Hey, fintech fam! 💜

Last month, The Academy of Fintech (if you haven’t joined: now is the best time because you get a discount on your membership when you also buy tickets to the San Francisco Leadership Summit!) hosted 2 virtual events about AI.

It was known as AI August 🤑

And, by the way, I’m still learning about AI. Luckily, the women in our community are experts, and they have opened my mind to so many questions, ideas, and possibilities.

We talked about why AI matters in fintech, why some businesses are resistant to the idea of it, why some businesses can’t get enough of it, and most importantly: how to keep humans at the center of all moves we make with AI.

Join the community now, as we are going even deeper with AI next month alongside our next big Leadership Summit: AI Edition in San Francisco.

These conversations got me thinking about the Salesforce Agentforce World Tour I attended in New York earlier this year.

Whether you love or hate AI in fintech, it’s here.

It’s always been here, but it’s now being held under a microscope as consumers discover just how prevalent it is in the technology we use every single day.

So, while I’m still on vacation, let’s revisit my takeaways from the Salesforce event and their big moves with agentic AI in general.

Let’s get into it.

#TRENDING

Agentic AI today feels like the internet in 1995—that’s the sentiment I’ve been hearing repeatedly from top fintech and tech execs.

It’s about reimagining the very structure of our work, and Salesforce just staked a bold claim in its future with the launch of Agentforce for Financial Services, the company announced back in May.

Zooming out, the stakes are massive. McKinsey estimates Agentic AI could unlock $4.4 trillion in economic value every year.

Salesforce hasn't disclosed exact investment figures for Agentforce, but its high-profile debut and heavy executive alignment make clear: they’re betting big on this paradigm shift.

I had a front-row seat at Salesforce’s Agentforce World Tour in New York City just after they made this huge announcement—an event that surfaced a much bigger question for fintech:

What happens when AI stops operating behind the scenes and starts working alongside us?

The timing couldn’t be more urgent.

The financial services industry is grappling with a talent crisis.

Nearly 50% of the current insurance workforce is expected to retire in the next 15 years. If productivity levels remain unchanged, the U.S. will face a shortfall of 100,000 financial advisors by 2034.

Meanwhile, customer expectations are rising—and unmet.

According to Salesforce’s Connected Financial Services 2025 report, only 21% of consumers are fully satisfied with the personalization they receive from their financial providers. Another 35% say they feel treated like a number.

Agentforce was designed to close that gap.

With role-specific agents like the Digital Loan Officer and Financial Advisor Assistant, firms can deliver more personalized, timely, and consistent service. In theory, this shift could make firms more competitive and customer-centric—without ballooning costs.

The rise of AI in financial services is often framed as a question of replacement: will technology take over the work of advisors, bankers, or underwriters?

But the more powerful opportunity is different.

AI can serve as a digital coworker—taking on administrative load, surfacing insights, and streamlining workflows—so humans can spend more time on the relationships, strategy, and nuanced decisions that actually drive value.

Like Salesforce, a handful of platforms are beginning to experiment with role-based AI tools. Yet the bigger challenge for the industry isn’t the technology itself—it’s whether professionals and clients will trust AI to operate in high-stakes, highly regulated environments.

Trust, compliance, and personalization can’t be afterthoughts; they’re the foundation of adoption.

The real question isn’t if digital coworkers will become part of financial services—it’s how they’ll be deployed in ways that reinforce the human element rather than dilute it.

Early adopters are already seeing value.

Nexo reported freeing up 400 hours in Q1, increasing chat deflection by 20%. CaixaBank expects faster, more accurate responses across its 20.3 million customers. And firms like Cumberland Mutual and Absa say Agentforce is driving measurable improvements in claims, procurement, and fraud management.

Still, adoption isn’t just about features. It’s about trust. As Salesforce’s Eran Agrios, SVP and GM, Financial Services noted, “AI shouldn’t replace the human connection—it should scale it.”

That’s why the conversation around AI needs to shift from what it can do to how it shows up.

Transparency, explainability, and accountability aren’t just regulatory buzzwords; they’re the foundation of human confidence.

People need to see where AI fits into the process, what role it plays, and how their financial partner remains ultimately responsible for the outcomes.

The arrival of agentic AI marks a shift for financial services.

