Top 10 AI Prompts and Use Cases and in the Financial Services Industry in Des Moines
Last Updated: August 16th 2025

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Des Moines financial teams can deploy top AI prompts for chatbots, fraud detection, credit scoring, forecasting, and compliance to cut cycle times and costs: examples include Principal's AWS approvals cut “months to weeks,” Nilus reducing month‑end close 20→6 days, and 70% fraud reduction.
Des Moines is a national hub for financial services innovation - home to Principal Financial Group, which manages roughly $695 billion in assets and used a cloud-first strategy to cut AWS service approval times “from months to weeks,” accelerating secure AI projects and safer deployments; local banks and credit unions can similarly deploy conversational agents and anomaly detection to speed service and reduce fraud, as Principal's Amazon Lex voice virtual assistant work shows benefits for call routing and analytics (Principal Financial Group cloud security case study on AWS, Amazon Lex virtual assistant implementation and analytics).
For Des Moines teams ready to act, building practical prompt-writing and AI workflow skills matters - Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work bootcamp registration teaches tools and prompts that turn pilots into production impact, so organizations move from experiments to measurable reductions in call time and approval bottlenecks.
Bootcamp | Details |
---|---|
AI Essentials for Work | 15 weeks; early-bird $3,582; syllabus: AI Essentials for Work syllabus; registration: Register for AI Essentials for Work |
"I see it driving smarter decision-making, hyper-personalized customer experiences and stronger risk management," - Kathy Kay, Principal Financial Group
Table of Contents
- Methodology - How we selected the Top 10 use cases and prompts
- Automated customer service - Denser chatbot for RFPs and FAQs
- Fraud detection and prevention - FinSecure Bank transaction anomaly detector
- Credit risk assessment and scoring - Zest AI credit-scoring assistant
- Algorithmic trading and portfolio management - BlackRock Aladdin signal assistant
- Personalized financial products & marketing - MetroBank Group customer insights prompts
- Regulatory compliance and AML monitoring - Principal Financial Group QnABot for compliance guidance
- Underwriting (insurance & lending) - SecureLife Insurance automated underwriting assistant
- Financial forecasting & predictive analytics - Nilus treasury forecasting prompts
- Back-office automation & efficiency - Workiva reconciliation and reporting assistant
- Cybersecurity & threat detection - CardGuard Bank behavioral threat detector
- Conclusion - Next steps for Des Moines financial teams starting with AI
- Frequently Asked Questions
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Accelerate your AI journey by attending local events and networking in Des Moines like the Iowa Technology Summit 2025.
Methodology - How we selected the Top 10 use cases and prompts
(Up)Selection prioritized use cases that showed measurable, repeatable value for Des Moines teams: priority went to prompts and workflows that cut cycle times (Principal's cloud work shortened AWS service approvals “from months to weeks”), bolstered security-ready AI paths, and scaled existing automation so local IT groups could own deployment - evidence includes a factsheet automation program that produced a Des Moines “Center of Excellence” and reduced business days for reporting; cases that demonstrated high-message volumes or fast provisioning (xMatters' 350,000 messages/month and 1,100 subscriptions built in a month) scored highly for operational resilience and scale.
Each candidate use case had at least one demonstrable outcome (time-to-market, days saved, or security controls documented), a clear data boundary for compliance, and a low-friction path for reuse across regional insurers, credit unions, and asset managers - criteria informed by Principal's cloud + AI testing strategy and Vermilion's multi-domicile reporting work to ensure prompts map to auditable, secure workflows (Principal Financial Group cloud security case study on AWS, Principal Financial Group factsheet automation case study).
“Working with AWS experts, we've established a cloud security operating model that enhances our security posture, accelerates our development process, and meets our speed-to-market goals securely.” - Matt Raveling, Assistant Vice President of Technology at Principal Financial Group
Automated customer service - Denser chatbot for RFPs and FAQs
(Up)Des Moines banks, credit unions, and proposal teams can cut friction in high-volume support and tender workflows by deploying a no-code, document-trained assistant like Denser to answer FAQs and parse RFPs - these bots pull answers directly from uploaded policies and past bids, attach a highlighted source for auditability, and scale across web and messaging channels so compliance teams can verify responses without repeated SME checks (Denser no-code chatbot overview for document-trained assistants).
Pairing that transparent retrieval with proven RFP prompting patterns and agentic workflows can move drafts dramatically faster - platform case studies show pre-prompting and agentic RFP systems reduce manual drafting time and deliver win-ready content up to 70% faster than starting from scratch (Thalamus AI RFP prompts and agentic workflow findings).
