Smartstream Smart Agents delivers 70% reduction in back-office investigation time, proving the case for autonomous operations

• Smart Agents is demonstrating on average 70% reduction in time per user – cutting exception handling from 14 minutes manually to just 30 seconds.
• Based on Smartstream’s pilot tests, Smart Agents provides 30–60% faster resolution times and 20–40% fewer escalations across exception-heavy workflows.
• Smart Agents will be deployed across bank reconciliations, cash breaks, settlement exceptions, and AML/KYC investigations, where it will natively integrate across the Smart solution suite, as well as, third-party and internal systems.

Smartstream, the trusted data solutions provider for leading global financial institutions and enterprises, today announces that Smart Agents – its agentic AI solution for bank back-office operations is delivering measurable, transformational impact, with pilot results showing a 70% reduction in investigation time per user, per break.

As the industry accelerates toward a service as software (SaaS) operating model, and allowing more work to get done from software solutions, Smartstream is embracing this approach with agentic AI. The results validate a fundamental shift in how financial institutions approach exception management. In one benchmark scenario, the manual processing of 500 exceptions, typically requiring 116 hours of team effort, was reduced to just a few hours under fully autonomous operations. This eliminates swivel-chair workflows and frees up teams to focus on risk oversight, decision making, and higher-value activities.

Institutions continue to struggle with back-office workflows that consume up to 70% of operational effort. Fragmented systems, manual data gathering, email-based communication, and over-reliance on individual expertise create bottlenecks that traditional automation has failed to resolve. Smart Agents addresses this not by optimising existing processes, but by replacing them entirely with intelligent, autonomous workflows that plan, decide, and execute end-to-end.

At the core of Smart Agents is a structured execution model that mirrors how experienced analysts work. Agents interpret and classify exceptions, retrieve, and validate data across multiple sources: including databases, client applications, market data, and industry services, and autonomously execute resolution actions across interconnected systems. Smart Agents cleans the data once it finds the root cause, and will reduce exceptions going forward. Every decision is fully logged, ensuring complete auditability and regulatory compliance, with human oversight preserved for the moments where governance or judgment is required.

Beyond speed, Smart Agents can onboard a customer’s standard operating procedures, whilst delivering measurable improvements across risk, compliance, and cost. Based on Smartstream analysis, Smart Agents reduces manual investigation workload to redefine what a high-performing bank back-office operations looks like.

Thomas Steinborn, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Smartstream, commented: “The performance data coming out of Smart Agents deployments confirms that the solution doesn’t improve broken processes, but replaces them. Built on decades of financial services domain expertise and deep investment in AI, Smart Agents is proving the autonomous back-office operations is a reality and the results speak for themselves. The conversations we are having with customers shows this area needs attention and a movement towards automation”.

Smart Agents is purpose-built for financial operations, with privileged access to Smartstream’s proprietary product intelligence, private APIs, and institutional bank reconciliation knowledge. It delivers a level of precision and actionability that generic AI tools cannot match. Its multi-agent orchestration coordinates triage, investigation, resolution, alerts, and analytics across a network of specialised agents, while elastic scalability ensures resilience during peak volumes.