Five Reports Evaluate Virtual Assistants, AI-Powered Fintech Tools and AI Search Retrieval across Retirement, HSA, Banking, Brokerage and Annuity
New York, NY, Nov. 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Corporate Insight (CI), the leading provider of competitive intelligence and customer experience research to the financial services, insurance and healthcare industries, today announced findings from a series of research reports identifying leaders in customer-facing AI across financial services. Based on firsthand testing of virtual assistants, AI-powered fintech platforms and AI search engines, the research identifies the leaders best leveraging these new tools among retirement plan recordkeepers, HSA providers, fintechs, banks, brokerages and annuity providers.
“The leading virtual assistants in our testing complete real tasks inside the chat window: Robinhood’s Cortex sets price alerts and drafts trades, Voya’s assistant changes a participant’s 401(k) contribution rate, and Lively’s HSA assistant answered every test question we asked, typos included,” says Olivia Jack, director of financial services research at CI. “But median tools lag far behind these leaders, directing users to a page that might contain the answer, rather than answering a user’s questions in-chat. Customers who use ChatGPT and Claude every day will notice that difference the first time they use a firm’s chat.”
Key findings from each report highlight the leaders in each AI space:
Fidelity and Voya Financial lead retirement plan virtual assistants (Retirement Plan Monitor):
Fidelity and Voya Financial earned the only Excellent ratings among the eight recordkeeper virtual assistants (VAs) CI’s researchers tested. Both tools excelled at completing tasks in-window: At the time of the research, Voya PAL was the only tool in the report that lets participants change contribution rates directly in the chat, a task 79% of participants in CI’s 2025 Participant Survey rated as very or extremely important. Fidelity’s NetBenefits assistant delivers participant-specific balance and contribution data in-chat on both web and mobile and can hand participants off to a live representative within the chat window.
Notably, VA adoption in the retirement industry remains limited: Only eight of the 18 recordkeepers CI covers offer a virtual assistant, and only three of those eight offer a VA on mobile.
Lively sets the standard for HSA virtual assistants (Workplace Finance Monitor):
Lively’s LivelyAI earned the only Excellent rating among six HSA virtual assistants that CI’s researchers tested, being the only tool to answer 100% of CI’s test queries, including misspellings and casual phrasing such as “Can you lmk the account balance?” LivelyAI returns balance, eligibility and beneficiary details in-chat and completes beneficiary and contact updates without sending participants elsewhere. Its AI Mode lets participants…
Read More: Corporate Insight Releases Research Series on AI Leaders in Financial
