Frost Bank is investing in its AI, payments and customer onboarding experience to remain competitive and penetrate new markets. 

In the second quarter, the $49 billion San Antonio-based bank upped its technology spend 8% year over year to $35.9 million, according to its July 25 earnings report.

“We have plans to use AI … [and] we’re really focused on improving customer experience right now,” Laura Miller, executive vice president of consumer strategy and digital at Frost Bank, told Bank Automation News. “It’s less about operational efficiency, although that is something we expect to happen with AI. 

“We hear customers asking for money to move faster, to settle faster, and we’ve done everything we can to speed it up and remove friction [in] implementing real-time payments,” Miller said. 

The bank selected real-time payments provider Finzly to offer instant payments to its clients during the quarter, according to a June 25 Finzly release. 

In addition to adding Finzly, the bank has tapped the following tech providers to enhance digital offerings and improve customer experience: 

• LivePerson: The AI-driven customer engagement platform’s solution provides Frost Bank’s customer representatives with an AI co-pilot to summarize calls and provide conversation prompts to assist customers, Miller said. 

Frost Bank has been working with LivePerson for more than three years and has achieved a 91% customer satisfaction score along with a response time of less than 60 seconds, Collin Levandowski, strategic account director at LivePerson, told BAN, adding that the solution allows representatives to be more efficient and respond to customer queries in a more accurate manner. 

According to Miller, “It allows us to do deep analysis of those conversations and look for trends and do sentiment analysis. We spend a lot of time doing quality assurance on customer conversations and so that AI really helps create some operational efficiency for us.” 

• Atomic Financial: As open banking regulation inches closer, Frost Bank is using this direct-deposit switching service provider to allow customers to easily switch their accounts to Frost. 

“Prior to there being regulatory intervention, we’ve been committed to making it easy for customers to switch” their accounts between financial institutions, Miller said, adding that the bank’s partnership with Atomic will also help it shore up deposits. 

Future look

As the bank continues to focus on its tech provider strategy, it’s also looking into fraud security, footprint and tapping into machine learning.  

“I suspect that [fraud detection] is going to be one of the early use cases [of AI] that you see here at Frost and at most banks,” Miller said. The bank will wait to use AI in underwriting until it gains more regulatory and compliance clarity, she said. 

The bank is doubling its footprint in the Austin, Texas, region to grow deposits and customer base organically, Miller said. 

Frost Bank has 17 financial centers in Austin and has said it aims to double that number by the end of 2026. 

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