The Potential of AI Agents in FinTech

The market size of AI in FinTech was valued at USD 8.23 billion in 2021, and is expected to reach USD 61.30 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 22.5% from 2022-2031 (according to Allied Market Research). Interestingly, the Asia-Pacific region is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR over this forecast period.

It is important to note that the “solution” segment dominates the fintech market, accounting for 77.5% of the global revenue (according to Dimension Market Research). These include mobile banking applications, digital loans, insurance, credit scores, buying and selling activities, and asset management.

How did it all begin? The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak was the turning point, changing how people interact with financial services. Then came Generative AI, driving explosive growth in AI technologies across various industries. FinTech companies have been riding that wave and are now focusing on building AI solutions to handle massive daily transactions and personalizing their services for customers.

More recently, we have started seeing the emergence of AI agents, programs that can understand natural language and perform tasks on behalf of users or organizations. These agents encompass a range of applications, from chatbots and virtual assistants to more complex systems that handle financial planning and investment management. How are these agents built, and how do they transform FinTech? Let’s take a look.

How are AI Agents Built?

Building an AI agent involves several steps. First, define the agent’s purpose and the environment it will operate in. Next, collect data relevant to that environment and choose an AI model architecture or a pretrained open-source model that can be trained. With the data and model in place, train the agent on advanced cloud GPUs, allowing it to adjust its internal parameters to improve performance algorithmically. Then, connect it with a contextual dataset using architectures like RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) and enhance it with Vector Stores and Knowledge Graphs. Additionally, integrate the agent with APIs to enable it to perform actions. Finally, build an application using the agent, refining how you prompt the agent, build reasoning pipelines, and create an interface for interaction or connect it with an existing application. Several open-source frameworks, such as DSPy, LangChain, CrewAI, and LlamaIndex, can simplify this process.

Applications in FinTech

With the framework described above, powerful AI agents can be created for FinTech. These agents can assist companies with fraud detection, personalizing customer experiences, developing robo-advisors, building automation, and identifying risks. Let’s explore some of the key applications in the FinTech sector.

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Personalized Customer Experiences

Machine learning and Generative AI are being adopted to create propensity models. Banks and insurance companies are introducing ML-based solutions for web and mobile applications, offering LLM-powered chatbots. These chatbots provide immediate, personalized support, making financial advice and assistance more accessible. Beyond handling routine inquiries, AI agents can be created to perform complex tasks like facilitating transactions and providing tailored financial advice, transforming customer service from a cost center into a value-added service.

Fraud Detection​

AI is revolutionizing fraud detection in finance by rapidly identifying and mitigating financial fraud and malpractice. By fine-tuning open-source models like Mistral or Llama3 on relevant datasets, AI systems can help compute and analyze transaction methods and user habits to spot anomalies in real-time. LLM-powered agents can be built to check emails, websites, and messages for potential phishing attempts while monitoring network traffic, system logs, and endpoint activities. For example, in May 2024, the Reserve Bank of India reported a rise in banking frauds to 36,075 in the fiscal year 2023-24, though the total amount implicated decreased by 46.7%. AI can develop solutions to address such issues, minimizing fraud risk and enhancing customer security.

Robo-Advisors

Investing requires extensive research on factors like price-to-earnings ratios (P/E ratios), dividends, and past performance. AI agents can be built that enable users to conduct comprehensive market research and manage portfolios efficiently. Traditional wealth management is tedious and lacks protection against market fluctuations, often leading to suboptimal performance. AI agents provide a sophisticated solution using ML algorithms to monitor portfolios continuously, identify missed opportunities, perform real-time market analysis, automate trades, and reduce delays, thus optimizing investment strategies.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Building RPA with AI agents allows financial institutions to automate tasks like customer onboarding, security checks, loan applications, handling routine inquiries, processing credit cards, and managing account closures. AI agents enhance RPA by providing intelligent decision-making and natural language capabilities, enabling sophisticated automation of complex tasks. This integration offers a cost-effective way to manage back-office procedures, ensuring accurate and timely processing while reducing human errors and increasing operational efficiency.

Credit Scoring and Loan Prediction

AI agents can enhance credit scoring and loan prediction by helping analyze past credit histories, income, and other financial information to accurately predict a borrower’s likelihood of defaulting. This enables lenders to make more informed approval decisions. Additionally, AI agents can identify new customers more likely to default by analyzing various data points, such as demographics, income, credit scores, and social media behaviour. Lenders can proactively identify potential defaulters and mitigate risks before approving loans by leveraging AI agents, resulting in more reliable and efficient lending processes.

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Future Notes

As FinTech companies adopt and innovate with AI solutions, the industry will witness significant advancements in service delivery, customer engagement, and financial security. The frameworks and methodologies discussed, including advanced cloud GPUs, RAG architectures, and open-source tools, provide a robust foundation for building powerful AI agents. These developments promise a future where financial services are more efficient, accessible, and tailored to individual needs, ultimately driving the FinTech sector toward unprecedented growth and innovation.

Views expressed by – Kesava Reddy, Chief Revenue Officer, E2E Networks Ltd – India’s fastest-growing accelerated cloud computing platform