BrandInsightAI Insights
Finance · a live data story

Business Banking,
according to AI

Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about business banking — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Xero owns the conversation.

0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated

The podium

Xero is the default answer.

Named in 43% of business banking answers, typically in position 2.8. Starling Bank follows at 40%, QuickBooks at 40%.

Starling Bank
40% of answers
Xero
43% of answers
QuickBooks
40% of answers
The full board

Every brand AI names, ranked.

Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.

#BrandVisibilityAvg. positionCitation shareRead→cited
1Xero 43% 2.8 6% 16%
2Starling Bank 40% 2.7 13% 28%
3QuickBooks 40% 3.5 3% 25%
4Monzo 30% 3.3 5% 25%
5Tide 30% 3.7 3% 31%
6Revolut 27% 4.4 6% 12%
7NatWest 23% 5.4 2% 0%
8Wise 22% 3.1 15% 16%
9Mettle 17% 4.1 0%
10Lloyds Bank 17% 5.2 4% 20%
11Barclays 15% 3.9 1% 14%
12HSBC 15% 6.6 1%
13Airwallex 13% 3.6 10% 29%
14ANNA Money 10% 4.5 7% 55%
15Sage 10% 5.5 3% 50%
What AI wants here

Xero is named most. That is not the same as being wanted.

Being named is visibility. Underneath it, every answer describes a brand in three ways — how much it stands out, how much it belongs, and how much it is returned to. In business banking, Ramp leads attraction at 130 against Bindo at 77, indexed on the category at 100.

Attraction
Ramp130
Bindo77
53-point spread · tracks being named 0.46
Affinity
Co-operative Bank114
Bindo75
39-point spread · tracks being named 0.62
Attachment
Ramp119
Bindo83
36-point spread · tracks being named 0.58
Ramp: Attraction 130, Affinity 107, Attachment 119
Ramp
Complete desire
Stripe: Attraction 128, Affinity 111, Attachment 114
Stripe
Complete desire
Wise: Attraction 122, Affinity 105, Attachment 119
Wise
Complete desire
AttractionAffinityAttachment

Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared. See the full business banking desire edition →

What AI searched for first

Before it answers, it goes looking for Xero.

An assistant does not answer from memory alone. It runs its own web searches first, and whoever it searches for is the shortlist it then chooses from. Across 90 searches in business banking, Xero is named in 17% of the ones that name a brand at all. ChatGPT Web does not report its searches, so these shares are measured against the ones that do.

Xero 17%
Starling Bank 14%
QuickBooks 11%
Revolut 8%
Barclays 6%
Mettle 6%
Claude
Searches per question1.6
Names a brand14%
Names a year59%
Goes to a site0%
Gemini
Searches per question2
Names a brand13%
Names a year28%
Goes to a site0%
ChatGPT
Searches per question1.2
Names a brand46%
Names a year14%
Goes to a site73%
site:starlingbank.com/docs/legal/account/starling-business fees 2026 £0 business account cash deposit
ChatGPT
UK small business cash flow forecasting software Float Fathom Futrli Cashflow official pricing
ChatGPT
UK business bank account switch Current Account Switch Service business accounts official
ChatGPT
small business loan options and overdraft facilities compared UK
Gemini

These are the assistants' own searches, read from their answers — not what anyone typed into a search engine.

Who AI trusts here

The referees of business banking.

The independent sources AI models cite when answering business banking questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.

gov.uk 16 cites
money.co.uk 9 cites
businessexpert.co.uk 7 cites
business.gov.uk 7 cites
businesscomparison.com 4 cites
currentaccountswitch.co.uk 4 cites
fca.org.uk 4 cites
forbes.com 4 cites
moneysavingexpert.com 4 cites
moneysupermarket.com 4 cites
Read is not cited

ANNA Money converts reads into citations. Revolut doesn't.

When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? ANNA Money converts 55% of reads; Revolut just 12%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.

