Why AI zero-click search is reshaping brand building in finance

Ruth Jones, CEO of PR Agency, 3THINKRS, explores how AI is fundamentally reshaping brand discovery.

One truth holds steady within financial services: trusted brands enjoy greater client retention than less-trusted competitors. That trust is built from signals – ones of visibility, authority, consistency and transparency. Yet, being deemed a trusted brand has been difficult since the financial crisis: financial service brands hovered under the neutral level of 50 in Edelman’s 2024 trust barometer.

But it’s not an insurmountable task. Take the fintech disruptors: Monzo and Starling. They didn’t just build innovative apps. They built trust and loyalty through powerful branding and unique marketing strategies. Monzo rose to fame with radical transparency as a central part of its marketing strategy. And Starling stood out by leading with a marketing strategy that highlighted its top-rated app reviews.

The arbiter between buyer and brand

AI is reshaping how financial service brands send trust signals. Now, ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Grok all sit between the buyer and the brand. They don’t just surface results; they filter them, summarise them. And, often, answer the prospects’ question without the buyer ever clicking through. The same is true for Google Search. In 2024, 59.7% of google searches in the EU ended without a click. This means the buyer journey stops on the results page. This places AI as an arbiter of brand visibility.

These new LLM gatekeepers don’t rely on an algorithms like Google search, which are heavily influenced by keyword strategies and link building. Instead, what surfaces in the featured snippet is the result of natural language processing (NLP) and retrieval and reasoning capabilities. That means how brands show up, when, and in what context is changing in real-time.

This is a shift that will keep evolving. AI startup, Perplexity, for example made a bold $34.5 billion bid for Google’s Chrome browser. A move that if successful would shift Chrome into an ‘answer engine’. This type of shift in search, means financial services brands need to consider five fundamentals as they evolve their marketing strategies.

1. Know your share of AI models

To disrupt means knowing that you are leading the conversation. Or to be more precise, it means knowing that you are answering your prospects questions. And answering them more often than your competitors are. That, in turn, demands measuring how often your brand surfaces in AI-search. This includes whether the citation was favourable (sentiment monitoring), how your brand fairs against your closest rivals (competitor benchmarking), and how often the queries are asked (analytics on query volume).

Of course, there’s a fast-growing market of tools offering to help brands do this. Profound, for example, allows brands to track common questions asked of AI and how they perform related to that query. FalcoRank.ai’s homepage provides an instant view of how your business ranks for ‘Share of AI Voice,’ showing which competitors surface in Google AI Overview, ChatGPT and Perplexity. While Hubspot also provides free share of voice analysis, showing how visible brands are verses their competitors.

2. Treat LLMs as new influencers

It isn’t just ‘discoverability’ that AI is owning. It’s now an influencer and decision maker. Omnisend found that 34% of consumers would allow AI tools to make a purchase on their behalf. That might not be the case in financial services just yet, but it’s a clear sign of the path we’re on. It’s an indicator of why LLMs should begin to be considered more influential than traditional search.

Part of this trust in LLMs comes from the fact that AI can analyse a significant amount of content related to a query. This makes research for a new product or service infinitely quicker. And the kicker is: natural language processing capabilities mean the answer is nuanced to the individual. Not to mention that users can prompt it, to check for validity, contradiction and competitive evaluation.

But not all LLMs are equal. What informs one LLM is different to what informs another. That’s the big bet for financial services companies: which LLMs they prioritise. And how they prioritise answers (or content) for the most ‘queried’ questions.

3. Focus on relevancy, recency and structure

LLMs are all about relevance, recency and structure, not optimisation. Which is ironic, given the answer to AI-search is being dubbed Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) or Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). Regardless of what it’s called, the aim nevertheless is to ensure your brand surfaces as the ‘trusted citation’.

Most of the time, LLMs are turning to earned media for trust signals: 85% of citations in AI are from earned sources according to MuckRack. For finance searches specifically, the top 20 domains surfaced include Investopedia, Forbes, Wikipedia, NerdWallet, and Bloomberg. The variables for inclusion? Recency, query framing and outlet authority.

Lower down the funnel, LLMs are looking for well-structured, concise, and scannable text that helps them extract facts (headlines, bullet points, simple language). To return validation signals when prospects are finalising their shortlist or choosing a financial services provider, websites need clear FAQs, knowledge hubs and schema markup to boost machine readability.

4. Sync PR strategies with AI-search intent

Given the influence of earned media on AI search: PR, marketing and sales need to act as one. That means linking PR storytelling to what prospects are querying in LLMs. For example, if a prospect surfaces an article in the Financial Times answering their specific question – that carries both authority and clarity, verses a query answered on a company blog.

It’s also about being ‘always on’ and offering new, relevant opinions. That’s because LLMs prioritise fresh content. Meaning, ‘news-jacking’ will help a brand’s influence in the variables. Here, providing an opinion on ‘how the latest interest rate rise will impact financial decisions’, will serve to garner the attention of the LLM. And your brand visibility in a zero-click search experience.

It’s also important to note that 26 major publishers signed agreements with AI platforms in 2025, meaning that publication prioritisation will require constant review. The Financial Times, for example, allows ChatGPT to summarise paywalled articles in its snippets. Meanwhile, Perplexity is sharing 80% of its Comet Plus revenue with publishers, like Fortune. These deals are not just a side note, they should be a discussion point, when considering where you land that exclusive media story.

5. Don’t forget customer attention matters

All that said and done. AI isn’t taking up all of your prospects’ attention. Prospects are flipping between TV screen, their phones or billboards at sporting events and concerts. Their attention is constantly divided. McKinsey research rightly calls out the ‘missing point on attention’. And that’s ‘quality attention’. It’s an overlooked marketing and PR consideration. One that when captured has a higher chance of influencing decision making.

Brands should consider how they garner ‘quality attention’. On the media side, when you compare quality attention, print newspapers and magazines garner more quality attention than digital and social. So, whilst it is important to consider LLMs as influencers, there also needs to be a strategy to grab the attention of prospects when they are focused and have a clear intent to purchase.

Marketing takeaway

Zero-click search is transforming brand building in finance by making AI tools the new arbiters of trust and visibility. To win, financial services brands must measure their share of AI voice, treat LLMs as powerful influencers, and prioritise relevance, recency, and structured content. Success will come from syncing PR, marketing and sales strategies with AI-search intent. And ensuring earned, owned and paid content is re-written for readability.