Salesforce’s recent launch is just one signal of a broader trend: intelligent, role-based systems are moving from theory into real-world operations.

The question is no longer if these tools will shape the industry, but how they’ll be deployed without undermining trust, compliance, or brand.

For fintech founders, CIOs, and executives, agentic AI isn’t simply another automation wave—it represents a new layer of digital labor that can scale operations, free up talent, and reshape customer experiences.

But with that opportunity comes responsibility. The firms that succeed won’t be the fastest adopters; they’ll be the ones that adopt thoughtfully.

Key expectations are already emerging:

Ultimately, agentic AI should be judged not on how futuristic it feels, but on how effectively it strengthens the human side of finance.

Agentforce and agentic AI showcases a blueprint for the next evolution of work in financial services. And as economic pressure mounts and customer expectations skyrocket, firms will need to rethink how they deliver high-touch, high-trust service at scale.

If agentic AI can do that—without losing the human touch—it could become one of the most important shifts in fintech’s next chapter.

The $4.4 trillion question: Who’s ready to lead it?

The key learnings during May’s event were also about a mindset shift. The kind that reframes fear into opportunity and complexity into utility.

Leading that conversation was Sanjna Parulekar, SVP of Agentforce Product Marketing at Salesforce, who offered a clear-eyed vision that digital labor isn’t about replacing humans. It’s about removing the grind, so people can finally get back to doing their best work.

“Digital labor sounds scary,” Parulekar acknowledged. “But think about your day—how much of it is spent actually creating versus just prepping, documenting, or repeating tasks? Agentforce is here to extend your team, not shrink it.”

That distinction is critical. Parulekar isn’t selling fear. She’s reframing AI not as a harbinger of job loss, but as a tool that gives stretched teams breathing room.

Her own marketing team is proof of concept. “No one’s giving me 500 extra headcount,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean our job to support sales is any less important. So we built an internal Agentforce assistant inside Slack that handles repetitive seller questions.”

That’s the promise of agentic AI: giving teams access to digital workers who can support the business in ways that would be cost-prohibitive—or simply impossible—with headcount alone.

Still, Salesforce isn’t naive to the skepticism. AI is at a cultural inflection point. According to Parulekar, what makes today different from the predictive AI wave of years past isn’t just marketing hype—it’s infrastructure. “We didn’t have the compute power. We didn’t have LLMs at this scale. Now we do.”

But technology alone doesn’t build trust. Parulekar sees Salesforce’s edge in the ability to make AI usable and approachable across the org chart.

“When customers come to us, they’re not saying, ‘I want AI,’” she explained. “They’re saying, ‘I want to boost sales productivity,’ or ‘I want to reduce support wait times.’ Our job is to translate generative and agentic AI into answers for those business problems.”

This translation hinges on one thing: data. Salesforce’s strategy is to bake agentic AI directly into the workflows and compliance controls of Financial Services Cloud. The agents aren’t generic bots—they’re embedded digital coworkers that follow firm-specific rules, policies, and goals.

Crucially, agentic AI isn’t confined to the IT department. “My events lead is talking about agents she wants to build,” Parulekar said. “She saw what was possible from the event, and now she wants to execute. And she can—because it’s low-code. That’s the difference.”

It’s a subtle but powerful shift: moving AI from centralized experimentation to department-level implementation. And it’s working.

“Salesforce has the opportunity to not just keep AI in IT,” Parulekar added, “but to activate it across the business.”

The takeaway from Parulekar is clear: this isn’t about science fiction. It’s about giving real people the space to solve real problems faster, better, and with more creativity.

“In a world where trust, transparency, and speed matter more than ever,” she said, “agentic AI isn’t replacing human talent—it’s amplifying it.”

Finally, let’s get into execution. Specifically, how banks, wealth managers, and insurance providers are already deploying Agentic AI to drive real results across productivity, efficiency, and growth.

Greg Jacobi, VP & GM of Lending and Banking at Salesforce, cut through the hype with a grounded perspective: Agentic AI isn’t a far-off concept. It’s here. It’s working. And it’s redefining what it means to build capacity in financial services.

“We’ve launched Agentforce for Financial Services with a set of pre-built, role-based templates,” Jacobi told me during an exclusive interview. “You can quickly spin up an AI agent—whether it’s for customer service or supporting a financial advisor—and get immediate utility.”

