How Agentic AI Is Slowly Reshaping Financial Services At Febarban Tech

Last week, I had the extraordinary honor of keynoting at Febraban Tech 2025, the largest financial services innovation conference in Latin America. Held in São Paulo's Transamerica Expo Center, the event attracted over 58,000 attendees under the theme "The Acceleration of the Financial Sector in the Age of Intelligence." The energy in the room was electric—charged with ambition, urgency, and optimism about how AI, blockchain, and governance are reshaping financial services.
Before delivering my keynote, AI First, Human Always, I attended one of the most powerful sessions of the event: the opening CEO panel, featuring the leaders of Brazil's largest banks. This discussion, moderated by Febarban president Isaac Sidney, set the tone for everything that followed.
These weren't cautious executives—they were bold architects of a new era for financial services.
The panel featured CEOs from Brazil's largest banks: Milton Maluhy Filho (Itaú Unibanco), Tarciana Medeiros (Banco do Brasil), Marcelo Noronha (Bradesco), Mario Leão (Santander), Carlos Vieira (Caixa Econômica Federal), and Roberto Sallouti (BTG Pactual). What united their voices was a shared focus on how banks are becoming increasingly intelligent platforms that are highly connected, predictive, and sustainable.
AI strategy was central to their discussions, with the CEOs addressing how the strategic use of data and algorithms is shaping new customer experiences and optimizing operations. They discussed new business models and disruptive solutions that expand access to credit and investments. The executives also emphasized their commitment to ESG goals, detailing how banks are exercising leadership in the transition to a green economy, financing sustainable projects, implementing ESG criteria, and promoting initiatives that accelerate Brazil's economic decarbonization, especially in the context of COP 30.
According to the president of Febraban, Isaac Sidney, "Artificial Intelligence is profoundly reshaping the banking sector across the entire value chain — from back-office to customer experience. This convergence allows for credit decisions with greater precision and speed, raises real-time fraud detection standards, drives hyper-personalization of products and services, and optimizes critical operational processes, freeing up human capital for strategic initiatives. At the same time, AI strengthens data governance and regulatory compliance, ensuring that innovation and security go hand in hand. Therefore, it is a structural transformation that repositions banks as intelligent digital platforms, capable of anticipating needs, generating sustainable value, and fostering financial inclusion at scale."
Brazil's banks plan to invest R$ 47.8 billion in technology in 2025 alone, a 13% increase from the previous year. This isn't incremental—it's systemic transformation of the financial sector.
As I took the stage to deliver the keynote that followed, I was deeply aware of the moment. My talk focused on what it truly means to lead an AI-first organization—and how to do so responsibly. AI is not just a set of tools or models. It's a mindset. And in financial services, it requires precision, ethics, and bold leadership.
Banco do Brasil exemplifies this approach. Their 2021 AI Ethics Guidelines (that's right from 2021!) prioritize fairness, transparency, and privacy across the entire AI lifecycle. Most impressively, this isn't confined to compliance—it's embedded across business units with quarterly ethics reviews, mandatory bias testing, and real-time monitoring dashboards. Blockchain-based audit trails ensure every AI decision can be traced and validated.
Itaú Unibanco has established AI governance committees at board and operational levels, implementing "AI impact assessments" that evaluate societal effects before production deployment. Their framework requires human oversight for high-stakes decisions like loan approvals above certain thresholds.
This kind of approach stood in contrast to what I've seen in other regions, where AI governance is often bolted on after-the-fact. In Latin America, responsible AI is increasingly seen as a strategic differentiator. Governance must move from the margins to the center of every AI-first initiative.
What makes Latin America so uniquely positioned to lead the next wave of innovation? Four reasons stood out in every session I attended.
