NewsTech NewsBusiness News

FinAi Podcast

FinAi News

The FinAi podcast, which covers current trends and intriguing topics in automation and beyond, is the definitive source for insights and news surrounding automation in financial services.

Play

Open in

20 episodes
Avg 19 min
English

Episodes 20

Newest Oldest Longest

All20 Unplayed20 In progress0 Played0

#310
Friday · 24 min
Mastercard focuses on ‘Verifiable Intent’ for agentic payments, CDO says
Nearly a year after launching Agent Pay, Mastercard is focused on developing trust to drive adoption. “The first thing is the consumer needs to know that they can trust the interaction,” Mastercard Chief Digital Officer Pablo Fourez tells FinAi News on this episode of the “FinAi Podcast.” “They need to know that if ‘I shop with this agent and something goes wrong, I am protected.’” Agent Pay, announced in April 2025, has now rolled out across Mastercard’s global operations, enabling the company's network of issuing banks to participate in agentic commerce, Fourez says. Central to Mastercard's approach to agentic payments is "Verifiable Intent," a specification the company co-developed with Google and open-sourced through standards bodies including the FIDO Alliance, he says. Verifiable Intent is an open, standards-based trust layer for agentic commerce that creates a tamper-resistant record of what users authorized when an AI agent acts on their behalf, according to a March Mastercard release. Verifiable Intent “helps basically a merchant understand that this is actually an agent that they can trust," Fourez says. Looking ahead, he says next year will bring more autonomous use cases and growth in machine-to-machine payments, including agent-to-agent transactions tied to business-to-business commerce. Listen as Fourez discusses how Mastercard aims to develop and drive adoption of agentic payments.
#309
August 27 · 14 min
Robotics, AI reduce manual processes at J.P. Morgan Payments
J.P. Morgan Payments is looking to AI to remove friction from workflows — freeing up employees from repetitive and manual tasks. "The workflow surrounding the payment has traditionally been very manual," Michelle Conklin, head of receivables and public sector product and operations for J.P. Morgan Payments, tells FinAi News on this episode of the "FinAi Podcast." It's "a manually intensive process that has multiple steps throughout," from physically receiving the mail, opening envelopes, extracting documents, capturing documents, entering data and resolving exceptions, she says. That's where AI is transforming the paper process into a digital effort. J.P. Morgan Payments has deployed a mail automation robot within its lockbox sites, tapping robots to open envelopes, remove and unfold the contents, scan documents and extract data, she says. Removing manual steps of check processing and data capture is a big help considering the bank processed more than 130 million checks in 2025, she says. "When you operate at the scale that we do, even the smallest inefficiencies become significant," she says. "We are transforming a highly intensive paper process into a more digital, efficient and scalable experience for both our clients, but also equally for our employees." Now employees can use their time and resources for exceptions, problem solving, client support and oversight. Listen as Conklin discusses how J.P. Morgan Payments is using AI to digitalize historically manual processes.
#308
August 6 · 16 min
AI adoption among SMBs doubles YoY, according to TD survey
Small businesses are increasingly looking to AI to improve operations – and banks must be able to meet the needs of those clients. According to the 2026 TD Financial Preparedness Survey, released in April, 69% of business owners already use AI to reduce expenses, up from 39% in the 2025 survey. The survey polled 1,000 U.S. business owners with 100 or fewer employees. “That was a dramatic increase,” Chris Ward, head of small business banking at TD Bank U.S., tells FinAi News on this episode of the “FinAi Podcast.” In the survey, small business owners identified the top benefits of AI for their businesses: Customer service; Fraud and cybersecurity; and Sales and marketing. AI in SMB banking While small businesses deploy AI internally, they are also looking to their financial services provider for advice and insights. “Operating a small business is really complex nowadays,” Ward says. “It’s tough to be a small business owner, so we found that giving tools to our business customers to help them manage their cash flow is more important than ever.” That’s where the bank’s Small Business Dashboard, or cash flow management tool, comes into play, he says. It offers insights, forecasts future cash flow needs and allows for benchmarking across other businesses in the same industry. “They’re looking for information and they’re looking for somebody who can help them manage their cash flow more intelligently,” Ward says. Listen as Ward discusses how SMBs use AI and how TD is keeping up with the demand for intelligent small business banking solutions.
