Good morning. Intuit, a fintech company, is experiencing a boost to its bottom line with AI.
For more than a decade, the company has operated an AI-driven expert platform strategy, Sandeep Aujla, EVP and CFO at Intuit, told me. Intuit continually practices cleaning up data, powering its AI engines—and “staying humble,” Aujla said. He added that the firm doesn’t have the attitude that “our LLMs [large language models] are the best,” he said. “LLMs are going to be the fastest depreciating assets out there,” he added.
However, Intuit (No. 297 in the Fortune 500), which offers products like TurboTax, Credit Karma, and QuickBooks, has made big gains in leveraging AI for customer-facing applications and for use within the company. Investments in AI are on track to deliver nearly $90 million in annualized efficiencies in its fiscal year 2025, Aujla said. “That was slightly ahead of what we had expected for this year,” he said.
Expert training, workforce operations, and data entry are all areas that got a boost with agentic AI. For instance, the Intuit Assist tool is using AI agents to deliver “done-for-you experiences,” which has contributed to a 20% reduction in the contact rate for TurboTax product support year to date, he said.
Aujla offered an example. When you’re filing your tax returns using the tool, and have sold stocks, bonds, or other securities during the year, you will need a 1099-B supplemental form. The AI agent will ask you to download the form and share it. “AI will then go through the supplemental form and automatically connect what the right tax bases would be,” Aujla explained. That’s saving people multiple hours of work, he said. “I remember when I was doing my taxes myself, and what I would dread was that,” Aujla said. "And it would literally take about three hours.”
“Through over 200 partnerships, we're able to automate 90% of the data that comes into a tax filing,” he added. That’s up from 68% last year. And essentially TurboTax users can have a bespoke experience on the platform, he said.
A goal for Turbo Tax is to reduce that customer support time because “we get paid by the return, and we pay our experts by the hour,” he said. “So if I can automate 90% of their tasks, that's money to the bottom line.”
Internally, including in the finance organization, the company is using AI knowledge engineering and machine learning to automate tasks, like data entry, he said.
Intuit reported on Feb. 25 earnings for its second fiscal quarter that ended Jan. 31. The company reached $3.96 billion in revenue for the quarter, an increase of 17% year over year, which surpassed analyst estimates. Credit Karma revenue was up 36% year over year. And its Global Business Solutions Group revenue was up 19%. Amid the ongoing U.S. tax season, AI-enhanced offerings are giving the company a boost.
Does Aujla have advice for increasing efficiency using AI? “Focus on driving productivity for everyone you serve, and be willing to experiment again and again,” he said.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
