Response management is no longer happening in a back office. RFP teams are known as strategic partners to the business, contributing to one-third of revenue. The best response teams are using data and AI tooling to become more strategic and proactive. It’s a meaningful shift.

Financial services firms in particular are facing waves of complex RFPs in a fiercely competitive market. The need for smarter, more efficient response processes is growing, and RFP teams are rising to meet those needs. Financial services RFP teams contributed to an average of $241M in business revenue last year, according to Loopio’s 2025 RFP Trends and Benchmarks Report.

In this article, we explore the RFP realities that financial institutions shared with us in Loopio’s sixth annual RFP Trends and Benchmarks Report—from forward-thinking projects to the challenges obstructing progress. Let’s get into it.

Modern financial services organizations are in a period of transformation. It’s an exciting era of AI, automation, and open-minded attitudes toward digital transformation. There’s a lot of potential just waiting to be realized.

While change is rarely simple and easy, these evolving conditions are driving financial services organizations to implement new tools and processes so they can win more business, strengthen security and compliance, and modernize their approach to response management. It’s a seismic shift, and a tricky one to get just right.

With this in mind, modern financial services organizations reported that they can be eager adopters of new technologies, while remaining measured in their approach. Here’s what they told us.

Financial services organizations have good reason to seek out modern technologies that will streamline their workflows and help them scale: the average financial services enterprise responded to 164 RFPs in 2024 compared to the industry average of 153.

The sheer volume of RFP responses means that in order to maintain their competitive edge and make each response shine, the RFP process itself must keep evolving to meet business growth goals. It’s no longer enough to only rely on a team’s strong RFP project management methodology—they need the right tools to take them to the next level.

And they’ve been seeking them out.

Modern financial services organizations are making major moves toward purpose-built technology to help them meet these goals.

The majority—83% of respondents within the financial services field—said their organization uses RFP response software. This is a substantial jump from the average organization, where 65% are using RFP response software.

RFP response software helps teams streamline workflows, boost collaboration, and improve their content library while staying aligned to business goals. This is especially important for financial services organizations that need to stay organized and speedy as they respond to wave after wave of complicated RFPs, DDQs, and security questionnaires.

The dynamic duo of AI and automation have become a central part of scaling the RFP process across industries. These emerging tech tools allow RFP teams to unlock a new level of business intelligence and revenue. Modern financial services organizations in particular have been embracing these tools to the point where they are now simply a regular part of their RFP workflow.

On top of RFP software, AI and automation use in the RFP process has also been gaining ground in recent years. While there was some fledgling interest around generative AI in 2023, it wasn’t a key tool in RFP teams’ workflows until 2024. People saw its potential and adoption rates skyrocketed. Use of AI and automation doubled year-over-year for the average organization (including financial services enterprises).

Now, 66% of financial services organizations report using AI in their RFP process in the past 12 months. This is in line with the industry standard of 68%.

Out of the respondents that report using AI regularly in their RFP process, 75% of them use AI at least weekly, which is five percentage points higher than the average organization.

AI and automation can:

• Streamline the RFP workflow
• Boost and help maintain the quality of content used throughout RFPs
• Improve collaboration between teammates, SMEs, and reviewers
• Generate responses based on information sourced both internally (from a secure content library, for example) and externally (online sources)

Leaning into the functionality and the potential of these specific tech tools can help these organizations stay competitive and win more bids, faster.

Modern financial services enterprises are capitalizing on the potential of AI and automation in their own organizations, and that also means empowering their RFP teams to make the right decisions.

Across the board, organizations are embracing AI tools in their RFP workflows. The recent rise in AI adoption has caused a meteoric increase of new tools available on the market, while existing AI products continue to evolve at a rapid pace.

There are both open-source and closed-source tools available at different price points and with different levels of risk. Managing the risks of using these evolving AI technologies is a must, especially for financial services organizations, who operate under strict compliance guidelines. Ensuring compliance is an integral part of the RFP process.