#307
April 8 · 12 min
Why tax season serves as an AI stress test for banks
Tax season adds stress to banking systems with a surge in transactions, fraud threats, data complexity and necessary risk controls. This added stress, including to AI systems, can expose gaps in data quality, Mark Blake, financial services industry practice lead at data management solution provider Stibo Systems, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. Those gaps to watch for in AI systems include: Mismatched data; Missing data; Lineage issues; and Auditability issues. Financial institutions must ensure “they’re meeting and satisfying the regulators, and they need to be confident that their AI models also stand up to that pressure,” Blake says. Listen as Blake discusses AI readiness at financial institutions this tax season.
#306
February 24 · 19 min
FIs deploy cloud-based AI agents
Financial institutions have established cloud partners and now those cloud providers are being tapped for agentic AI, Ravi Khokhar, executive vice president and head of cloud at Capgemini, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. "The role of cloud has now become an enabler for AI across financial services,” Khokar says. For example, banks are tapping their cloud providers to host agents, creating processes that are “a little bit more intentional for managing risk, compliance, explainability,” he says. Netherlands-based bank ABN AMRO tapped Microsoft and Capgemini to migrate its existing chatbot to the cloud, according to Capgemini’s ” “World Report Series 2026: Cloud in Financial Services.” The bank migrated its chatbot infrastructure to Microsoft Copilot Studio to create an agent that integrates generative AI features and scalability. Before moving it to the cloud, the chatbot had high customer drop-off rates, limited capabilities and high operating costs, according to the report. Now, the agent’s language processing accuracy in Dutch has increased by 7% and overall drop-off rates fell. Listen as Khokhar discusses agentic readiness, multicloud and multiagent ecosystems and the importance of governance, trust and training when deploying agentic AI.
#305
February 9 · 14 min
Bank of America’s head of digital speaks on bank’s AI strategy
Bank of America invests about $4 billion annually in AI and other technologies to keep up with the needs of its clients. “AI at the bank … touches everything we do,” Nikki Katz, head of digital at Bank of America, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. Katz leads a team of designers, data scientists, product managers and others who meet the needs of the 59 million clients accessing the bank through its digital channels — its website, mobile app, and its AI-driven assistant Erica. “We make over a thousand different enhancements to [the digital experience] every year,” she says, noting, “We’re constantly tuning Erica.” Erica adoption continues to grow as it is continuously iterated. The latest stats: About 50 million clients have used the AI assistant; Clients have engaged with Erica for almost 19 million hours; and Erica has had over 3 billion interactions. Listen as Katz discusses how her team approaches emerging technology and the application of AI across digital channels at the bank.
#304
February 2 · 20 min
How AI is catching check fraud early
Check fraud remains a threat for financial institutions, but AI can help by detecting anomalies. Check fraud is “a growing concern for many,” Ati Azemoun, vice president of business development at Longmont, Colo.-based software provider ParaScript, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. In fact, 63% of organizations experienced check fraud or attempted check fraud in 2025, according to the Association of Financial Professionals. The AFP surveyed 521 treasury practitioner members. One anomaly AI can detect is signature forgery, Azemoun says. ParaScript’s forgery detection software, SignatureXpert.AI, can compare signatures from previous checks and flag when a signature is different, ultimately stopping the fraud, he says. Founded in 1996, ParaScript banking clients include financial institutions, government agencies and companies in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Australia. In 2025, ParaScript partnered with tech provider BIRGER which will introduce the technology to commercial banks in Mauritius, Africa. Listen as Azemoun discusses the current state of check fraud and how AI is reducing fraud at financial institutions.
#303
January 6 · 23 min
Reimagining payment experiences with agentic AI
