instance, but more complex or risky interactions, causing customers worry, mean they invariably “want to talk to a human being”. It’s why the team never conceals its phone number or tries to push people into an online chat. “We always give the customer the choice of how they want to interact with us.” “Our house view at the moment is ‘proceed with caution and always with a human in the loop’ because at the end of the day nothing beats human judgment,” agrees Barter. None of which is to say there isn’t plenty in AI that’s exciting CX professionals in the financial sector. In April, Mastercard launched its Agent Pay tool, for example, which enables intelligent, secure payments that require minimal input from the user, says Elsdon. “The long-term vision is commerce that just happens smoothly, securely and invisibly. That’s the future of customer experience, and AI is getting us there faster than ever. “The next big advance in customer experience for financial services lies in agentic AI – technology that not only anticipates what a customer needs, but can take secure, personalised action on their behalf,” she concludes. “Imagine AI helping you manage your budget, rebook a flight or complete a purchase without you needing to lift a finger. This shift turns AI from a passive support tool into an active participant in people’s lives, which makes the creative and ethical design of these systems more important than ever. The goal is to deliver seamless, real-time interactions that feel intuitive and helpful, while still being grounded in trust, transparency and emotional relevance.”

“Within financial services the expectation of customers is rightly high.”

— Phoebe Barter, Aviva

“Our systems can identify suspicious activity in real time and act instantly.”

— Kerry Elsdon, Mastercard

Strong ethical standards “Customers are quick to embrace technology when it delivers real value, whether that’s speed, personalisation or a greater sense of control,” adds Kerry Elsdon, senior vice president, global digital marketing and martech at Mastercard. “But they also expect transparency, especially as AI and synthetic media become more visible.” For this reason, she adds, “we work closely across legal, privacy, brand, communications and tech to ensure that every AI-driven experience is responsible, secure and clearly explained. As generative content becomes more widespread, we’re focused on building trust through clear disclosures, accessible formats and strong ethical standards. For us, transparency isn’t just a principle, it’s a critical enabler of trust and long-term engagement.” Elsdon says the global payments company is seeing the biggest payoffs with AI in applications that merge personalisation, automation and trust. That includes using AI to enhance fraud detection. “Our systems can identify suspicious activity in real time and act instantly, without adding friction for the cardholder,” she says. “That balance, protecting people without slowing them down, is where tech makes a real difference.”

Read the CX50 members' profiles

More sector lists and analysis

Manufacturing, logistics, energy and utilities

Public sector

Financial services

Retail, consumer goods, travel and hospitality

Life sciences

METHODOLOGY

Financial services customers expect AI to be both powerful and invisible, enhancing security and personalisation without creating friction or uncertainty. A number of successful implementations focus on behind-the-scenes applications like fraud prevention and risk analysis, where use of AI can benefit customers by enabling an experience that is secure and transparent.

Google Cloud

The biggest opportunities lie in intelligent automation that enhances rather than replaces human capabilities. AI can handle data processing, initial risk assessments and routine queries, freeing financial advisors and customer service teams to focus on strategic guidance and complex problem-solving.

Rohit Gupta, Managing Director, UK and Ireland, Cognizant