94 resolutions. If a process requires multi-step coordination across departments like account changes or fraud investigations, an AI agent can orchestrate these tasks end-to-end. At Scotiabank, reconciliation reports that once took up to 20 hours are now largely automated. “Reports are painful and time-consuming,” said Matt Loos, manging director of global payments at Scotiabank, in a Microsoft-led session at Sibos 2025. “Now we have agents that clean the data, structure it so systems can talk to each other, and match data to create client insights reports. That allows us to scale something that was extremely manual.” Diana Halder, partner for North American payments at EY, explained how banks can apply AI beyond customer-facing chatbots, which are already common across the industry. “Helping Scotiabank was about looking inside – adding value to the end user and upscaling the operations team,” she said. “The bank deployed AI in the back office, and that really makes it frontier.” Compliance monitoring is another area where agentic AI can meaningfully reduce risk. “Bankers don’t have enough hours in the day to monitor everything,” says Hamblin. “An audit agent or AI-powered Microsoft Teams recording solutions like ASC Technologies’ Recording Insights can ensure checks are performed regularly, surface anomalies, generate suspicious activity reports and initiate follow-up tasks. This frees compliance teams to focus on the cases that genuinely require human review.” The unifying impact of these operational use cases is that they allow banks to function more cohesively. Rather than siloed departments relying on manual processes, agentic AI ensures information circulates effortlessly across teams, improving efficiency and reducing errors. As banks scale their use of AI, Microsoft identifies three evolving phases of agentic adoption. “The first phase is human with assistant where AI supports tasks, research and information gathering to improve individual productivity,” says Hamblin. “The second is human-led agents where AI orchestrates multi-step processes, but employees remain firmly in control. And the third is human-led, agent-operated systems where agents coordinate entire processes across the enterprise, with humans supervising, guiding and focusing on high-value decision-making. “Agentic AI does not replace bankers, it empowers them and gives them more time, insight and capacity to deliver the experiences customers want: personalised guidance, faster service and greater financial confidence. The banks that orchestrate this harmony best will set the tempo for the next era of financial services.” FEATURE Wells Fargo employees are using an AI agent for quick answers about procedures and regulations Photo: Wells Fargo
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