Invest in a clean, guided UI (welcome messages, quick-reply buttons, clear handoff cues) to lower caller confusion and escalate complex asks to humans - best-practice designs that improve UX and conversion are detailed in Sendbird's chatbot UI guide (Sendbird chatbot UI examples and best practices), a practical checklist for Des Moines teams aiming for faster responses and auditable accuracy.
Feature | Why it matters for Des Moines financial teams |
---|---|
Document-trained answers | Uses past RFPs, policies, and FAQs to keep replies compliant and consistent |
Source highlighting | Provides an audit trail for regulators and internal reviewers |
No-code UI | Enables operations teams to iterate flows without developer backlog |
Fraud detection and prevention - FinSecure Bank transaction anomaly detector
(Up)FinSecure Bank's transaction anomaly detector shows how Des Moines firms can move from brittle rule sets to adaptive, real‑time AI that baselines customer behavior, spots contextual outliers (location, frequency, device), and prioritizes true threats for investigator review - an approach proven to cut false positives and speed resolution in large banks (AI risk management case studies and metrics for banks).
Techniques such as unsupervised clustering, autoencoders, and behavioral profiling help surface novel fraud patterns without constant rule-tuning, while real-world deployments report dramatic wins (HSBC and JPMorgan saw major drops in false positives and faster processing; DBS reported steep investigation-time reductions).
For Iowa teams this matters: fewer false blocks mean smoother retail and ag‑banking transactions for local customers and less manual review burden for compliance officers - start with an AI+rules hybrid, continuous model retraining, and explainability to meet examiners' needs; practical algorithm choices and stepwise integration are detailed in anomaly detection guides (anomaly detection strategies for financial fraud) and local use-case guidance (fraud detection use cases in Iowa financial services).
Example bank | Reported outcome |
---|---|
HSBC | 2–4× increase in detection; ~60% reduction in false positives |
JPMorgan Chase | Notable decline in fraud; ~20% reduction in false positives |
DBS Bank | ~90% reduction in false positives; 75% reduction in investigation times |
“AI-based tools reduce false positives by up to 30%, helping us focus on the alerts that really matter.”
Credit risk assessment and scoring - Zest AI credit-scoring assistant
(Up)Des Moines lenders and credit unions can shrink underwriting timelines and reach more creditworthy Iowans by adopting Zest AI's machine‑learning underwriting: enterprise customers report auto‑decisioning rates of 70–83% that free underwriters to focus on complex cases, while independent analysis shows Zest's models can increase approvals for underrepresented borrowers (Latinas, African Americans, women, seniors) by 197%, opening credit to applicants traditional scores miss - so what: local banks can serve more customers without raising portfolio risk and deliver near‑real‑time decisions for auto and home loans (Zest AI machine‑learning underwriting, case study on Zest AI's impact in lending).
Start with a controlled pilot on one product line, monitor lift by cohort, and keep explainability controls for exam readiness.
Metric | Reported impact |
---|---|
Approvals for underrepresented groups | 197% increase (case study) |
Auto‑decisioning rate (credit unions) | 70–83% auto‑decisioning (Zest AI testimonial) |
“Zest AI's underwriting technology is a game changer for financial institutions. The ability to serve more members, make consistent decisions, and manage risk has been incredibly beneficial to our credit union.” - Jaynel Christensen, Chief Growth Officer
Algorithmic trading and portfolio management - BlackRock Aladdin signal assistant
(Up)For Des Moines asset managers and pension teams looking to scale algorithmic trading and portfolio oversight, BlackRock's Aladdin platform brings a “whole‑portfolio” data language and built‑in signal tools that turn disparate risk, trading and private‑market feeds into actionable signals - Aladdin's integrated risk analytics and trade‑execution hooks let teams test thematic ideas and stress scenarios at enterprise scale, while BlackRock Systematic's Thematic Robot shows how LLM‑powered workflows can assemble thematic equity baskets in minutes rather than days, speeding hypothesis-to-trade cycles for local managers and helping trustees see concentration risks faster (BlackRock Aladdin platform - unified portfolio risk and trading, How AI is transforming investing - BlackRock insights on AI in finance).
Start small: run Aladdin‑style simulations on a single fund to validate signals, document explainability, and shrink monitoring time for ag‑exposed and municipal bond sleeves common in Iowa portfolios.
Function | Benefit for Des Moines teams |
---|---|
Whole‑portfolio data language | Unifies public and private exposures for clearer risk views |
Thematic Robot / LLM signals | Builds thematic baskets fast, accelerating idea testing |
Integrated risk & trading | Faster stress tests and trade execution with fewer data silos |
Aladdin® is a tech platform that unifies the investment management process through a common data language.