AI, in some capacity, has been used within payments for 30 years. The latest evolution in AI is through the agentic lens — transforming transactions and experiences alike. “We're actually thinking about really reimagining not one payment, but an entire experience,” Zachary Aron, principal, Deloitte Consulting, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. For example, how can agents be used for travel, business spending or even date nights, he says, noting that you bought the airfare, but do you need to add a hotel or sightseeing package? Agentic AI can facilitate those payments. Agentic AI makes payments “invisible and easy,” Aron says. Listen to “The Buzz” as Aron discusses the possibilities for agentic transactions this year.
#302
Dec 16, 2025 · 19 min
Rabobank, Santander Brazil see returns from Pega GenAI
Rabobank and Santander Brazil are seeing efficiency gains from generative AI. The European banks use AI Pega GenAI from workflow automation system provider Pegasystems, Steve Morgan, global banking industry lead at Pega, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast.
#301
Nov 25, 2025 · 16 min
White Clay CEO Mac Thompson talks 8 steps for AI implementation
Financial institutions are implementing AI at scale, but logistics should be the focus before diving headfirst into emerging technology. Mac Thompson, chief executive of software provider White Clay, tells FinAi News the eight steps he shares with financial institution clients when approaching AI on this episode of “The Buzz.”
#300
Nov 18, 2025 · 14 min
Austin Capital Bank CEO Erik Beguin on AI-driven fraud
Fraud is on the rise, and AI is contributing to both the solution and the problem. “Fraud is a really large problem and growing exponentially,” Austin Capital Bank Chief Executive Erik Beguintells FinAi News in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. Consumers reported losing $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, according to the FTC. And that’s probably understated, Beguin says, noting that not all consumers report being defrauded, due to embarrassment, being in denial or other reasons. Fraudsters are using AI to target individuals, using it to read social profiles and identify the best way to attack a person, he says. This streamlines an extremely laborious task for bad actors. On the other hand, FIs are using AI to boost account security, Beguin says. For example, consumers and financial institutions are likely to start moving away from usernames and passwords and even traditional multifactor authentication methods. Instead, the market should move toward biometrics and AI-driven device and image authentication.
#299
Nov 11, 2025 · 23 min
Casca CEO Lukas Haffer on opportunities for AI in small business lending
Small business owners need fast access to capital, with fair rates. That’s the reality that Lukas Haffer, chief executive of AI-native loan origination provider Casca, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. For small business owners, the “No. 1 problem is access to capital,” he says. The time it takes to close a Small Business Administration loan, one guaranteed by the SBA, is 90 days, Haffer says. No one has time for that, he says. And this is where AI and a streamlined experience come in. Manual procedures in the lending process, including document collection, analysis and communication, can be streamlined with AI, he says. In fact, Casca is working with financial institutions to do just that. For example, when a client sends an email, creating a response that includes personalized messaging, previous correspondents, and necessary information, it can take 20 to 25 minutes, Haffer says. With Casca, that message can be created in 63 seconds. Casca, founded in 2023, continues to grow. Its most recent fundraise consisted of $29 million in a series A round, bringing total funding to $33 million, according to the company. The round was led by Canapi Ventures. Live Oak Bank, Huntington National Bank and Bankwell Bank also participated. Listen to “The Buzz” as Haffer discusses the opportunity for AI in small business lending and where Casca plans to expand its business.
#298
Sep 9, 2025 · 27 min
FV Bank CEO Miles Paschini on future of stablecoin
FV Bank aims to stay ahead of emerging technology trends, including stablecoins. The Puerto Rico-based digital bank integrated stablecoins three years ago, ahead of the recent excitement around the cryptocurrency, Chief Executive Miles Paschini tells Bank Automation News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. “We had the idea that stablecoins could play an important role in banking, so we integrated with USDC,” he says. Now investment in stablecoins is skyrocketing. In fact, according to British bank Standard Chartered, the stablecoin market is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2028, up from $250 billion last month.
#297
Jul 18, 2025 · 21 min
Piermont Bank CEO Cai-Lee on tapping the $7T embedded finance market
Piermont Bank built its own proprietary API platform to allow companies to tap its embedded finance services, a market that is expected to reach $7 trillion in transaction value in 2026.
#296
Jun 20, 2025 · 22 min
Spring by Citi Managing Director, Global Head Subramanyam on embedded finance
