What is the Banking AI Visibility Index®

The Banking AI Visibility Index 2026 is the first public benchmark measuring how often major U.S. banks are surfaced, cited, and recommended inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It was produced by 5W, the AI Communications Firm.

What is Citation Share®

Citation Share is the share of AI responses in which a brand is named, recommended, or cited as a source. It measures how often a brand appears inside AI-generated answers.

Which bank has the most AI visibility in the United States®

JPMorgan Chase captures 28.4% of consumer banking Citation Share — more than Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Capital One combined.

Which investment bank has the most AI visibility in the United States®

Goldman Sachs captures 41.6% of investment banking and wealth Citation Share — ahead of Morgan Stanley at 18.2% and JPMorgan Private Bank at 12.4%.

What sources do AI assistants cite when answering questions about U.S. banks®

Three publishers — Bankrate, Investopedia, and Wikipedia — supply 68% of all banking-related AI citations. Wikipedia alone appeared in 44% of model responses tested. Bank-owned domains account for less than 7%.

Which fintechs outperform regional banks in AI search®

Chime, SoFi, Ally, and Discover rank inside the U.S. consumer banking top 12 — outperforming PNC, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Citizens despite smaller deposit bases.

GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — is the practice of building brand authority and content infrastructure that AI assistants surface, cite, and recommend. It is the discipline replacing SEO in an AI-mediated discovery layer.

How many banks were tested®

The Index tested the 75 largest U.S. financial institutions and the leading fintech challengers across 31,500 prompts between January and May 2026.

Banking AI Visibility Index 2026

01

Three publishers supply 68% of all banking-related AI citations

Bankrate, Investopedia, and Wikipedia account for the majority of every cited source surfaced when AI assistants answer questions about U.S. banks. The Wall Street Journal, NerdWallet, Forbes Advisor, and Reuters make up most of the next tier. Bank-owned domains — chase.com, bankofamerica.com, wellsfargo.com — account for less than 7%. AI assistants are not citing banks. They are citing the publishers who write about banks.

02

Wikipedia is the single most-cited external source

Wikipedia appeared in 44% of model responses tested — the most influential single source in U.S. banking AI discovery. Larger than Bankrate. Larger than Investopedia. Larger than every Tier-1 business publication. For most U.S. banks, the Wikipedia entry is the answer.

03

JPMorgan Chase captures more AI Citation Share than the next four largest banks combined

JPMorgan Chase: 28.4%. Bank of America: 7.1%. Wells Fargo: 5.9%. Citi: 4.8%. Capital One: 4.2%. Chase's dominance is not proportional to its deposit base. AI Citation Share concentrates further at the top than market share does.

04

Fintechs out-cite regional banks

The fintech challengers — Chime, SoFi, Ally, Discover — rank inside the consumer banking top 12. They outperform PNC, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Citizens, all of which run larger deposit bases and physical branch networks. Fintechs built digital-native content ecosystems years before the AI layer existed. Regional banks did not.

05

22 of the 75 largest U.S. banks show minimal AI discoverability

Twenty-two institutions on the top-75 deposit list registered less than 0.3% Citation Share across the engines and categories tested. Several appear in AI output only when prompted by name. Fifth Third Bank, KeyBank, M&T Bank, Huntington, and Regions Bank are the largest-by-assets examples.

06

Goldman Sachs holds 41.6% of investment banking and wealth Citation Share

In wealth, private banking, and investment banking queries, Goldman's brand authority is more concentrated than in any other top-five category measured. Morgan Stanley (18.2%) and JPMorgan Private Bank (12.4%) follow. Citi Private Bank, despite ranking among the world's largest private banks, captures less than half the Citation Share of either.

07

Citi shows the widest brand-to-AI-visibility gap of any top-10 U.S. bank

Citi is the third-largest U.S. bank by assets and ranks fifth in consumer banking Citation Share. The delta is larger than any other top-10 institution. The gap reflects limited consumer brand investment over the past decade and a thinner publisher-content footprint compared with Chase and Bank of America.

08

Goldman's retail exit still lingers in model memory

More than a year after Goldman wound down its consumer retail experiment, AI assistants still surface "Marcus" in 31% of Goldman consumer banking responses. AI assistants update slowly. Brand corrections require active intervention — not silence.

09

AI assistants disagree on the top consumer bank

ChatGPT and Gemini favor JPMorgan Chase. Perplexity over-indexes Capital One and surfaces fintechs more aggressively. Claude is the most balanced. Google AI Overviews are the most volatile. Banks that optimize only for one engine inherit a one-engine result.

10

Trust signals favor the largest banks — but not always

In queries explicitly asking about safety, FDIC coverage, and crisis resilience, AI assistants favored JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. First Republic, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank still appear in 8% of safety-related responses as cautionary references — more than two years after collapse. AI assistants encode reputational memory in the model layer for years after the event.

JPMorgan dominates AI banking visibility — while most regional banks are barely there.

AI assistants are outsourcing U.S. banking authority to media publishers — not to the banks themselves.

Banking discovery has been quietly reordered. Most banks haven't noticed.

Ten observations from 31,500 prompts.