Personalized financial products & marketing - MetroBank Group customer insights prompts
(Up)MetroBank's playbook shows how prompt-driven customer insights and channel-first messaging combine to deliver measurable lift: an AI analytics program drove a 30% bump in customer satisfaction and, by running real‑time sentiment and channel analytics, produced a 20% rise in engagement and 35% higher product uptake - outcomes Des Moines banks can replicate by tuning prompts to local agent language, ag‑season cycles, and branch+mobile touchpoints (MetroBank AI analytics customer satisfaction case study).
Pair those signals with affordable rich messaging - Infobip's Viber for Business integration cut message costs 30–50% while enabling personalized, CRM-driven journeys (Infobip Viber for Business integration for Metrobank) - and use survey-driven insight loops to prioritize offers (InMoment tripled response rates and improved NPS) so targeted prompts produce faster, auditable uptake in local markets (InMoment Metro Bank customer-centricity and insight program).
The so-what: a 30% satisfaction gain plus up to 50% messaging savings creates a clear ROI path for Des Moines teams to scale personalized deposit, mortgage, and small‑business offers without ballooning acquisition costs.
Metric | Reported result |
---|---|
Customer satisfaction | +30% (MetroBank AI analytics) |
Engagement | +20% (case study) |
Product uptake | +35% (case study) |
Rich messaging cost savings | 30–50% (Infobip Viber integration) |
Survey response rates | 3× (InMoment partnership) |
Infobip provided a solution enabling quick benefits from Viber for Business, with an easy Salesforce integration, no disruption to business processes, and a local Philippines office for support. - Ramon Martin Rodriguez, Performance Marketing Head
Regulatory compliance and AML monitoring - Principal Financial Group QnABot for compliance guidance
(Up)Principal's QnABot deployment demonstrates a practical path for Des Moines compliance teams to embed generative AI while preserving auditability: the Principal AI Generative Experience pairs QnABot with Amazon Q Business and Bedrock, integrates Azure Entra ID for SSO and RBAC, and keeps data within the company tenant so answers remain traceable to source documents - an initial proof of concept went from idea to preproduction in three months and cut time-to-respond on RFPs and client inquiries by about 50%, with users accepting or building on over 95% of answers (Principal QnABot on AWS: implementation and results).
For Iowa exam-readiness, that combination of RBAC, monitoring dashboards, and retrieval-augmented generation creates an auditable trail that reduces manual review work for AML and compliance officers while preserving human oversight - a pattern local banks and credit unions can adapt to speed reviews without loosening controls (Practical AI deployment guidance for Des Moines financial teams).
Feature | Benefit for Des Moines compliance teams |
---|---|
SSO + RBAC (Azure Entra ID) | Fine-grained access control for examiner-ready audits |
RAG + Amazon Q Business | Faster, source-linked answers - ~50% faster RFP responses |
POC timeline | 3 months to preproduction, enabling quick pilot-to-scale |
Answer quality | 95%+ user acceptance; >99% document relevance reported |
Underwriting (insurance & lending) - SecureLife Insurance automated underwriting assistant
(Up)SecureLife Insurance's automated underwriting assistant ingests unstructured submissions (MRCs, SOVs, loss runs) with OCR + NLP, extracts key attributes, triages by risk score, and surfaces explainable recommendations for human review - an approach aligned with industry playbooks that transforms throughput and accuracy for Iowa carriers and credit unions.
Document‑automation pilots show big wins: V7 Labs documents up to an 80% reduction in manual data entry for submission ingestion, while platform vendors report shrinking submission handling from 45 minutes to 3 minutes and time‑to‑quote to roughly 10 minutes when integrations and third‑party data are in place; Earnix and Businessware note automated decisions for many standard policies can occur in minutes with high accuracy.
For Des Moines teams that underwrite ag, municipal, and small‑business risks, the practical payoff is faster quotes, fewer rekeys and errors, and more capacity for complex referrals - provided explainability, human‑in‑loop controls, and audit trails are built into rollout (V7 Labs AI underwriting guide: automated document processing and AI underwriting, Cogitate underwriting workbench case study: accelerating submission processing, Earnix guide to using AI in insurance underwriting).
Metric | Reported result |
---|---|
Submission ingestion manual entry | Up to 80% reduction (V7 Labs) |
Submission processing time | 45 minutes → 3 minutes; time‑to‑quote ≈10 minutes (Cogitate) |
Automated decisioning | Standard policies: decisions in ~12.4 minutes with high accuracy (Earnix) |
“AI won't replace underwriters, but underwriters who use AI will outcompete those who don't.”