Citi’s embedded finance service, Spring by Citi, is looking to expand its use cases in payments acceptance and foreign exchange by tapping the consumer bank, Managing Director and Global Head Vineeth Subramanyam tells Bank Automation News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. Spring by Citi launched in 2020 and has a global presence in 23 markets. The payment and acceptance and merchant acquiring service sits inside the $1.7 trillion bank’s services organization and is built on Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions payments network.
#295
May 22, 2025 · 22 min
New Fintilect CEO Soergel on the richness of transactional data
Access to transactional data provides the richest insights for personalized banking experiences. “What are [consumers] paying, how are they paying, what kinds of life stages are they in the midst of?” Lindsay Soergel, chief executive at AI-powered digital banking solutions provider Fintilect, asks. She says this information delivers “the greatest value to our financial services customers.” Soergel, who has held leadership positions in the financial services industry for more than 20 years, pointing to her time at PNC, SunTrust Bank, NCR, Kasisto and more, speaks with Bank Automation News for this episode of “The Buzz.” She became CEO at London-based Fintilect in March. Founded in 1985, Fintilect’s client base spans the banking, credit union and auto lending sectors, Soergel says.
#294
Apr 28, 2025 · 19 min
How JPMorgan uses AI to support SMBs
JPMorgan Chase is scaling its digital resources and fintech integrations to support small business owners through economic uncertainty and continued digital transformation. The effort starts with understanding business owners, John Frerichs, head of global SMB payments at the $4.3 trillion bank, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. “Our duty is to be here for our customers in difficult and uncertain times,” he says. According to JPMorgan Chase’s March small business sentiment survey, 78% of respondents were optimistic about the future, with about 40% planning to expand, Frerichs tells BAN. However, tariff concerns could cause confidence to dip slightly in April, he notes. Chase expects the results of its April small business sentiment survey by early May, the bank shared with BAN. With April marking National Financial Literacy Month, Frerichs emphasizes its importance: “We want to make small business owners’ life as easy as possible. Part of that is through financial literacy.” For example, the bank’s Coaching for Impact program, which provides consulting, on-demand financial education and banking tools for entrepreneurs, has grown from four cities to 38 since its 2020 launch to include 82 senior business consultants. “So far, 7,000 small businesses have gone through the program,” Frerichs says. To help business owners make data-informed decisions, Chase applies AI and analytics to transaction data. “We take anonymized transaction data and spin it back to … a small business owner, showing sales, customer demographics and transaction trends,” he says. Chase also offers SMBs end-to-end digital tools, including: Payroll integration via fintech Gusto; An e-commerce gateway through Visa-owned payment gateway Authorize.net; Real-time, same-day and scheduled payment options; Digital invoicing; and Omnichannel acceptance for in-store, online and mobile transactions. “We try to always bring that all together in as streamlined a way as possible,” Frerichs says. “Small business owners need time back.” Learn more about how the nation’s biggest bank is tailoring solutions for SMBs in this episode of “The Buzz.”
#293
Apr 10, 2025 · 26 min
Banks push for cost-effective, multimodal AI tools
Financial institutions are moving beyond pilot projects to implement production-grade, explainable and cost-effective AI solutions that can meet operational and regulatory demands. AI has evolved rapidly since fintech Arteria AI was founded in 2020, Amir Hajian, chief science officer, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. The company provides banks with AI-powered digital documentation services. “2020 was a very simple year where AI was classification and extraction, and now we have all the glory of AI systems that can do things for you and with you,” Hajian says. “We realized one day in 2021 that using language alone is not enough to solve [today’s] problems.” The company began using multimodal models that can not only read but search for visual cues in documents. AI budgets and strategies vary widely among FIs, Hajian says. Therefore, Arteria’s approach involves reengineering large AI models to be smaller and more cost-effective, able to run in any environment without requiring massive computer resources. This allows smaller institutions to access advanced AI without extensive infrastructure. Hajian, who joined Arteria AI in 2020, is also head of the fintech’s research arm, Arteria Cafe. One of Arteria Cafe’s first developments since its creation in January is GraphiT — a tool for encoding graphs into text and optimizing large language model prompts for graph prediction tasks. GraphiT enables graph-based analysis with minimal training data, ideal for compliance and financial services where data is limited and regulations shift quickly. The GraphiT solution operates at roughly one-tenth the cost of previously known methods, Hajian says. Key uses include: Regulatory compliance; Anti-money laundering; Predictive modeling; and Low-data problem solving. Arteria plans to roll out GraphiT at the ACM Web Conference 2025 in Sydney this month.
