Waleed Anwar, an SEO and AI visibility expert and founder of Click Traces (stylized as ClickTraces), has urged banks and other financial institutions, fintechs, and marketers to take a serious look at how their brands appear inside AI-generated answers, not just on Google, as consumer behavior in the financial sector shifts faster than most institutions are prepared for.
In 2026, nearly half of consumers have used the AI tools like ChatGPT to help choose a financial product, shifting a meaningful share of research away from banks’ own channels to external platforms. For Waleed Anwar, that number signals a direct commercial issue. A customer asking an AI platform to compare credit cards or recommend a digital bank account is already in high-intent mode. The institutions named in that answer get considered. Those absent do not.
WHAT AI PLATFORMS ARE EVALUATING
The mistake Waleed Anwar sees most often is financial brands assuming their existing SEO performance carries over into AI visibility. It does not. AI platforms use Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to pull and verify information from multiple sources across the web before generating a response, not just from organic search rankings. For the financial institutions, visibility starts with entity optimization.
AI systems need to recognize a bank as a distinct, trustworthy source, which requires accurate and consistent product information, positioning, and brand details across the bank’s website, comparison platforms, financial publications, and review sites. Inconsistencies create ambiguity, making a brand less likely to be cited. Relevance matters just as much. The banks that publish clear, factual content answering real customer questions about eligibility, fees, account types, and product comparisons build the topical authority AI systems rely on.
Promotional content and thin coverage on owned channels do not carry the same weight. Sentiment is another important signal. The banks that are discussed positively and consistently across independent sources tend to have stronger AI visibility than those that rely primarily on their own marketing content. Waleed Anwar said that the banks already invest heavily in digital channels. But the next question was whether they were visible, accurate, and trusted inside AI-powered search experiences, he asked. “Those are different requirements than ranking well on Google, and most banks have not yet distinguished between them.”
AI VISIBILITY IN SEO INVESTMENT
As an SEO and AI visibility expert, Waleed Anwar believes that the artificial intelligence visibility should not sit outside a bank’s existing inbound marketing strategy but be part of it. The banks that align their content, brand information, and third-party presence with how AI systems evaluate sources will find that the same work strengthens their organic search performance, their credibility with customers, and their presence in AI-generated answers simultaneously. He said that ClickTraces has already been studying AI visibility patterns across the banks.
Waleed Anwar believes institutions that build this foundation now will hold a compounding advantage as AI-powered search continues to grow as a first-touch channel for banking decisions. It is pertinent to mention here that Waleed Anwar as an SEO and AI visibility expert helping businesses improve discoverability across Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI-powered search. His work focuses on modern search optimization, AI-driven brand visibility, and building the digital trust signals that influence both search engines and AI systems.
“Click Traces is an AI-driven digital marketing agency that has been helping businesses across different industries since 2021,” he said about his company. “Our team of experts combines data-driven and custom-made strategies with advanced AI technologies to give measurable results,” he said, adding that anyone can browse their collection of successful campaigns, websites, and digital strategies built for clients across industries. He said that each project of their company showcases focus on growth, innovation, and delivering real ROI – return on investment.
