As AI and automation transform how decisions are made in financial services, some commentators suggest the next competitive frontier will be bot-to-bot. But at TSG, we believe the firms that succeed will be those that combine technical excellence with human insight — using Quality Engineering to build trust and resilience in both systems and relationships.
Chris Skinner https://thefinanser.com/2025/09/is-your-bot-more-competitive-than-my-bot – you can get the link to the article here – recently argued that financial services marketing is shifting from targeting humans to targeting bots. It’s a provocative thought — that in the near future, it won’t be customers choosing financial products at all, but their bots. Decisions will no longer be driven by brand, loyalty, or perceived value, but purely by data: connectivity, uptime, and price.
For many working in financial services and technology, this signals a fundamental shift in how competition will play out. If bots are making the decisions, then the firms that win will be those whose systems are most available, reliable, and seamlessly connected — a bot-to-bot advantage.
At TSG, we find that idea both fascinating and a little unsettling.
For small and medium-sized consultancies like ours, the differentiator has always been the human relationship — the quality of our people, our responsiveness, and our ability to understand each client’s unique context and challenges. Trust is built through conversations, collaboration, and shared problem-solving. It’s what helps us deliver outcomes that are not just technically sound, but genuinely transformative.
So, what happens to firms like ours in a world where bots do the choosing?
Beyond Bot-to-Bot: The Case for Human-Centred Advantage
Skinner is right that technical performance will matter more than ever. Uptime, data integrity, and resilience will determine who gets to participate in an increasingly automated marketplace. But being chosen by a bot is not the same as being trusted by a client.
The firms that will thrive in this next phase are those that can combine machine efficiency with human integrity — the ability to design, operate, and govern systems that reflect human intent, ethics, and empathy.
This perspective aligns closely with the growing debate around human-centred AI strategies — the idea that AI should amplify human strengths, not replace them.
The false choice between automation and people creates serious strategic blind spots. Real-world examples show that organisations which replaced human roles entirely with AI often had to reintroduce them after quality and customer experience declined. The misconception that AI can fully replace human judgment leads to costly missteps and reputational risk.
Even the most advanced agentic AI — systems capable of autonomous planning and action — still require human oversight, context, and direction.
In that sense, the competitive advantage of the future may still be profoundly human: trust, transparency, accountability, and the ability to build systems that serve people as well as processes.
Quality Engineering: Building Trust in the Bot-to-Bot World
This is where Quality Engineering plays a crucial enabling role. If bots are to make operational or financial decisions, then connectivity, reach, and resilience must be proven, not just promised.
Quality Engineering provides the technical foundations for that trust. It ensures that:
- Services can be reliably discovered and consumed.
- Interfaces and APIs perform consistently under load.
- Systems remain secure, observable, and continuously available.
In short, QE provides the assurance that allows automation to scale responsibly. It bridges the gap between the human experience firms want to deliver and the digital infrastructure that enables it.
The Human Edge
At TSG, we believe that while bots may determine transactions, humans still define relationships. As financial ecosystems evolve towards more automated, data-driven interactions, the organisations that will stand out are those that keep people at the centre — in how they design, govern, and validate technology.
Automation will change the way financial services operate, but it doesn’t remove the need for empathy, ethical awareness, and dialogue. Those human qualities will remain the foundation of trust — and trust will always be the ultimate differentiator.
In a bot-to-bot marketplace, human-centred design and quality engineering together form the real competitive advantage.