#292
Mar 25, 2025 · 19 min
Citizens moves from scraping to APIs for payments
Citizens Bank is advancing its digital payments strategy in 2025, with a focus on embedded finance and omnichannel capabilities. For example, Citizens is moving from screen scraping to an API-enabled environment, allowing it to use insights from its private banking segment in other segments, such as SMB, mid-market and commercial, Taira Hall, executive vice president and head of enterprise payments at the $217.5 billion Citizens, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. “One of the benefits of having an enterprise payments function is … we can look at all of our core payment rails and understand at scale … It’s sort of bringing this intertwined aspect to it … making sure that anything we build in one place has connectivity tissue into the rest of the bank,” she says. The bank, she says, is moving forward with its multiyear digital transformation, focusing on: Fintech partnerships; Data and analytics investment; AI deployment; and Expanded capabilities for existing tools, such as the bank’s SMB-focused Cash Flow Essentials payments platform. Learn more from Hall about how Citizens is looking to balance relationship banking with digital innovation in this episode of “The Buzz.” Subscribe to The Buzz Podcast on iTunes or Spotify, or download the episode.
#291
Feb 24, 2025 · 17 min
FairPlay launching AI fairness index tool
FairPlay, a “fairness as a service” startup is launching an index tool in Q3 of this year that shows financial institutions how their underwriting affects consumers. Los Angeles-based Fairplay uses AI-powered data analytics software to help FIs assess the accuracy of their automated loan decision models and provides them with metrics to help identify potential biases, Kareem Saleh, founder and chief executive at FairPlay, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. Saleh was named one of BAN’s executives to watch in 2024. “Fundamentally, what we do is help financial institutions stress test their AI, identify blind spots in their AI and then correct those blind spots,” Saleh says. “And what we find is that something like 25% to 33% of the folks that financial institutions declined probably would have performed as well as the riskiest folks they approve.” Since being founded in 2020, FairPlay has raised $14.5 million toward its tech, according to the online financial database Crunchbase. Keeping data in check But even AI-powered decisioning algorithms require careful examination of the datasets they use, Saleh says. “The conventional wisdom is that AI stands for ‘artificial intelligence,’ but it can sometimes also stand for ‘accidentally incorrect,’” he says. “If you don't have a real clear-eyed view about this bias in the algorithms to overfit to the data, then you might miss the blind spots.” 5 questions for compliance The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in June 2024 approved a rule requiring FIs that use algorithmic appraisal tools to ensure compliance with nondiscrimination laws. Multiple lenders received fines from federal regulators for unfair lending practices in the past two years, including $2.6 trillion Bank of America, $2.4 trillion Citi and $560.5 billion TD Bank. FairPlay’s software enables FIs to answer these questions to help ensure compliance: Is this algorithm fair? If not, why not? Could the algorithm be fairer? How could being fairer economically affect our business? Did we double-check declined loan applications for undeserved denials? Three of the top 10 largest banks are already using FairPlay fair lending analysis software. The names of the banks were not disclosed, but the top three banks by asset size are $4 trillion JPMorgan Chase, followed by the aforementioned Bank of America and Citi. Its newest partner, $7.6 billion Pathward Financial, was added Feb. 18, Saleh says. “Banks that use our software are often able to increase their approval rates by 10%, increase their take rates by 13% and increase positive outcomes by 20%,” he says. Listen to this episode of “The Buzz” podcast as Saleh discusses how banks can leverage AI to improve loan approval rates. Subscribe to The Buzz Podcast on iTunes or Spotify, or download the episode.

Showing 1–20 of 20 episodes