Agentic AI in financial services: What you need to know before building

Agentic AI in financial services represents a significant evolution in automation, combining traditional automation's predefined workflows with generative AI's content creation and extending further to autonomous goal pursuit and decision-making. Unlike traditional systems, agentic AI systems can reason through problems, take actions, and adjust based on results, making them particularly effective in high-impact use cases like fraud detection, customer support automation, compliance, and customer onboarding. Success in deploying agentic AI hinges on starting with focused use cases, establishing clear metrics, and ensuring proper infrastructure, which includes real-time data platforms like Redis for low-latency operations. Compliance and governance are critical, with frameworks requiring explainable, auditable AI-driven decisions and varying levels of human oversight. Institutions that effectively implement agentic AI benefit from improved performance in areas such as claims processing and fraud detection, illustrating the importance of infrastructure readiness and strategic vision in leveraging AI for measurable business outcomes.