From 2027, the Bank of Russia will integrate an AI assistant into the mobile apps and websites of banks and insurers. The service will help clients choose deposits, mortgages, credit cards, and CASCO insurance using a single regulator methodology — and financial organizations risk losing a key advantage of their own product selection systems.
For the first six months, the service will operate in advisory mode. The regulator does not rule out that, if results are successful, use of the assistant will become mandatory. Technological readiness is expected by the New Year.
How the Central Bank's assistant will work
The Central Bank is preparing a letter for credit and insurance organizations — CASCO is also included in the list of products alongside banking ones. The assistant's prompts will carry the label "according to the Central Bank methodology." The service operates on templates and instructions for the neural network (prompts) that the regulator developed together with market participants.
Testing has been underway since the end of 2025. Ten major banks took part, including VTB, T-Bank, and Sovcombank. Now the regulator intends to assess how the service works on a broad customer base.
What clients will get and what banks risk
Clients will be able to compare terms using a single methodology directly in their bank's or insurer's app. This is about eliminating information asymmetry — a situation where the seller knows more about the product terms than the buyer.
Banks and insurers may lose some control over which products a client sees. The regulator is confident that the assistant's guidance will be equidistant from all market participants: no one will gain an advantage that an organization could have achieved through its own system, and no one will be discriminated against.
At the same time, financial organizations will retain influence over the prompts. The Central Bank will build in an arbitration procedure: if a bank or insurer dislikes the assistant's answers, the parties will discuss them and adjust them if necessary. The neutrality of the service will largely depend on how often banks use this right.
Meanwhile, banks are building their own AI consultants
The regulator's service will appear in apps where major banks already offer clients their own AI prompts. Portfolio analysis based on "GigaChat" has been running in "SberInvestments" for more than a month: the tool shows the client which securities and events affected the value of their investments. Sber also announced the integration of a financial AI assistant into "Sberbank Online" — it will analyze the client's income and obligations, select options, and perform routine operations.
The Central Bank's neutral service is precisely intended to deprive banks of the advantage that their own product selection systems provide.
Cryptalist analysis: The Central Bank's initiative marks a transition from voluntary bank recommendations to a centrally managed infrastructure for selecting financial products, which strengthens the regulator's position as an arbiter of the customer experience. For banks, this means a gradual erosion of the value of their own AI consultants and a shift in competition from selection algorithms to the quality of the products themselves and pricing. Investors and market participants should watch whether the assistant becomes mandatory after the pilot period — this is a key signal about the depth of regulatory intervention in retail banking.