In a landscape where artificial intelligence is rapidly redefining how financial institutions interact with their customers, few founders combine deep academic rigor with real-world fintech execution as convincingly as Michael Dowling.
In this Q&A, the CEO and Founder of Narrative Banking shares how his team is rebuilding the guidance relationship between banks and small businesses — and why reclaiming that role is becoming mission-critical for the future of SME finance.
1. Tell us about yourself / your co-founder(s).
Michael Dowling is steeped in research, as a former fintech professor turned founder. In his research career he built the AI models for modern fintech. Yulia Plaksina pioneered AI financial coaching at a Fortune 100 after her startup was acquired by them.
2. Who are your target customers, and what problem do you address for them?
Our target customers are banks and digital platforms who have a financial relationship with small businesses. We provide an AI-native relationship management solution for these providers that enables them to build strong relationships through the provision of hyper-personalised financial guidance. This helps providers to keep customers, and grow their customers in a way that boosts revenue and loyalty.
3. What is your product / solution, who do you compete with, and what is your USP?
We provide a guidance platform for the small business customers of these financial providers, that fits easily into the current app or dashboard as an extra tab. For the small business it turns cold financial data into warm personalised guidance that is meaningful to the customers in how they run their business. The guidance platform acts as a mentor to the small business owner, a business partner, and a financial partner. To some extent this mimics the role the traditional bank manager used to play for small businesses back before cost cutting laid waste to that role. 70% of small businesses say that personalised financial guidance is critical to them.
Our competitors at the moment are the accounting platforms that are all rushing out AI assistants for small businesses. The problem with those is that small business owners usually log on to their accounting platforms once a month, while we’re embedding in places like bank apps that are visited daily by small business owners. We’re focused on where the eyeballs actually are.
Our USP is the AI engine we built before spinning out of a university in Dublin. This engine is a significant breakthrough in terms of being able to meaningfully understand the small business and the small business owner – their intentions, goals, hopes, and fears. We’ve built a true engagement layer for small business finance.
4. What is your current stage and traction, and how can our network help you in the next 6-12 months?
We’ve just finished the Techstars x ABN AMRO Future of Finance accelerator in Amsterdam. It was a truly transformative experience. We’re now gearing up for our pre-seed raise in January. Our core focus now is on building up our customer base – banks, digital platforms that focus on small business finance – that’s what we’d be hugely interested in from the network.
5. How do you go to market? How are banks or insurers working with you (or can work with you)?
We’ve just signed our first commercial contract with a Tier 1 Irish bank. We’ve also a very good pipeline. Getting in front of bank Heads of SME is a challenge, but with our first contract – and having gone through the full CRA cycle in that bank – we’re now ahead of the pack in terms of being a startup that has actually been there and done that. Our focus now is on getting out there and getting in front of as many SME financial providers as possible.
6. Any relevant industry trends or market shifts we should be watching?
The big trend we’re focused on is the amount of small business owners that are turning to ChatGPT for financial guidance – half of European small businesses use ChatGPT daily. This is driven by the chasm of guidance provided by banks – with ChatGPT stepping into the role. What does this mean for banks if they abdicate all their guidance role to another (more) powerful organization? And at what point does ChatGPT start monetizing its power to embed lending advertising or even embed financing – and, in doing so, completely eat the banks lunch? We view this as the core threat to small business financial providers, but we have the solution to retain that guidance relationship, and the business that comes with it.
7. What’s on your bookshelf or podcast app? Your favourite place for a coffee or a drink?
It’s a cliche but its: The Hard Thing About Hard Things. I read it initially a decade ago and thought it was a nice read, now I’m re-reading it and deeply empathising with every page!
My favourite place for a coffee is Sandycove Store and Yard: https://www.saysaunas.com/ – right next to the famous sea-swimming cove in Dublin, with amazing coffee, completely eclectic furniture, and saunas out the back to warm you up after a frozen dip in the Irish sea. If you’ve ever seen the Apple TV show – Bad Sisters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Sisters ) – you’ll be familiar with the location.
As banks navigate rising competition from AI-first platforms and shifting customer expectations, Narrative Banking’s perspective is both timely and provocative.
By reframing financial data as an ongoing, trusted dialogue rather than a static report, the company is positioning itself at the center of a conversation that will define the next era of small business banking.