First, Latin America is skipping the transformation phase. While banks elsewhere struggle to retrofit AI into decades-old systems, the region's institutions are building AI-native from a clean slate—fewer legacy constraints, more openness to disruption.
Second, blockchain isn't an afterthought—it's foundational. While Brazilian bank CEOs focused their main panel on AI and sustainability, blockchain commanded dedicated sessions. MIT Technology Review's CEO positioned it alongside AI as today's most impactful trend. FEBRABAN featured live tokenization demos and an entire track on "on-chain and the next step of digital assets."
Third, the human element is central. Latin America's emphasis on community, trust, and relationship-building makes the region a natural fit for human-centered AI. The phrase "AI First, Human Always" isn't just a strategy here—it's a reflection of cultural values.
Finally, the region is mobile-first, and by extension, agent-first. With some of the highest smartphone adoption rates globally, Latin American users are already engaging in digital ecosystems. As AI agents begin coordinating across financial products—handling transactions, customer support, and advisory—consumers here are ready for it. In many ways, they're already living in the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) economy.
I saw this readiness in discussions with CIOs from Itaú, Bradesco, Banco do Brasil, BTG Pactual, and Caixa. They spoke not only of deploying GenAI tools, but of operationalizing AI agents across internal teams and customer-facing services, all supported by blockchain-verified identity and transaction systems.
JP Morgan stood out as a global reference point. Their AI models detect fraud in real-time, reducing false positives by 50%. Katana Lens integrates over 800 data sources and uses 50+ machine learning models, resulting in 42% improvement in early detection.
Latin America is setting its own examples. Itaú Unibanco launched its "Inteligência de Investimentos Itaú", using generative AI to provide personalized investment recommendations to clients, initially available to 10,000 customers with plans to expand to 500,000 by year-end. The bank operates over 1,000 AI models and employs more than 430 data scientists and 60 machine learning engineers.
BTG Pactual partnered with Feedzai to implement AI-powered financial crime monitoring, including advanced machine learning for transaction monitoring and Pix payment system oversight.
In speaking to João Marcello Dantas Leite, an Executive Officer at BTG Pactual. He told me that 'FebrabanTech 2025 hosted a series of provocative debates about the role AI will play in the financial space. With 58,000 visitors, 500 speakers and 200 panels, this was the event's 35th edition, and this time it focused on how AI will be an accelerator of the financial sector development."
The bank has also moved into digital assets, launching its own dollar-backed stablecoin "BTG Dol" and operating a crypto platform for direct cryptocurrency investments. BTG leverages blockchain technology through initiatives like ReitBZ, which uses digital asset tokens to provide global investors access to Brazilian real estate opportunities.
As I closed my session and spent time walking the exhibition floor, meeting entrepreneurs, data scientists, and bank executives, one message kept echoing: Latin America isn't following global trends—it's helping define them.
Febraban Tech 2025 confirmed for me that we're entering a new chapter of financial services, one led by institutions that are bold enough to act, transparent enough to earn trust, and visionary enough to build AI for people—not just for performance.
The journey from São Paulo has just begun. Latin America isn't following global trends—it's defining them.
Financial services leaders: The question isn't whether to embrace AI-first thinking, but how quickly you can implement governance frameworks that build trust. Start with ethics, build on blockchain infrastructure, never lose sight of human impact.
Technology executives: Study how blockchain and AI integration creates competitive advantage. Leading institutions aren't just adopting these technologies—they're architecting them together from the ground up.
The question is: Will you be watching from the sidelines, or building the future?
Did you enjoy this story Agentic AI In Financial Services? Don't miss my next one: Use the blue follow button at the top of the article near my byline to follow more of my work.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