ANNA Money · read 11×55%
Sage · read 4×50%
Tide · read 13×31%
Airwallex · read 17×29%
Starling Bank · read 18×28%
QuickBooks · read 8×25%
Monzo · read 12×25%
Lloyds Bank · read 10×20%
Wise · read 37×16%
Xero · read 25×16%
Full data table
#BrandVisibilityAvg. positionCitation shareRead→cited
1Xero43%2.86%16%
2Starling Bank40%2.713%28%
3QuickBooks40%3.53%25%
4Monzo30%3.35%25%
5Tide30%3.73%31%
6Revolut27%4.46%12%
7NatWest23%5.42%0%
8Wise22%3.115%16%
9Mettle17%4.10%
10Lloyds Bank17%5.24%20%
11Barclays15%3.91%14%
12HSBC15%6.61%
13Airwallex13%3.610%29%
14ANNA Money10%4.57%55%
15Sage10%5.53%50%
Which AI you ask

The models do not agree on who leads.

Ask about business banking and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Starling Bank, Gemini → Xero, ChatGPT → Xero. Their top-five lists share just 43% of names.

Claude recommends
Starling Bank
named in 35% of its answers
Gemini recommends
Xero
named in 70% of its answers
ChatGPT recommends
Xero
named in 35% of its answers

Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.

Xero 45pp
QuickBooks 40pp
Monzo 35pp
Starling Bank 25pp
Lloyds Bank 25pp
ANNA Money 25pp
NatWest 20pp
Wise 20pp
ClaudeGeminiChatGPT
The data behind this chart
BrandClaudeGeminiChatGPTSpread
Xero25%70%35%45pp
QuickBooks25%65%30%40pp
Monzo15%50%25%35pp
Starling Bank35%55%30%25pp
Lloyds Bank5%30%15%25pp
ANNA Money5%25%0%25pp
NatWest20%35%15%20pp
Wise15%35%15%20pp
Barclays5%25%15%20pp
Tide35%35%20%15pp
What AI reads here

Comparisons carry business banking.

Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. Comparisons supply the most citations; Comparisons convert best — 100% of the ones models opened were actually cited.

Comparisons
94 cited · 0 read only
100% of reads cited
How-to guides
50 cited · 0 read only
100% of reads cited
Editorial
44 cited · 0 read only
100% of reads cited
Product pages
41 cited · 0 read only
100% of reads cited
Listicles
18 cited · 0 read only
100% of reads cited
Documentation
14 cited · 0 read only
100% of reads cited
Other
14 cited · 0 read only
100% of reads cited
The data behind this chart
Page typeCitedRead but not citedConversion
Comparisons940100%
How-to guides500100%
Editorial440100%
Product pages410100%
Listicles180100%
Documentation140100%
Other140100%
What gets cited

Answer up front is what separates cited from ignored.

Of the business banking pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Answer up front is worth 0 percentage points. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.

Answer up front +0pp
Updated this year +0pp
Comparison table +0pp
Named author +0pp
Structured data +0pp
Hard statistics +0pp
The data behind this chart
FeaturePages withCited %Pages withoutCited %Difference
Answer up front148100%149100%+0pp
Updated this year125100%172100%+0pp
Comparison table124100%173100%+0pp
Named author187100%110100%+0pp
Structured data242100%55100%+0pp
Hard statistics109100%188100%+0pp
Citation readiness

WorldFirst builds pages AI can quote.

Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. WorldFirst is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.

BrandReadinessPages citedPages profiled
WorldFirst 62 7% 15
OFX 54 33% 9
Airwallex 50 46% 13
Fathom 50 0% 3
Tide 48 20% 5
ANNA Money 43 42% 12
Wise 43 25% 57
Santander 38 0% 7
Starling Bank 37 7% 123
Float 35 0% 27

Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.

What the answers answer

The questions business banking pages have to settle.

Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.

What is a multi-currency account?
What is a business bank account?
What is a multi-currency business account?
What is a business overdraft?
What is cash flow forecasting software?
What is the Current Account Switch Service (CASS)?
How does a business overdraft work?
What are the best business bank accounts in the UK for 2026?
Keep exploring

Nineteen more categories.

Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:08:08 GMT.

scroll ↓