Krishnan NR, IBM Vice President, Account Technical Leaders & Client Engineering, believes that financial services companies have reached a tipping point with the recent rise of Agentic AI. He selected a panel of leading experts in Banking and Financial Services to present a state-of-the-industry conversation for a packed ballroom enjoying lunch at IBM TechXchange Conference 2025 in Orlando, Florida, October 7.

In preparing to moderate the panel, Krishnan reflected on the recent evolution of AI-Automation in the Financial Services Market (FSM). “When you look at Financial Services enterprises today, one of the most exciting shifts is the rise of agents,” he said. “We started with rules-based systems that could answer a few questions.  Over time, we developed intelligent assistants that were pretty good at pulling up some data, engaging you in a conversation and driving some efficiency improvements.  Now, we’re at a point of Agentic AI that can reason, take actions and coordinate across multiple systems.”

Krishnan suggests that Agentic AI represents not just the next step for financial services, but a significant leap forward. “These are not just ‘co-pilots.’ Essentially, what they help you do is automate workflows, make decisions at scale, and completely reshape how work gets done in the context of a financial services organization.”

At TechXchange, Krishnan was joined by a stellar lineup of FSM stars, including Gary Fusco, Senior Vice President, Engineering Director, M & T Bank, Seemal Zuman, Director, AI Growth Products, Visa, Manish Patel, Head of Database and Middleware Service, Worldpay, and Suman Devarasetti, Director, Payments Technology, US Bancorp.

Krishnan is pleased with how the dialog flowed. The room was filled to capacity with FSM industry participants and the open Q&A section provided the audience with a chance to query the panelists.  “The audience was rewarded with deep insights around how Agentic AI technology can be applied in their own context, in their own use cases, within their enterprise.”