Rain COO Frederic Choquette makes a compelling case for why AI agents will play a crucial role in improving Americans’ financial literacy and health. The timing couldn’t be better, as 70% of Americans have less than $500 in savings – the definition of living paycheck to paycheck
Choquette said Rain’s operates on a progressive, three-stage format, beginning with stabilization. This targets the people who are one unplanned expense away from financial trouble. They need access to cash funding without being buried by fees. Stop that bleeding.
Control is next. Now that someone is stable, they have the bandwidth to learn new financial concepts and adopt helpful financial tools like secured credit cards and fee-free banking.
The final stage is growth. This is where Rain helps people save, invest and build their credit scores. While earned wage access use will dip, usage of other tools will increase.
Many well-intentioned financial education efforts fail because they don’t recognize the stress those financial cliff dwellers face, Choquette said. The financially stressed won’t attend a seminar or absorb an article. Budgeting skills crumble when faced with a financial emergency.
The answer? AI agents who ingest data and provide insights to help folks move back from the cliff. By analyzing individual spending and income histories (Choquette said six months provides strong patterns), the AI agent can identify when money can be transferred to savings. Should an upcoming bill put a user into overdraft, the agent can file for earned wage access to prevent it.
“If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you’re not turning on (other) tools because you don’t know if these other things are going to happen,” Choquette said. “But if you have an AI agent that’s constantly monitoring your inflows and your outflows, then it can tell you when a good time is to put $25 into your savings, because you won’t run out of cash before your next paycheck.”
Are there risks with AI agents providing financial advice?
With AI so new, Choquette said constant education is crucial. While earned wage access has moved beyond the early innovator to the early adoption stage, financial AI is still in the starting blocks.
Is Choquette concerned about reports of people turning to AI for financial advice? A bigger problem is that people don’t know what questions to ask, so build agents that use their unique financial information to give recommendations and information. Report Netflix and Spotify payments to Experian and tell them how it improves their credit score. Analyze spending and income patterns and build an emergency nest egg.
Rain’s AI agents do these things. One avoids overdrafts by moving sufficient funds into the right account before a bill is due. Savings AI agents can negotiate bill reductions and even consolidate debt.
“The opportunities are endless, at least for us, as to where we can build and deploy agents over time,” Choquette said. Looking ahead, micro investing will soon join the menu, perhaps as early as 2027.
Some in the industry have urged better preparation for a world where our personal AI agents communicate with corporate ones. Choquette welcomes that time, which could arrive sooner than some think.
“Eventually, if we can have agent-to-agent communication, I think it will have even more things optimized.”
Why AI has become so popular so fast
The surge in corporate AI interest is unique in that both the startups and established players are working on models. Choquette believes the fear of being left behind is the main reason.
Another thing to watch is which models actually stick. Choquette estimates Rain has tried a few dozen tools but actively uses maybe four. Some companies with gaudy revenue totals are churning through all their clients.
Generic tools at best handle generic tasks, but do little for needs 12 layers down.
“We either need a specific vendor for our exact use case or build it ourselves,” Choquette said. “A company onboarding 500 clients a month won’t focus on that twelfth level.
“Rain could introduce 18 tools tomorrow, but we have the luxury of time. We do one well, then do another one well.”