A modern CRM is core to connecting organizational silos to drive customer and business value. And now CRMs are integrating AI, and adding intelligent agents to boost productivity and deliver personalized customer experiences at scale. This makes modern CRM an indispensable tool for financial services firms aiming to enhance customer experience, streamline operations, and drive growth.

But despite the benefits, I frequently hear two consistent messages from financial services firms: 1) they struggle to justify the investment in CRM modernization, especially in the current economic environment; and 2) firms that have modernized their CRM say they are struggling to extract value from it.

The common thread is that financial services firms are underutilizing their CRM, especially AI capabilities — which, in a way, is akin to buying a high-performance car and only using it to drive to the grocery store. The reason? They often cite a lack of internal resources, partner support, and/or vendor assistance, making it more important than ever to choose the right vendor.

The Financial Services CRM Market Is Bifurcating, Making Vendor Choice Harder

In a competitive market dominated by a few global leaders, and amidst an intense battle over AI to optimize and automate almost everything, the CRM market is bifurcating. This makes CRM purchasing decisions more complex for financial services firms. Some vendors are deepening their industry-specific capabilities, including AI offerings purpose-built for financial services firms. Others are moving away from financial services-specific capabilities and instead focusing on the industry agnostic AI and automation building blocks firms can use in developing their own solutions or work with partners to customize.

So, what should financial services firms do? Given CRM is a critical piece of technology infrastructure that underpins a firm’s ability to deliver next generation financial services, firms need to:

  • Treat CRM as a strategic purchasing decision. Align with vendors and partners that have the vision, innovation, roadmap, support, and capabilities to support your short- and long-term strategic business goals.
  • Ensure support for extracting value and optimizing ROI. Seek vendors with strong support services that can help you continually optimize the system and extract more value from the capabilities you’ve purchased.
  • Choose a CRM vendor that can accelerate your AI adoption. Prioritize vendors that have a cohesive toolset for predictive AI, genAI, and AI agents; and robust AI trust, compliance, and security practices. Faster adoption and ROI may necessitate OOTB financial services AI capabilities.

Forrester clients can review The Forrester Wave™: Customer Relationship Management Software For Financial Services, Q1 2025 where we evaluated the most significant CRM providers for financial services, and read about the Financial Services CRM landscape.

If you need help understanding the Financial Services CRM market, modernizing your CRM, or extracting more value from your existing CRM, connect with me via a guidance session.