Financial forecasting & predictive analytics - Nilus treasury forecasting prompts
(Up)Des Moines treasury teams can use Nilus' forecasting prompts to move from retrospective spreadsheets to live, decision‑grade cash forecasts: by automating bank and ERP feeds and applying transaction auto‑tagging, teams have cut month‑end closes from 20 days to 6, achieved 95–98% auto‑tagging rates, and run bottom‑up scenarios in real time - deliverables that turn idle balances into deployable liquidity and shorten the cycle for investment or debt decisions; practical deployment notes and KPIs are documented in Nilus' real use case and forecasting guide (Nilus AI in Treasury case study: faster close and better forecasting, Nilus guide to cash forecasting with AI and automation), showing implementations in weeks not months and a path for local credit unions, municipal treasuries, and regional banks to reallocate reconciliation time into strategic cash management.
Metric | Nilus reported result |
---|---|
Month‑end close | 20 days → 6 days |
Transaction auto‑tagging | 95–98% |
Implementation speed | Implemented in weeks (3 weeks example) |
Forecasting accuracy (customer) | ~95% reported |
“With Nilus, we finally had a complete, summarized view of our cash, allowing us to strategically manage and time our cash flow with just a few clicks. We were no longer spending hours piecing together data; instead, we could focus on the strategic aspects of cash management.” - Steven Miller, Sr. Manager, Treasury Services
Back-office automation & efficiency - Workiva reconciliation and reporting assistant
(Up)For Des Moines finance teams focused on closing faster and staying exam-ready, Workiva's connected reporting platform and Gen AI add a practical layer between ledgers and disclosures: the platform is widely used for connected reporting and compliance for public companies (Workiva connected reporting platform for public company compliance), and its Gen AI tooling helps draft SOX narratives, summarize disclosures, and keep reports linked to source systems for automatic updates (Workiva Gen AI for SOX narratives and ESG reporting).
Pairing that capability with document‑trained assistants can shift routine reconciliations into automated matching and exception queues, reducing manual handoffs at credit unions and regional banks (Generative AI for back-office automation in Des Moines financial services).
The payoff: linked, pre‑populated, audit‑ready disclosures that let reviewers trace numbers back to source systems, shortening audit prep and freeing staff for higher‑value analysis.
Feature | Benefit for Des Moines teams |
---|---|
Connected reporting | Unifies ERP/GL feeds into one source for consistent disclosures and faster close |
Gen AI for SOX/ESG | Drafts narratives and summaries that remain linked to source data for auditability |
Reconciliation automation | Automates matching, surfaces exceptions for review, and reduces manual rekeying |
Cybersecurity & threat detection - CardGuard Bank behavioral threat detector
(Up)Behavioral analytics are delivering measurable defense improvements for banks that mirror challenges faced by Des Moines financial institutions: CardGuard Bank's ML‑based behavioral detector cut credit‑card fraud incidents by 70% in year one and reduced false‑alert complaints by 80%, while a separate top‑bank deployment using behavioral analytics detected attacks 4× faster, trimmed digital onboarding costs 30%, and had NeuroID flag 40% of manually approved cases as risky (CardGuard Bank behavioral analytics case study - AI in finance, Experian behavioral analytics case study - faster fraud detection).
For Des Moines credit unions and regional banks serving ag, municipal and retail customers, supervised and unsupervised behavioral models with real‑time alerts can cut losses, lower manual review volume, and reduce customer friction - start by instrumenting telemetry, routing high‑confidence alerts to automated blocks, and keeping human reviewers for edge cases to preserve auditability (Fraud detection use cases in Iowa - financial services AI guide).
Program | Reported outcome |
---|---|
CardGuard Bank (behavioral analytics) | 70% reduction in credit‑card fraud; 80% decrease in false‑alert complaints |
Top bank (Experian case) | 4× faster detection; 30% lower digital onboarding costs; 40% of manual approvals flagged risky by NeuroID |
Conclusion - Next steps for Des Moines financial teams starting with AI
(Up)Des Moines teams ready to move from experiments to impact should follow a focused pilot path: pick one high‑value use case (RFPs, AML, or month‑end cash forecasting), define clear KPIs, assemble a cross‑functional team, and run a 3–6 month pilot that isolates data boundaries and examiner‑ready controls so results are auditable; practical steps and common pitfalls are outlined in a hands‑on AI pilot guide for financial services teams, while a six‑step industry roadmap shows how to evolve pilots into enterprise programs without losing governance (Six‑Step Roadmap to AI in Banking).
