- Key insight: The industry's overall reputation remained healthy in 2026, with RepTrak's score dipping just 0.4 points to 70.5, while measures of public support in times of crisis declined more sharply.
- Supporting data: Only about 35% of respondents completely trusted banks to self-regulate in a deregulatory environment.
- Forward look: AI and deregulation emerged as significant reputational risks, with consumers particularly concerned about weaker oversight and banks' ability to use AI ethically.
The banking industry's reputation remained historically strong in 2026, but in a deregulatory environment, respondents disclosed anxiety about conduct and firms' responsiveness in the event of a crisis.
The industry's overall reputation score, measured on a scale of one to 100, largely kept pace with recent gains, dipping slightly 0.4 points, from 70.9 in 2025 to 70.5 this year, according to RepTrak. That kept banks in the firm's "strong" reputation range, but the decline in measures of public support for the industry was somewhat larger.
"We see a tiny bit of decline here in the main business outcomes … people's willingness to do business with them, give them the benefit of the doubt and trusting them to fix things if there's a product and service issue," said Sven Klingemann, senior director at The RepTrak Company. "While this is sort of in-line with the slight reputation decline, at the same time, these declines are a bit steeper than what we see for reputation."
The survey, conducted in May, collected 14,000 ratings from members of the informed general public who were familiar with the banks they evaluated.
The results show that banks have largely retained the reputational gains made in the years since the
Products and services remained
The dangers of AI
Artificial intelligence emerged as a new source of reputational risk. Respondents indicated that they find the technology most useful as an information tool rather than a substitute for banking itself.
About a third of respondents said they were very likely to use AI tools for banking or personal-finance purposes. Willingness to use AI, however, did not translate into broad confidence in the technology.
"Republicans, Democrats, men and women, their number one concern is that AI needs more regulation and oversight," Klingemann said. "Everybody agrees that's their biggest concern."
Only a relatively small share — 32% — of respondents completely trusted banks to use AI ethically if regulatory guardrails were reduced, with large banks performing particularly poorly. 56% of respondents said they were very concerned about easing regulations on AI at banks.
The public's concerns about AI also eclipsed the perceived benefits they awarded firms for deploying the technology. The strongest sentiment, that AI needs more regulation and oversight, held a net agreement score of 53 points. That was followed by concerns that AI will reduce jobs, at 39 points, and fears about digital privacy, at 35 points. By comparison, the net score for AI improving customer service was just 4 points.
The potential reputational consequences are significant. Respondents who were aware of a bank failing to implement AI ethically would be expected to lower its reputation score by 8.5 points. A failure to prevent or adequately respond to AI-enabled fraud, including scams, deepfakes and sophisticated online fraud, carried an 8.4-point hit.
AI's own scores
The survey also tested how AI systems themselves evaluated banks. RepTrak asked ChatGPT and Google Gemini to assess the reputations of seven banks. The reputation firm found that AI-generated scores were far lower than those assigned by the informed general public for every bank tested. TD Bank, for example, received a reputation score 51.3 points higher from the public than from AI chat bots.
Open AI's ChatGPT model generally produced more negative assessments than Gemini. RepTrak also found that the systems relied on different information sources. ChatGPT leaned more heavily on government, regulatory and public-agency sources, while Gemini relied more heavily on news and editorial content.
Across the seven banks tested, AI assigned average scores of 42 for products and services and 26.1 for conduct, versus 71 and 68 respectively from the public.
Less regulation
Concerns about ongoing financial deregulation also posed risks for banks. Around six in 10 respondents said they were very concerned about changes to banking regulations, roughly in line with last year's survey. The strongest concerns centered on weakening government oversight and removing limits on fees, followed by reductions in capital requirements and looser oversight of crypto activities and AI.
Crypto oversight also ranked prominently. Both the youngest and oldest respondents, as well as women and Democrats, listed cryptocurrency regulation among their three biggest regulatory concerns.
The public showed less willingness to trust banks to police themselves. Just roughly 35% of respondents completely trusted banks to self-regulate in areas affected by deregulation. Respondents who completely trusted banks to self-regulate assigned them substantially higher reputation scores than respondents who expressed mixed feelings or no trust.
