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We checked what ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot can read on the websites of 478 ranked fintech and financial-services companies: which AI crawlers their robots.txt shuts out, whether the homepage says anything without JavaScript, whether it describes the company in schema, and who publishes an llms.txt. Checked 2 November 2026, published 2 November 2026.
Short answer: As of 2 November 2026, 2.8% of 464 ranked fintech and financial-services companies block at least one AI crawler in robots.txt, and 1.9% block GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot, the main crawlers of OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity. 35.8% publish an llms.txt. 4.7% of the homepages we could read show 50 words or fewer without JavaScript. Only 55.9% pass all four of our AI search tests.
I'm Moe Alhosni, founder of ROI Maximizer. We run cold email for B2B companies, many of them selling to financial institutions, and our own site is built to be read by AI tools, so we are not neutral on this subject. The method, the sample and every limit are below, and the aggregate data is free to download.
| Measure | Result | Out of |
|---|---|---|
| Block at least one AI crawler (any of the five) | 2.8% (13 companies) | 464 robots.txt answers |
| Block GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot | 1.9% (9) | 464 |
| Block all three of those | 0.4% | 464 |
| Block Bingbot from the whole site | 0.4% | 464 |
| List a sitemap | 84.5% | 464 |
| Publish an llms.txt | 35.8% (165) | 461 sites we could ask |
| Any JSON-LD schema on the homepage | 67.3% | 404 homepages read |
| Organization schema on the homepage | 60.9% | 404 |
| FAQ schema on the homepage | 8.2% | 404 |
| Homepage readable without JavaScript (200+ words) | 93.3% | 404 |
| Homepage is an empty JavaScript shell (50 words or fewer) | 4.7% (19) | 404 |
| Pass all four AI search tests | 55.9% (226) | 404 |
The median homepage served 1132 words of text without JavaScript.
robots.txt is the file that tells crawlers what they may fetch. A block here means the company's robots.txt disallows that crawler from the whole site, either by name or through a rule for all crawlers.
| Crawler | Blocked from the whole site | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 1.9% | OpenAI. Collects pages that may train its models; ChatGPT search uses its own OAI-SearchBot, but sites that block one often block both. |
| ClaudeBot | 1.9% | Anthropic. Collects pages that may train its models; Claude's web search uses separate agents. |
| PerplexityBot | 0.4% | Perplexity. Indexes pages that Perplexity answers cite. |
| Google-Extended | 2.2% | Not a crawler: a robots.txt token that tells Google not to use pages for Gemini. It does not affect Google Search. |
| CCBot | 2.8% | Common Crawl. A public web archive that many AI models are trained on. |
| Bingbot | 0.4% | Bing search, which also feeds Microsoft Copilot and many ChatGPT search results. A control: blocking it removes a site from Bing altogether. |
2.4% of companies name at least one AI crawler and block it while still letting Bingbot in: a deliberate choice about AI, not a site closed to every crawler. Blocking a crawler that only collects training data is a policy choice with little effect on search. Blocking PerplexityBot or Bingbot is different: it keeps the site out of the answers Perplexity, Bing and Copilot give, so when a buyer asks about the company or its category, the answer is built from other people's pages.
Most AI crawlers do not run JavaScript. A homepage that builds its text in the browser looks empty to them, however good it looks to a person.
| Segment | Companies | Blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot | llms.txt | Organization schema | Readable without JavaScript | AI-ready |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payments | 131 | 1.6% | 31% | 63.1% | 90.1% | 55.9% |
| Enterprise fintech (regtech, data, banking infra, finance software) | 80 | 2.6% | 54.5% | 70% | 98.6% | 65.7% |
| Wealth, investing and trading | 73 | 1.4% | 36.1% | 57.4% | 96.7% | 55.7% |
| Lending and alternative finance | 71 | 1.4% | 29% | 52.5% | 91.8% | 49.2% |
| Digital banks and banking-as-a-service | 48 | 4.3% | 36.4% | 60.5% | 94.7% | 55.3% |
| Insurtech | 43 | 0% | 24.4% | 51.4% | 89.2% | 45.9% |
| Crypto and digital assets | 32 | 3.1% | 37.5% | 69.2% | 92.3% | 61.5% |
Digital banks and banking-as-a-service companies are the most likely to block an answer-engine crawler, at 4.3%. Enterprise fintech (regtech, data, banking infra, finance software) has the highest share passing all four tests, at 65.7%. Segments with fewer than 20 companies answering are not shown.
| Region | Companies | Blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot | llms.txt | Organization schema | Readable without JavaScript | AI-ready |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 158 | 2.6% | 46.2% | 65.9% | 94.8% | 61.5% |
| United Kingdom | 147 | 1.4% | 28.2% | 64% | 96.8% | 60% |
| Middle East and North Africa | 52 | 2% | 24% | 53.3% | 93.3% | 44.4% |
| Asia-Pacific | 50 | 4.4% | 34.9% | 57.1% | 80% | 51.4% |
| EU, EEA and Switzerland | 42 | 0% | 46.3% | 61.5% | 92.3% | 56.4% |
| Canada, Latin America and Africa | 29 | 0% | 24.1% | 36% | 88% | 32% |
Regions with fewer than 20 companies answering are not shown.
Our four tests: the site lets GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot fetch the homepage; the homepage serves at least 200 words without JavaScript; it carries Organization schema; and robots.txt or /sitemap.xml lists a sitemap. 117 companies pass all four tests and also publish an llms.txt, among them 365 Finance, 9fin, ACI Worldwide, ANNA, Addepar, Adyen, Alaan, Alan, Alloy, AngelList, Ant International, Aspire.
Download the aggregates (CSV): overall, by segment and by region, under CC BY 4.0. Please credit "ROI Maximizer (roimaxi.com)" with a link to this page. No company is named in the file.
Related data: the Financial Services Outbound Index, our quarterly read on outbound into finance, and the fintech email security benchmark on the same 478 companies. For which lead generation agencies AI assistants name when buyers ask, see the quarterly AI recommendation leaderboard. For how we reach buyers at these firms, see lead generation for financial services.
Some do. As of 2 November 2026, 2.8% of 464 ranked fintech and financial-services companies block at least one AI crawler from their whole site in robots.txt, and 1.9% block GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot.
35.8% of the 461 ranked fintechs whose /llms.txt we could request publish one, counting only real text files and not pages that answer every address with the homepage.
Often not. Most AI crawlers read the HTML a server sends and do not run JavaScript. 4.7% of the fintech homepages we read showed 50 words or fewer without it, so an AI crawler sees almost nothing on them.
Lets GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot fetch the homepage, serves at least 200 words with no JavaScript, has Organization (or a subtype) JSON-LD on the homepage, and lists a sitemap. 55.9% of the 404 companies where all four could be checked pass.
ROI Maximizer, a B2B lead generation agency, as part of its free research on financial services. The full name of the dataset is Fintech AI Search Readiness 2026.
ROI Maximizer is a trading name of M Ventures LTD, registered in England and Wales, company no. 15554493. Registered office: 4 Beau Street, Bath BA1 1QY, United Kingdom. moe@roimaxi.com
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