News24

18 minutes ago

• News24

How robotic hives and AI are lowering the risk of bee colony collapse

The US has observed a startling uptick in the number of bee colonies dying off since the mid-2000s. Robotic hives are helping cut down losses as they are able to collect data and analyse the health of bees in real time. Some companies are developing vaccines to protect bees against disease. For climate change news and analysis, go to News24 Climate Future. Lifting up the hood of a Beewise hive feels more like you're getting ready to examine the engine of a car than visit with a few thousand pollinators. The unit - dubbed a BeeHome - is an industrial upgrade from the standard wooden beehives, all clad in white metal and solar panels. Inside sits a high-tech scanner and robotic arm powered by artificial intelligence. Roughly 300 000 of these units are in use across the US, scattered across fields of almond, canola, pistachios and other crops that require pollination to grow. It's not exactly the romantic vision of a beehive or beekeeper lodged in the cultural consciousness, but then that's not what matters; keeping bees alive does. And Beewise's units do that dramatically better than the standard hive, providing constant insights on colony health and the ability to provide treatment should it start to falter. The US has observed a startling uptick in the number of die-offs since the mid-2000s as beekeepers have struggled to keep pace with the rise of disease-carrying mites, climate extremes and other stressors that can wipe out colonies. That's endangering billions of dollars in crops from almonds to avocados that rely on the pollinators. This past year saw the worst colony losses on record. Beewise has raised nearly $170 million, including a $50 million Series D earlier this month, and it has a plan to change the industry. AI and robotics are able to replace '90% of what a beekeeper would do in the field,' said Beewise Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Saar Safra. The question is whether beekeepers are willing to switch out what's been tried and true equipment. READ | How did life survive 'Snowball Earth'? In ponds, study suggests Ultimately, the fate of humans is tied to that of bees. Roughly 75% of crops require pollinators, with nuts and fruits particularly dependent. While other species of bees and insects can play a role, they can't replace honeybees. 'There would essentially be no crop without the bees,' said Zac Ellis, the senior director of agronomy at OFI, a global food and ingredient seller. The beehive hasn't seen much technological innovation in 170 years. The Langstroth hive, named after the American reverend who patented it in 1852, is a simple wooden box with frames that can house the queen and her worker bees, larvae and honey. 'Langstroth hives are easy to work with, break down, build up, manipulate frames, make splits' and move, said Priya Chakrabarti Basu, a Washington State University bee researcher. These boxes are the backbone of the agriculture industry and the high-value crops that are heavily reliant on the 2.5 million commercial hives that crisscross the US on semi-trailers. Beekeepers with thousands of hives will travel from as far away as Florida to provide pollination services for California's $3.9 billion almond crop in spring before moving on to other states and crops. 'Almonds are one of the largest pollination events in the world,' said Ellis, who uses Beewise's hives on 30% of the acres he manages. 'Typically, a grower needs two hives per acre,' each with up to 40 000 bees. Pollinating the 10 000 acres of almonds, walnuts and pistachios he oversees requires millions of bees doing the brunt of the pollination work. The number of hives and demand have created a problem, though: Beekeepers are only able to check on their colonies' health every week or two. But a growing number of threats to bees means entire colonies can be wiped out or weakened past the point of no return in just a few days. READ | SA's iconic protea flower relocates as climate warms Toxic pesticides, a changing climate and a sharp uptick in the invasive, disease-transmitting varroa mite since the 1980s have contributed to the rise of what's known as colony collapse disorder. The exact role each of these issues plays in wiping out colonies is unclear, but they are also likely interacting with each other to take a toll. 'You are rarely going to find a bee who is only, for example, stressed by a mite or a bee who's stressed by a disease only or a bee who's only stressed by poor nutrition,' Chakrabarti Basu said. 'It is always a combination.' The impacts, though, are clear. From the 12-month period starting last April, more than 56% of commercial colonies were wiped out, according to the Apiary Inspectors of America. Beekeepers have taken a major economic hit as a result: Between last June and March, colony losses cost beekeepers an estimated $600 million, according to the Honey Bee Health Coalition. Robotic hives While a new hive design alone isn't enough to save bees, Beewise's robotic hives help cut down on losses by providing a near-constant stream of information on colony health in real time - and give beekeepers the ability to respond to issues. Equipped with a camera and a robotic arm, they're able to regularly snap images of the frames inside the BeeHome, which Safra likened to an MRI. The amount of data they capture is staggering. Each frame contains up to 6 000 cells where bees can, among other things, gestate larvae or store honey and pollen. A hive contains up to 15 frames and a BeeHome can hold up to 10 hives, providing thousands of datapoints for Beewise's AI to analyse. While a trained beekeeper can quickly look at a frame and assess its health, AI can do it even faster, as well as take in information on individual bees in the photos. Should AI spot a warning sign, such as a dearth of new larvae or the presence of mites, beekeepers will get an update on an app that a colony requires attention. The company's technology earned it a BloombergNEF Pioneers award earlier this year. 'There's other technologies that we've tried that can give us some of those metrics as well, but it's really a look in the rearview mirror,' Ellis said. 'What really attracted us to Beewise is their ability to not only understand what's happening in that hive, but to actually act on those different metrics.' That includes administering medicine and food as well as opening and closing vents to regulate temperature or protect against pesticide spraying. Safra noted that after two hurricanes hit Florida last year, BeeHomes in the state were still operational while many wooden hives were destroyed. That durability and responsiveness has Ellis convinced on expanding their use. Today, BeeHomes are on 30% of his acres, but he said within three years, they're aiming for 100% coverage. Whether other growers and beekeepers are as keen to make the switch remains to be seen, though, given nearly two centuries of loyalty to the Langstroth design. The startup wants to more than triple the number of BeeHomes in use, reaching 1 million in three years. 'We're in a race against time,' Safra said. 'We might have the best product on planet earth in 15 years, but it doesn't matter' if there aren't any bees left. Ellis likened the hives to a Ritz-Carlton for pollinators. The five-star stay appears to suit bees well: Beewise says its units - which it leases to provide pollination services at what it says are market rates - have seen colony losses of around 8%. That's a major drop compared to the average annual loss rate of more than 40%, according to Apiary Inspectors of America, a group that tracks colony health. 'The asset is the bees, that's the revenue-generating asset,' said Safra, noting that losing more than 40% of those assets makes it hard for businesses to cover labour to maintain hives, trailers to transport them and other fixed costs. Beewise expects to have $100 million in revenue this year, and Safra said it's a year away from profitability. The company declined to share the valuation for its Series D. READ | Austria trials DNA testing to uncover honey fraud It has competition in the bee-saving technology realm. Some companies like Dalan Animal Health are developing vaccines to protect bees against disease. BeeHero and Beeflow (sensing a pattern?) are among those that provide sensors for monitoring health in hives and fields. Both can help improve outcomes at Langstroth hives, but they still require regular beekeeper maintenance. Chakrabarti Basu from Washington State and her colleagues are also working on using AI to detect bees entering hives. 'The more data sets we can give, the better it'll be trained,' she said. 'Pattern recognition - it could be monitoring a brood frame, it could be looking at anything for estimating colony health or any aspect of colony health - I think AI will probably get better at it.'