In 2024, 53% of RFP professionals working in financial services who use AI in their work report using the AI built into their RFP response software, among other tools. This is 20 percentage points higher than their RFP peers across industries.

Financial services organizations also report using other AI tools, such as ChatGPT (60%) and Microsoft Copilot (53%) at rates that align with the RFP industry average.

While tools like MS Copilot are typically approved by an organization’s IT team, general-purpose AIs like ChatGPT are riskier. Information pulled to generate answers could be incorrect, out of date, or incomplete. There are also significant security concerns in using LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT, since they don’t prioritize confidentiality, and can even use that confidential data to train itself for future queries.

Under the right conditions, and assuming no sensitive information is at risk of exposure, general-purpose AI can help RFP teams respond to individual questions. Human oversight is then needed to ensure the accuracy, originality, and coherence of the response. It’s an extra step but it’s necessary.

Embracing AI tools to take the RFP process to a new level can be a challenge, and financial services organizations also need to continue to prioritize security and compliance. As AI technology evolves, there will always be room for improvement, and modern financial services enterprises show an eagerness to explore.

Financial services organizations know that their RFP teams are true strategic partners of the business. These proposal professionals bring talent, strategy, and fresh ideas to the response management process—and leadership’s trust in this team shows.

RFP teams within financial services organizations feel they have autonomy and authority to carry out their work. Seventy-three percent say they feel empowered to make decisions on team collaboration. A further 53% feel the same when it comes to bid strategy, and 41% feel empowered to make budget decisions.

These numbers show that these teams are more likely to feel that leadership trusts them to manage their teams and goals as they deem appropriate. It’s worth noting that these numbers are also 5-13% higher than the average of responses reported by their peers across other industries.

Modern financial services enterprises understand that their proposal teams are a deeply strategic partner to the business. Working in an environment with a high level of trust and autonomy to make the right decisions for their team allows proposal leadership to focus on building better RFP processes.

Next, we’ll look into the significance of this recent tech shift, and what it means for financial services organizations that must also prioritize improving their RFP workflows.

Modernizing workflows for efficiency, higher RFP win rates, and scale often means going bigger—on investments, efforts, and goals. It can be a massive undertaking but, when it’s done right, the ROI is so worth it.

Modern financial services organizations have already demonstrated their interest in adopting AI and automation technologies, and they have made space in their 2025 budgets to continue to invest in the platforms and tools they need to stay competitive.

More than half of financial services organizations said they planned to invest in new technology this year compared to 44% for the average organization.

Financial services organizations also planned to invest in more training for existing team members (47%) and hire more staff (31%), both of which are aligned with the general RFP industry average.

Investing in new technologies coupled with additional training for the team could show that financial services organizations are focused on supporting their staff in learning how to use these new tools. In this time of digital transformation, even the most tech-savvy teammates could benefit from additional training in risk management, compliance, and security to learn how to safely apply emerging technologies in creative, new ways.

Investing in new technologies, training, and teammates to support the RFP process can each be a massive undertaking, requiring change management within their systems and business units. This is all done in the pursuit of improving the RFP process, boosting win rates, and increasing business revenue.

Financial institutions experience a high volume of complex RFPs, DDQs, and security questionnaires, which means it’s critical to develop an efficient response process. While it’s a constant work in progress, one key indicator of efficiency is how much time is spent writing a single RFP.

RFP teams working in financial services spend an average of 23.9 hours writing a single RFP compared to 24.7 hours for the average organization.

There’s no doubt that there’s always room for improvement in speedily completing and submitting RFPs, and financial services enterprises are edging out the average organization in this area.

Our research shows that time spent writing RFPs has dropped significantly across industries since 2023. Much of this efficiency boost is attributed to the rise in popularity of RFP software and generative AI.

The recent shift requires ongoing discussions with IT and InfoSec teams as well as consistent team training about the potential advantages and drawbacks of available tools on the market. If financial services enterprises remain measured in their approach to new technologies, it’s possible to scale with both quality and security.

