The Financial Services Leaderboard — ARA Financial Services Q3 2026

Competitive Ranking — by Total ARA Score

17 financial services brands. Five attributes are scored 0 to 20 each and summed to 100. The cohort average is 67. Scores run from 79 to 54.

01 Visa

STRONG

+12 vs avg

02 Stripe

STRONG

03 Mastercard

STRONG

04 American Express

STRONG

05 Vanguard

STRONG

06 Charles Schwab

AVERAGE

07 Goldman Sachs

AVERAGE

08 Bloomberg

AVERAGE

09 S&P Global

AVERAGE

10 Morgan Stanley

AVERAGE

11 BlackRock

AVERAGE

12 Venmo

AVERAGE

13 Fidelity

AVERAGE

14 State Street

AVERAGE

15 PayPal

AVERAGE

16 Nasdaq

AVERAGE

17 Blackstone

WEAK

-13 vs avg

WINNER / Top

Visa 79

chosen 17× of 60 / 28% / 4 of 4 models

Visa holds first place in the payments trust questions, and models named it in seven of fifteen questions. It stays absent from fraud handling, CFO partnership and regulator record, and Claude pairs it with Mastercard rather than naming it alone.

Wins: most trusted name, next ten years, technology never fails, hardest to replace, crisis resilience.

Absent from: trust with money, trusted research data, fraud breach handling, cfo partners.

WINNER / Strongest attribute

Mastercard 74

AI Recommendation 16/20 against a cohort average of 8.1.

chosen 15× of 60 / 25% / 4 of 4 models

All four models name Mastercard, and the models choose it in a quarter of the answers. In most of those answers the models write Mastercard as the second half of a Visa and Mastercard pair.

Wins: most innovative, crisis resilience, next ten years, ahead in ai, hardest to replace.

Absent from: trust with money, trusted research data, technology never fails, fraud breach handling.

LOSER / Weakest attribute

Venmo 62

AI Recommendation 0/20 against a cohort average of 8.1.

chosen 0× of 60 / 0% / 0 of 4 models

No model recommended Venmo for any of the fifteen trust questions. Venmo may sit outside the category the questions define, since the battery asks about crisis survival and AI leadership.

Absent from: most trusted name, trust with money, crisis resilience, next ten years.

LOSER / Bottom

Blackstone 54

chosen 1× of 60 / 2% / 1 of 4 models

Blackstone manages 1.35 trillion dollars and four models named it once in sixty answers. No model named it first anywhere, and none named it for trust, crisis strength or AI leadership.

Absent from: most trusted name, trust with money, crisis resilience, next ten years.