Fox News

34 minutes ago

• Fox News

Fox News AI Newsletter: Amazon to cut workforce due to new tech

IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER: - Amazon CEO says AI will reduce his company's workforce- OpenAI CEO claims Meta offering $100 million to poach employees- America's power grid faces unprecedented challenge as AI and crypto drive demand skyward TECH TAKEOVER: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says artificial intelligence will "change the way" work is done and expects the company's total corporate workforce to be reduced as a result. 'GIANT OFFERS': Meta has allegedly tried to recruit employees from competitor OpenAI by offering bonuses as high as $100 million, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed on a podcast that aired Tuesday. ENERGY OUTLOOK: The rise of artificial intelligence and the increasing popularity of cryptocurrency will continue to push electricity consumption to record highs in 2025 and 2026. POWER DRAIN CRISIS: Every time you ask ChatGPT a question, to generate an image or let artificial intelligence summarize your email, something big is happening behind the scenes. Not on your device, but in sprawling data centers filled with servers, GPUs and cooling systems that require massive amounts of electricity. GAME-CHANGING MACHINE: At ETH Zurich's Robotic Systems Lab, engineers have created ANYmal-D, a four-legged robot that can play badminton with people. TECH POWER PLAY: OPINION: In 1823, President James Monroe drew a firm line in the sand: the Western Hemisphere would be closed to further European interference and, most importantly, America's primary domain of industrial, political, and military control. The Monroe Doctrine, while audacious, proved effective and laid the groundwork for the Western Hemisphere as America's stepping stone to the rest of the world. America was not yet a superpower and could not enforce it alone, however. Instead, America aligned British naval dominance with our interests to build a coalition of opportunity. America asserted its position, secured a partner through alignment against common rivals, and laid the groundwork for its emergence as a global superpower. ROBOT RUMBLE: Robot combat just got a lot more interesting in Hangzhou, China. Four Unitree G1 robots, each steered by a human operator, went head-to-head in a tournament called Unitree Iron Fist King: Awakening! AI EYEWEAR: Tech giant Meta on Friday announced it is partnering with Oakley to launch new performance glasses powered by artificial intelligence. FOLLOW FOX NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA FacebookInstagramYouTubeTwitterLinkedIn SIGN UP FOR OUR OTHER NEWSLETTERS Fox News FirstFox News OpinionFox News LifestyleFox News Health DOWNLOAD OUR APPS Fox NewsFox BusinessFox WeatherFox SportsTubi WATCH FOX NEWS ONLINE STREAM FOX NATION Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future with Fox News here.

Entrepreneur

34 minutes ago

• Entrepreneur

Guardians Of Digital Trust

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. As India's digital penetration deepens across Tier I to Tier III cities, the digital economy is thriving, but so are digital frauds. According to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) annual report, digital payment fraud surged more than fivefold to INR 14.57 billion (USD 175 million) in the fiscal year ending March 2024. KYC (Know Your Customer) scams are on the rise, with cases like a 73-year-old Mumbai woman losing INR 2 lakh and an RTO clerk duped of INR 4.35 lakh, exposing the growing vulnerabilities in the system. Amidst this landscape, IDfy is stepping up to combat fraud with Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions. "We power about 60 per cent of all video KYCs in India," says Ashok Hariharan, Co-founder and CEO of IDfy. The company provides end-to-end verification services for banks, insurance providers, credit card issuers, and online merchants from employee onboarding to authenticating transactions. Yet, as Ashok points out, fraudsters are constantly evolving. "Fraudsters are always finding holes in the lock one area, they'll find a backdoor." Phishing, digital arrest scams, and mule accounts have proliferated, exploiting weaknesses in systems that rely heavily on physical KYC or less sophisticated technologies. "They target cooperative banks with weaker systems, often colluding with branch managers to bypass manual verification," Ashok adds. AI, however, is proving to be a formidable defense. "Deepfake detection, device mimicry, and intrusion attacks – we can catch all of this today," Ashok explains. By using AI models that analyse anomalies, IDfy can flag suspicious transactions such as a low-income applicant seeking a high-value loan. "A person living in Dharavi applying for a INR 10 crore loan that's anomalous," he highlights. IDfy's platform operates on four fundamental questions: Does the individual exist? Is the person the one transacting? Have they committed fraud before? Are they likely to commit fraud in the future? With AI, the company matches PAN card selfies to live photos, preventing fraudsters from impersonating others. It also cross-references court records and prior transactions to strengthen fraud detection. The need for such rigorous checks is clear. "In a test with cab aggregator platforms, seven per cent of vehicles we flagged were linked to drivers with criminal records or vehicles involved in hit-and-run cases," Ashok reveals.