With autonomous AI, there must always be “a human on the hook”

Akber Jaffer, CEO of Smartstream, took part in the Sibos 2026 panel „Agentic capital markets: when AI becomes the counterparty“, which looked at how governance and operational controls must evolve as AI systems take on more critical functions in capital markets.

Jaffer said: „I do think there has to be a recognition that the world is moving at a much faster pace… The speed at which governance has to move now, it’s very different, because things are changing on a monthly basis.“ He called for an „agility to governance“, where it is viewed more as an „enabling function“ for introducing technology.

Autonomous AI cannot be truly autonomous, at least not yet. In the words of Akber Jaffer, CEO of Smartstream, there must always be a human „on the hook“.

Jaffer likened autonomous AI to a new graduate who has just joined an organisation: „We wouldn’t give a new graduate the decision-making power over, say, a balance sheet change of more than maybe $50,000, but we’d give the group CFO the ability to make a balance sheet decision of $10 or $20 million… when we talk about using technology to change processes, in many ways, it’s about tolerance levels.“

Jaffer acknowledged that change may meet some inertia at the start: „Some of these processes have been set up for a long time… We recognise that we’re coming from a place with a lot of legacy. The question is, how do we phase that change in? Technology is just the enabler. It’s really a business change and a culture change.“

For financial institutions, the key question is how to set limits for AI agents. „How do you programme that in so that the agent is operating within the tolerance levels that you are comfortable with as an enterprise and the risk that you want to take? Ultimately it boils down to business change,“ said Jaffer. Smartstream develops Smart Agents agentic AI for financial operations for this next stage of automation.