Guide to Financial Services Cloud

The financial services landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by the continuous emergence of new regulations and customer expectations for personalized, anticipatory service. The industry must address challenges like manual paper-based processes, the time consuming task of preparing for client meetings, and missed opportunities to build and deepen relationships with clients and grow revenue. To overcome these challenges and unlock limitless growth, financial institutions are turning to modern technology solutions.

A Financial Services Cloud is a specialized customer relationship management (CRM) platform hosted in the cloud and built specifically to meet the unique needs of the banking, wealth management, and insurance sectors. It moves beyond generic CRM capabilities by incorporating industry-specific data models and processes. This type of product helps financial services institutions deepen customer relationships and grow revenue while managing complex regulatory requirements.

A robust Financial Services Cloud provides a single, unified view of the customer. This view integrates data across all lines of business, systems, and channels, giving advisors, bankers, and human agents the full context needed to provide truly personalized and anticipatory service. For example, banking service representatives often need to access a multitude of systems (deposit, loan, credit card, etc.), each with its own set of customer data. This requires ensuring they are looking at the same customer in each system. For example, Jon Doe might appear in a different system as J. Doe or as part of a joint account with a spouse. Taking the time to verify that Jon Doe and J. Doe are the same person not only slows down the issue resolution process, it interferes with the customer interaction. However, when data is integrated into a single, harmonized view, there is only one central customer profile. As a result, the representative can feel confident that they have all the necessary customer information in one place.

Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, now known as Agentforce Financial Services , is the purpose-built financial services platform from Salesforce. It is engineered to help financial services firms achieve limitless growth, deliver anticipatory service, and ensure uncompromising compliance. The platform integrates systems to provide a single, harmonized view and is specifically designed for the financial services industry, including banking, insurance, wealth management, asset management, and lending.

Financial Services Cloud combines the power of humans and autonomous agents to create a new path to growth. Human employees are essential for building relationships, earning trust, and bringing empathy to the client experience. The autonomous agents complement these human skills by handling the busy work, manual processes, and configuring compliance controls. This human-plus-agent model helps financial institutions scale their operations without simply increasing headcount, which can often consume potential growth. The shift to using autonomous agents, also known as agentic AI , is already underway in financial services, with growth in agents being measured in terms of trust, compliance, customer experience, and growth.

The benefits of implementing Financial Services Cloud are directly tied to overcoming the industry's roadblocks that stall growth and the ability to transform client interactions. Some examples include:

By automating manual work, such as cross checking multiple systems to prepare for a client meeting , the platform frees up human capacity. This automation, powered by agents, helps organizations scale efficiently. This allows financial services professionals to focus on higher-value activities and deepening client relationships rather than being bogged down by administrative tasks. It can also help identify opportunities that previously could’ve slipped through the cracks.

Financial institutions can move from reactive to anticipatory service by leveraging deep customer insights to predict customer needs before they are even raised. For example, rather than waiting for a customer to request a loan, institutions can instead recommend mortgage products to customers who have been browsing home-buying resources. Financial services institutions can transition from a traditional, reactive approach to a more proactive model that prioritizes personalized engagement that cultivates loyalty and retention.

Compliance and trust are fundamental in a highly regulated industry. Financial Services Cloud includes no-code tools for creating compliance controls and features like Process Compliance Navigator. This feature can extract clauses directly from regulatory documents using AI and then embed those compliance controls in business processes. This capability allows firms to prepare for audits in minutes, not weeks, with real-time compliance reporting.

Financial Services Cloud operates on a unified, open platform that connects people, data, and processes across a financial institution. It leverages agentic AI to embed intelligence throughout the entire client lifecycle. The platform works through a series of foundational steps:

• Deeply Unify Data and Systems: Financial Services Cloud begins by unifying data from Salesforce and external systems with Data 360, including client data, policy documents, risk appetite, and legacy systems, onto the metadata platform. This foundational step creates a true Customer 360 view.
• Leverage Agent Fabric for Interoperability: The MuleSoft Agent Fabric allows the platform to be open and interoperable, connecting with an integrated ecosystem of industry partners. This allows agents to seamlessly pull and analyze data from disparate sources, such as checking if a client's portfolio aligns with their low-risk appetite.
• Embed AI in the Flow of Work: Industry-specific AI is embedded directly into the daily applications used by financial professionals. Agents automate tasks like generating meeting prep materials, running risk analyses, and preparing dashboards to show funding gaps and investment performance.
• Automate Complex Processes with Agents: AI agents are configured to perform end-to-end tasks, such as automating post-meeting follow-up tasks or routing a transaction dispute. This includes pre-built templates for voice channels to scale personalized contact center experiences.
• Enforce Compliance Controls: Compliance is integrated into business processes through features like Process Compliance Navigator. Agents can be configured to manage compliance controls, ensuring actions like a portfolio reallocation are governed by the necessary guardrails.

Financial Services Cloud is characterized by features designed to address the specific needs of banking, insurance, and wealth management organizations.

• Agentforce Voice for Financial Services: Allows institutions to seamlessly deploy pre-built Agentforce templates on voice channels to scale personalized, human-like contact center experiences while maintaining compliance.
• Agentic AI: Enables human employees to build relationships and bring empathy while agents handle busy work, configure compliance controls, and bring scale.
• Embedded AI for Client Engagement: Predictive insights and analysis tools surface new opportunities and automate tasks like creating meeting agendas and updating financial goals. This feature reduces meeting prep time from hours to minutes.
• Process Compliance Navigator: A tool to extract regulatory clauses using AI, configure compliance controls, and provide real-time reporting to prepare for audits quickly.
• Digital Lending Platform: Features like Collateral Management and Broker Led Origination designed to help firms design profitable loan offerings, empower modern borrower experiences, and reduce the loan application cycle time.

The flexibility of Financial Services Cloud makes it applicable across various sectors and business functions within financial institutions.

Wealth managers use the embedded AI to receive actionable insights for client review meetings, such as checking portfolio risk alignment and identifying tax efficiency opportunities. This allows them to validate retirement projections and confirm college savings plans during the meeting. Agents automate the preparation of all materials, ensuring the advisor is ready to discuss goals, market conditions, and plan adjustments with deep context.

Banks can take advantage of the platform's voice and service agents to streamline customer interactions . For example, a banking service agent can be deployed on voice channels to handle a credit card dispute, identify the charge, initiate the dispute, and apply a temporary credit—all within 48 hours. This functionality allows for a faster turnaround for transaction disputes and potential increases in contact center productivity.

Insurance carriers use the platform to empower adjusters and improve the claimant experience. Features like Digital Insurance Claims Management , Claim Lifecycle Management, and Payments and Reserves allow for an AI-powered platform to automate routine claims processing. This ensures loss reserves are filled for all coverages and provides a comprehensive view of claim financials.

The transition to an agentic enterprise is key for financial institutions aiming for a future of limitless growth. Agentforce Financial Services provides the unified platform, deep context, and agentic AI needed to transform service, drive growth, and build trust. Financial institutions can learn more about how to deploy industry-specific AI agents that automate complex compliance tasks and accelerate service resolution by exploring the resources for Agentforce Financial Services.