Aim for measurable wins - examples in this guide include ~50% faster RFP responses and faster closes that free staff for higher‑value work - and build internal skills so teams can own models; Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work bootcamp is a practical next step to learn prompt writing, tools, and pilot execution so a single validated pilot becomes a repeatable, scalable program that shifts capacity from manual reviews to strategic decisions.
Bootcamp | Length | Early‑bird Cost | Registration |
---|---|---|---|
AI Essentials for Work | 15 Weeks | $3,582 | Register for AI Essentials for Work bootcamp |
“The most impactful AI projects often start small, prove their value, and then scale. A pilot is the best way to learn and iterate before committing.” - Andrew Ng
Frequently Asked Questions
(Up)What are the top AI use cases and prompts for financial services teams in Des Moines?
Key use cases include: automated customer service (document-trained chatbots for RFPs and FAQs), fraud detection and prevention (transaction anomaly detectors), credit risk assessment and scoring (ML underwriting assistants), algorithmic trading and portfolio management (signal assistants and whole-portfolio analytics), personalized financial products and marketing (prompt-driven customer insights), regulatory compliance and AML monitoring (retrieval-augmented Q&A bots with RBAC), underwriting automation (OCR + NLP ingestion and triage), financial forecasting and predictive analytics (treasury forecasting prompts), back-office reconciliation and reporting (connected reporting with GenAI), and cybersecurity/behavioral threat detection. Prompts should focus on retrieval-augmented generation, auditability (source highlighting), clear handoffs to humans, and domain-specific pre-prompting to reduce cycle times and ensure compliance.
What measurable outcomes have local or comparable organizations achieved using these AI solutions?
Reported outcomes from vendors and deployments include: AWS approval cycles shortened from months to weeks (Principal), ~50% faster RFP and client-response times (Principal QnABot POC), 70–83% auto-decisioning rates for credit underwriting (Zest AI), up to 197% increase in approvals for underrepresented borrowers (Zest case study), fraud false positives reductions of ~60–90% (HSBC, JPMorgan, DBS), 70% reduction in credit-card fraud (CardGuard Bank), month-end close reduced from 20 to 6 days and 95–98% transaction auto-tagging (Nilus), 30% increase in customer satisfaction and 35% higher product uptake (MetroBank analytics), and large drops in investigation times and manual processing across underwriting and document automation pilots.
How should Des Moines teams start pilots to move from experiments to production?
Begin with a focused 3–6 month pilot on one high-value use case (e.g., RFP automation, AML, or treasury forecasting). Define clear KPIs (time-to-respond, false-positive rates, auto-decision rate, close time), assemble a cross-functional team (IT, compliance, business SMEs), isolate data boundaries for compliance, implement RBAC and monitoring, use retrieval-augmented workflows for auditable sources, and maintain human-in-the-loop controls and explainability. Validate measurable wins, document governance, and scale incrementally once outcomes are repeatable.
What technical and governance controls are recommended to keep AI deployments exam-ready and secure?
Recommended controls include: retrieval-augmented generation with source highlighting for audit trails, SSO and RBAC (e.g., Azure Entra ID) for fine-grained access, separation of tenant data and clear data boundaries, monitoring and logging dashboards, human-in-the-loop review for edge cases, model retraining and versioning, explainability mechanisms for decisions (especially in underwriting and credit scoring), and hybrid AI+rules approaches for fraud and AML to reduce false positives while preserving investigator workflows.
What skills or training should Des Moines financial teams pursue to maximize AI impact?
Teams should develop prompt-writing and AI workflow skills, learn retrieval-augmented generation patterns, and gain practical experience with document training, agentic workflows, model monitoring, and governance. Hands-on bootcamps like Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work (15 weeks) teach prompt design, pilot execution, and production readiness so teams can convert single pilots into repeatable programs that reduce call times, approval bottlenecks, and manual review burdens.
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Ludo Fourrage
Founder and CEO
Ludovic (Ludo) Fourrage is an education industry veteran, named in 2017 as a Learning Technology Leader by Training Magazine. Before founding Nucamp, Ludo spent 18 years at Microsoft where he led innovation in the learning space. As the Senior Director of Digital Learning at this same company, Ludo led the development of the first of its kind 'YouTube for the Enterprise'. More recently, he delivered one of the most successful Corporate MOOC programs in partnership with top business schools and consulting organizations, i.e. INSEAD, Wharton, London Business School, and Accenture, to name a few. With the belief that the right education for everyone is an achievable goal, Ludo leads the nucamp team in the quest to make quality education accessible