A modern CRM is core to connecting organizational silos to drive customer and business value. Today, 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 that firms can use to develop their own solutions or work with partners to customize.

So what should financial services firms do? Given that 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 short- and long-term strategic business goals.
  • Ensure support for extracting value and optimizing ROI. Seek vendors with strong support services that can help continually optimize the system and extract more value from purchased capabilities.
  • Choose a CRM vendor that can accelerate AI adoption. Prioritize vendors that have a cohesive toolset for predictive AI, generative AI, and AI agents, along with robust AI trust, compliance, and security practices. Faster adoption and ROI may necessitate out-of-the-box financial services AI capabilities.

Forrester clients can review The Forrester Wave™: Customer Relationship Management Software For Financial Services, Q1 2025, in which we evaluate the most significant CRM providers for financial services, and read about The Customer Relationship Management Software For Financial Services Landscape, Q3 2024.

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.