Honduran banks facing artificial intelligence
For twenty years, choosing a bank in Honduras began on Google: ten links and the customer decided. Today, a growing share of those queries end up on ChatGPT or Gemini, which don't return a list, but an already-drafted recommendation featuring two, three, or four specific names. The comparison is no longer made by the customer; it's now made by the system.The open report
La Banca Hondureña ante la Inteligencia Artificial (September 2026) measures for the first time which institutions AI surfaces when asked about banking in Honduras, how consistently it does so, what sources it draws its answers from, and how it compares with what Google shows. This article summarizes its key data, tables, and conclusions for banking, marketing, and communications executives.
What the study measures and how it was done
The research was carried out jointly by nine institutions across five countries: Quality Leadership University and Or University (Panama); Universidad de Málaga, ISEEN, AEMD, and Centria Group (Spain); UCEVA (Colombia); Universidad del Valle (Nicaragua); and IAAI (United States). The data are preliminary and come from studies currently under peer review.
Methodology: 150 AI responses and 799 Google results
- 25 real questions phrased in Spanish, exactly as a customer would write them, geolocated to Honduras: which is the best bank, which charges the fewest fees, which is best for a small business, who finances a car, who offers the best mortgages.
- 3 repetitions per question and 2 assistants (ChatGPT and Gemini): 150 AI responses in total.
- 799 Google results (organic and AI Overview) for the same 25 queries.
- Universe of entities: the 18 banks on the public registry of the Comisión Nacional de Bancos y Seguros (CNBS).
- Time window: August 2026.
In total, more than 50,000 data points were analyzed through 300 real observations.
The essentials in three minutes
- There is no single leader, there is a quartet. Banco Atlántida (92.5%), Banco Ficohsa (91.2%), BAC Honduras (88.4%), and Banco de Occidente (69.4%) dominate the general conversation. The fifth bank drops to 56.5%, and from there presence collapses.
- The order changes depending on the channel. The same four banks dominate both Google and AI assistants, but in a different order: Ficohsa leads on Google, and Atlántida leads in AI.
- The question determines who exists. BANHPROVI reaches 100% in housing-related queries, and BANADESA dominates agricultural credit on its own, despite being marginal in the general conversation.
- There is no fixed position, there is a probability. The same question asked three times does not always return the same banks.
- ChatGPT and Gemini source their information in opposite ways. ChatGPT bases 84% of its citations on institutional sources; Gemini's most-cited source is Reddit.
- Outdated information circulates as if it were current. A 2022 award carries four times more weight than the 2025 one, and housing rates from March 2023 are still being recommended.
What changed with AI and why it matters to banks
The intermediary is no longer neutral. A search engine ranks results and lets you choose; an assistant selects, summarizes, and recommends. Appearing or not appearing is binary: a bank that doesn't appear isn't being compared unfavorably, it simply isn't part of the conversation.The surface has narrowed. Where ten results once fit, now only three or four names fit. There is no second page. And there's an added asymmetry: with a search engine, the customer sees the full set of competitors; with an assistant, they receive an already-filtered list without knowing what was left out. Invisibility here is invisible to the customer as well.Almost no one is measuring this. Most institutions have SEO dashboards and traffic reports, but no measurement whatsoever of what AI says about them.
Which Honduran banks does AI recommend: full ranking
Honduras has a compact, highly concentrated banking system: 18 banks for just over ten million inhabitants. That context is reflected in the AI conversation, where a tightly packed leading quartet captures most of the mentions.
Presence of each bank in ChatGPT and Gemini
| Bank | Total presence | ChatGPT | Gemini |
|---|
| Banco Atlántida | 92.50% | 91.80% | 93.20% |
| Banco Ficohsa | 91.20% | 84.90% | 97.30% |
| BAC Honduras | 88.40% | 86.30% | 90.50% |
| Banco de Occidente | 69.40% | 53.40% | 85.10% |
| Banco del País | 56.50% | 46.60% | 66.20% |
| Banco Davivienda Honduras | 26.50% | 32.90% | 20.30% |
| Banco Promérica | 24.50% | 26.00% | 23.00% |
| Banco Lafise Honduras | 23.80% | 21.90% | 25.70% |
| BANHPROVI | 14.30% | 13.70% | 14.90% |
| Banrural Honduras | 14.30% | 9.60% | 18.90% |
| Banco Azteca de Honduras | 12.90% | 2.70% | 23.00% |
| Banco de Honduras (Citi) | 10.90% | 2.70% | 18.90% |
| Banco Popular Honduras | 7.50% | 5.50% | 9.50% |
| BANHCAFE | 6.80% | 6.80% | 6.80% |
| BANADESA | 4.10% | 4.10% | 4.10% |
| FICENSA | 3.40% | 4.10% | 2.70% |
| Banco Cuscatlán Honduras | 1.40% | 2.70% | 0.00% |
| Banco de Los Trabajadores | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
The top six banks account for 77.4% of all recorded appearances. From the sixth spot onward (Davivienda, below 27%) the drop is steep, and below 15% presence stops being a ranking position and becomes an occasional mention.
