Agentic AI purpose-built for bank back-office operations
Smartstream has announced the availability of Smart Agents, its agentic AI solution for bank back-office operations. The solution targets the operational effort financial institutions spend managing exception workflows across disconnected systems – surfacing the steps that require human action and executing the remainder autonomously, including counterparty and internal communications.
Smart Agents operates in both assistive and autonomous modes, with human-in-the-loop oversight, a full audit trail, step-by-step explainability, and complete data privacy. Its intelligence compounds continuously over time, with automation improving as the system observes and learns from user decisions.
Proven in Tier 1 deployments and immediately deployable
The solution has been validated in Tier 1 pilot deployments and is natively integrated with Smart Reconciliations, making it available to existing clients without lengthy implementation projects. Coverage spans bank reconciliations, cash breaks, settlement exceptions, and post-trade investigations.
Pilot results recorded a 97 per cent reduction in investigation time per exception – from 14 minutes manually to 30 seconds. Thomas Steinborn, chief product and technology officer at Smartstream, noted that operational knowledge accumulated over years is preserved and compounded rather than lost to attrition.
Industry recognition for purpose-built exception automation
Janey Speed, analyst at Celent, highlighted that financial institutions are under pressure to automate exception-heavy workflows for reconciliations, cash breaks, and settlement investigations, where manual processes are costly and error-prone. According to Speed, the institutions making the most progress are those deploying purpose-built solutions that preserve audit integrity and embed human oversight within the workflow – precisely the approach taken by Smart Agents.
