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NP Digital data shows challenger brands like SoFi beating legacy brands in AI answers
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San Diego, CA, Sept. 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — NP Digital released the
Fintech AI Visibility Index, a study analyzing more than 68,000 AI-generated answers to fintech prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude Sonnet 4, and Google AI Overviews. One comparison stands out: SoFi, a digital-first financial services company offering banking, lending and investing products, out-ranks Bank of America across every dimension NP Digital measured. In traditional organic search, brand age and decades of accumulated domain authority tend to favor legacy institutions. This study raises the question of whether AI search rewrites the rules for challenger brands.
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SoFi appeared in nearly 50% of relevant AI prompts, edging out Bank of America. When AI platforms did mention SoFi, they named it earlier in the answer, averaging a first-mention position of 3.75 compared to Bank of America’s 6.07. AI answers also framed SoFi more favorably, with 61.8% of its mentions being positive versus 46.8% for Bank of America.
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The study also explores a pattern across AI platforms that may impact which platforms brands prioritize. Gemini surfaced the most brands in answers, naming an average of 10 brands per response, compared to 6 for Perplexity.
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“The platform density patterns we uncovered in this study are valuable to strategists,” said Nikki Lam, VP of Earned Media at NP Digital. “Our previous research has shown that it’s easier to earn visibility on Gemini. This study shows why: Gemini’s answers just list more brands. That means there’s real value in a platform like Perplexity, where you’re one of six brands instead of one of ten.”
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The study raises a real question for marketers: is AI leveling the playing field between challenger brands and legacy incumbents? The study doesn’t settle it outright, but the findings are consistent with the idea that AI platforms weigh factors like content relevance, topical consistency, and clarity more heavily than sheer brand tenure or backlink history, the traditional currencies of organic search ranking.
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The full report examines this dynamic across the wider fintech landscape, including which factors most consistently separate high- and low-visibility brands in AI answers.
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The complete Fintech AI Visibility Index is available for download at npdigital.com/blog/fintech-ai-visibility-index.
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About NP Digital: NP Digital is an award-winning global digital marketing agency focused on enterprise and mid-market challenger brands, co-founded in 2017 by Neil Patel, a New York Times bestselling author and one of the world’s most influential marketers according to The Wall Street Journal and Forbes. Underpinned by its proprietary technology division and platforms, NP Digital is regarded as one of the fastest-growing, award-winning end-to-end digital marketing agencies in the industry. The agency’s services span paid and organic search, social media, influencer marketing, content, retargeting, display, email marketing, and conversion rate optimization — including dedicated practices for enterprise SEO across multi-site portfolios and for GEO and AEO strategy that helps brands show up inside ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI-driven answer engines. NP Digital views marketing through a consultative lens that takes a holistic view when applying specialist execution to build meaningful partnerships, working with some of the world’s most prominent Fortune 500 brands in addition to mid-size, direct-to-consumer organizations.
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English (US)