Same quartet, different order depending on the channel
This is the study's most important nuance. The same four banks dominate both Google and AI assistants, but not in the same order.
| Channel | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th |
|---|
| Google (799 results) | Ficohsa (58) | BAC (37) | Occidente (34) | Atlántida (28) |
| AI assistants (150 responses) | Atlántida (92.5%) | Ficohsa (91.2%) | BAC (88.4%) | Occidente (69.4%) |
Ficohsa leads clearly on Google, with more than double the appearances of Atlántida, but cedes first place to Atlántida in AI by just 1.3 percentage points. This isn't a contradiction: these are two channels that reward different things.A methodological caveat: Gemini tends to name more banks per response than ChatGPT, so any comparison between assistants must be made in relative terms (percentage of responses in which a bank appears), never by adding up raw mentions.
The question determines who exists: leaders by query type
The 25 queries were grouped into three blocks: general (9), product-related (10), and niche (6). The clearest pattern is BANHPROVI: it is virtually absent from the general conversation (5.9%), but triples its presence in product-related questions (20.0%) and completely dominates its specialty.
General recommendations, service, and costs
| Question | Who leads |
|---|
| What is the best bank in Honduras? | BAC, Atlántida, Ficohsa, Occidente (100%) |
| Which bank is best for me in Honduras? | BAC, Atlántida, Ficohsa, Occidente (100%) |
| Which bank has the best customer service? | BAC, Ficohsa (100%) |
| Which bank has the fewest complaints? | Occidente, Atlántida, BAC (100%) |
| What do customers say about the service? | BAC, Ficohsa (100%) |
| Which bank charges the lowest fees? | BAC, Atlántida (83.3%) |
| I'm new to Honduras, which bank do you recommend? | BAC, Atlántida, Ficohsa (100%) |
| Best bank for small businesses? | BAC, Ficohsa (100%) |
| Best image or reputation? | BAC, Ficohsa, Atlántida (100%) |
Credit, housing, savings, and digital banking
| Question | Who leads |
|---|
| Best personal loans? | Occidente, Ficohsa, Atlántida, BAC (100%) |
| Best for financing a car? | BAC (100%) |
| Best credit cards? | BAC (100%) |
| Best mortgage rates? | BANHPROVI, Davivienda (100%) |
| Best for a first home? | BANHPROVI, Atlántida, Ficohsa (100%) |
| Best app or online banking? | BAC (100%) |
| Best interest rates on term deposits? | Banco del País (100%) |
| Best for international transfers? | Atlántida (100%) |
| Best for medium or large companies? | BAC (100%) |
| Best for investing my money? | Banco del País (100%) |
Niche queries: foreigners, foreign trade, remittances, and agriculture
| Question | Who leads |
|---|
| Best for foreigners or residents? | BAC (100%) |
| Best for importing or exporting? | BAC (100%) |
| Best private banking or wealth management? | Atlántida (100%) |
| Best for receiving remittances? | Atlántida (100%) |
| Lowest cost for remittances from the U.S.? | Atlántida (100%) |
| Best for financing crops or agriculture? | BANADESA (100%) |
The most extreme case is BANADESA: with just 4.1% overall presence, it is the only answer AI gives to the agricultural credit query. And BANHPROVI appears in 100% of the two housing questions, a sign that AI has internalized its institutional positioning, not just its volume of web content.
The answer changes every time you ask
The same question, asked three times in a row under identical conditions, did not always return the same banks. Two responses to the same query share, on average,
64.7% of the brands mentioned in ChatGPT and
76.6% in Gemini. Gemini turned out to be more stable than ChatGPT in the Honduran case, the opposite of what one might assume without measuring.The operational consequence: in AI there is no stable position as there is in a search engine; there is only a probability of appearing. A single query is not a data point. The practical rule is to repeat each query at least three times, and to cover more questions with fewer repetitions rather than few questions with many repetitions.
Where each assistant gets what it says
Here lies the deepest difference between the two systems, and the one that matters most to a communications or marketing team.
Types of sources cited by ChatGPT and Gemini
| Source type | ChatGPT | Gemini |
|---|
| Total citations | 424 | 1,144 |
| Official bank websites | 56.80% | 41.40% |
| Regulator (CNBS) | 26.90% | 5.70% |
| Forums and social media / UGC | 1.40% | 17.70% |
| Media and other sites | 14.90% | 35.10% |
ChatGPT builds its answers almost entirely from institutional sources: bank websites and the CNBS portal together account for 83.7% of its citations. Its official comparison tool