For Jacobi, the real promise of Agentic AI lies in freeing human talent from low-value work. 

“Meeting prep is a great example,” he explained. “A moderately complex client relationship can take hours to prep for—just to gather data, check portfolios, and pull insights. We’ve helped customers take that time down from 90 minutes to under 10.”

In other words, Agentic AI isn’t theoretical efficiency—it’s measurable time savings, repurposed into deeper client engagement.

It’s also enabling faster onboarding for junior advisors. 

“Imagine someone earlier in their career having access to a digital co-worker who ensures they’re staying within investment guidelines, preparing effectively, and building trust quickly,” Jacobi said. “That’s not just productivity—it’s a confidence accelerator.”

As I shared above, the timing couldn’t be more critical.

According to Salesforce, if the current trajectory continues, the U.S. will face a shortfall of 100,000 financial advisors by 2034. At the same time, customer demand for more personalized, responsive financial service is rising rapidly.

“We need to make these jobs more scalable—and frankly, more attractive,” Jacobi said. “Agents help solve that. They take the grunt work off advisors’ plates, giving them more time to focus on what they love: working with clients.”

That kind of support model repositions Agentic AI not as a job killer, but as a force multiplier. 

“If you’re a financial advisor, imagine if you had the budget to hire five people to support your book of business. What roles would you fill?” Jacobi asked. “That’s how we think about Agentforce—giving you a digital team that helps you operate at a higher level.”

Jacobi doesn’t shy away from the disruption AI will bring. But he challenges the common fear narrative. “There’s massive productivity potential here. Yes, it will change how we work. But it won’t eliminate the need for human talent—it will elevate it.”

In a post-pandemic world where financial advisors are expected to be more than stock pickers—playing roles as life coaches, strategic planners, and wellness guides—the need for human empathy, nuance, and insight is greater than ever. 

“Digital labor lets humans focus on what only humans can do,” Jacobi said.

The implications for fintech leaders are clear:

In an industry built on trust and relationships, it’s easy to assume that AI would be a threat.

But we have the choice to keep humans at the center and serve better, scale faster, and stay human - just as Jacobi said.

At a time when the financial services workforce is aging, and client expectations are accelerating, that might be the most important ROI of all.

Join us every Thursday to keep up with fintech events!

Surprise update: I wasn’t planning on going to Future Proof this year. But then my publisher Wiley told me they’ve got a booth and asked if I’d sign and give away copies of my book Fintech Feminists.

So… here we are. Thanks to our friends at GoodFin, I’ll be at Future Proof on Monday, Sept 8 — signing books, giving them away, and connecting with this amazing community.

If you’re going, come by, grab your free copy, and let’s hang. Can’t wait to see so many of you IRL. 💜

👉 And if you want to add it to your calendar, register for the book signing. Just look out for the Wiley booth inside of Future Proof Festival. I’ll update via my LinkedIn in real time on booth location.

Join us October 8th in San Francisco and learn about AI in fintech from the brighest minds in fintech.

Here’s a quick glimpse at who is taking the stage at the AI Leadership Summit:

Climate tech is about directing capital toward a livable planet—and that makes it fintech.

From funding clean energy and scaling carbon markets to embedding sustainability in everyday transactions, these innovations rely on the same tools that power financial systems.

And just like fintech, climate tech isn’t only about technology—it’s about access.

When climate solutions are paired with financial inclusion, we unlock regenerative systems that work for people, planet, and profit.

Join Bhuva Shakti of WalletMax and me for the Climate Fintech Summit during Climate Week!

Climate fintech isn’t the future—it’s the now. Mark your calendar and join us September 19th!

A fun and catchy song to close out summer!

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📚 Increase your expertise by ordering your copy of my book, Fintech Feminists: Increasing Inclusion, Redefining Innovation, and Changing the Future for Women Around the World.

⭐️ P.S. If you’ve read Fintech Feminists (or listened to the audiobook!), I’d be so grateful if you could take 30 seconds to leave a review or rating on Amazon here. Your support means the world to me. A million thanks in advance!

That wraps up today’s edition—thanks for reading! Until next week, keep innovating and challenging the status quo. See you Tuesday!

Love,

Nicole 💜