Landing large client contracts involves a tailored mix of response management, sales, and deeply understanding your customer. At the same time, getting a new client to sign a contract or an existing customer to renew services is an involved, complex process that can start months or even years ahead of those closing conversations.

Customers who are confident in their vendor, enthusiastic about the product or service, and feel like their needs will be met are the ones most likely to remain loyal customers. Modern financial services organizations can nurture this customer sentiment from a combination of hard data, sophisticated processes, and interpersonal relationships.

Intense competition in the financial services industry means that even the biggest, most established organizations need to maintain a high level of performance in all areas of their business. One key indicator of performance is win rate. It answers the simple question, “Does this customer want to do business with us?”

Financial services enterprises report their average RFP win rate is 41.5%, which is slightly below the average 45.0% win rate across industries. When you take into account the high level of competition in this field, this is the likely cause of this slightly lower rate.

While bid win rates can indicate the success (or room for improvement) of an RFP team’s response process, often there are factors beyond their control that have an oversized influence on the bid outcome. Financial services organizations report the top three reasons they lose bids are:

• Overall price or pricing model of our solution (70%)
• Lost to the incumbent or a competitor (64%)
• Our product/offering didn’t meet the needs of the customer (42%)

Financial services organizations’ win rates show why they need to remain agile in their proposal process and discerning in which bids they pursue. While there is always room for improvement, modern financial services enterprises are proactively responding to the right RFPs and pursuing competitive opportunities driven by a focused, organized RFP process.

Modern financial services enterprises see the clear value of submitting winning RFPs. With financial services RFP teams contributing to, on average, $241M in business revenue last year, they are solidly positioning themselves as strategic partners to the business.

Financial services organizations’ RFP teams responded to 164 bids last year, more RFPs than the industry average of 153. While the average organization has seen a dip in volume, financial services organizations expect their own response rate to increase this year.

Sixty-seven percent of RFP teams planned to increase their RFP response rate in 2025 compared to 61% for the average organization.

Creating a seamless customer journey has as much to do with the beginning of the RFP process as it does reflecting on what worked and what needs improvement.

The relationship between RFPs and revenue is an integral part of business strategy and it’s getting noticed—especially since financial services organizations report that 30% of their company revenue is influenced by RFPs.

With RFPs generating a high level of revenue, leadership regularly reviews proposal teams’ business contributions. And the KPIs driving this revenue also tell a story about how an organization is able to connect with its customers.

Financial services organizations report that leadership considers percentage of bids won (43%) one of the most important KPIs, which is consistent with the industry average (49%).

The importance of bids won signals that organizations need to prioritize efficiency and scalability while maintaining high-quality responses in RFPs across all industries. The outcome? A higher quality customer experience throughout the RFP response process.

The story these KPIs tell about proposal teams’ contributions to relationship building is also deeply connected to business success. Meeting evolving customer expectations in an era of drastic digital change means there will be missteps and missed opportunities, but each experience is a chance to reevaluate what is working and what needs improvement.

Customer relationship-building and improving client experiences are a key aspect of modernizing the proposal process within financial services organizations. Grafting tangible KPIs to the customer experience is another way RFP teams actively contribute in their strategic business role.

Financial services enterprises need to win more business, strengthen compliance, and modernize their response management processes to stay competitive in their industry. It’s easier said than done, but within organizations with a modern mindset, it’s happening.

Digital transformation is driving modernization within these organizations, and we explored three areas undergoing major changes within the proposal side of the business:

• Managing the RFP process with new platforms such as RFP software and tools such as AI and automation
• Navigating the speed and efficiency workflow demands that inevitably accompany technological advancements
• Meeting the evolving needs and expectations of customers who are undergoing similar changes

Modern financial services organizations that now find themselves in this period of transformation are looking to future-proof their business and accelerate secure growth. While change may come faster to some, whether driven by internal or external influences, the future of response management in financial services looks to turn an operational challenge into a competitive advantage.