- Fintech Is Femme
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- đ€ AI August
đ€ AI August
How AI Is Driving the Future of Work; How Digital Co-Workers = ROI In Finserv, and How We Keep Humans at the Core of AI Growth

Hey, fintech fam! đ
Last month, The Academy of Fintech (if you havenât 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 đ€
And, by the way, Iâm 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 canât 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, itâs here.
Itâs always been here, but itâs now being held under a microscope as consumers discover just how prevalent it is in the technology we use every single day.
So, while Iâm still on vacation, letâs revisit my takeaways from the Salesforce event and their big moves with agentic AI in general.
Letâs get into it.
#TRENDING
Whatâs Up In Fintech
#1 Inside Agentforce: Why Salesforce Bet Big on Agentic AI in Financial Services Earlier This Year

Agentic AI today feels like the internet in 1995âthatâs the sentiment Iâve been hearing repeatedly from top fintech and tech execs.
Itâs 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: theyâre betting big on this paradigm shift.
I had a front-row seat at Salesforceâs Agentforce World Tour in New York City just after they made this huge announcementâan event that surfaced a much bigger question for fintech:
What happens when AI stops operating behind the scenes and starts working alongside us?
Why Nowâand Why It Matters
The timing couldnât 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 risingâand unmet.
According to Salesforceâs 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-centricâwithout ballooning costs.
Digital Coworkers, Not Replacements
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 coworkerâtaking on administrative load, surfacing insights, and streamlining workflowsâso 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 isnât the technology itselfâitâs whether professionals and clients will trust AI to operate in high-stakes, highly regulated environments.
Trust, compliance, and personalization canât be afterthoughts; theyâre the foundation of adoption.
The real question isnât if digital coworkers will become part of financial servicesâitâs how theyâll be deployed in ways that reinforce the human element rather than dilute it.
Real-World Impact
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 isnât just about features. Itâs about trust. As Salesforceâs Eran Agrios, SVP and GM, Financial Services noted, âAI shouldnât replace the human connectionâit should scale it.â
Thatâs why the conversation around AI needs to shift from what it can do to how it shows up.
Transparency, explainability, and accountability arenât just regulatory buzzwords; theyâre 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.
What Agentic AI Means For Fintech Leaders
The arrival of agentic AI marks a shift for financial services.
Salesforceâs 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 theyâll be deployed without undermining trust, compliance, or brand.
For fintech founders, CIOs, and executives, agentic AI isnât simply another automation waveâit 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 wonât be the fastest adopters; theyâll be the ones that adopt thoughtfully.
Key expectations are already emerging:
Speed without complexity: No-code deployment so teams can move quickly without heavy engineering lift.
Compliance by design: Built-in guardrails to satisfy regulators and reassure clients.
Tangible outcomes: Real ROI on automationâmeasured in hours saved, service improved, and experiences enhancedânot just hype.
Ultimately, agentic AI should be judged not on how futuristic it feels, but on how effectively it strengthens the human side of finance.
The Bottom Line
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 thatâwithout losing the human touchâit could become one of the most important shifts in fintechâs next chapter.
The $4.4 trillion question: Whoâs ready to lead it?
#2 How Agentic AI Is the Future of Work, Not a Threat to It

Sanjna Parulekar, SVP of Agentforce Product Marketing, Salesforce
The key learnings during Mayâs 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 isnât about replacing humans. Itâs about removing the grind, so people can finally get back to doing their best work.
âDigital labor sounds scary,â Parulekar acknowledged. âBut think about your dayâhow much of it is spent actually creating versus just prepping, documenting, or repeating tasks? Agentforce is here to extend your team, not shrink it.â
Augmentation, Not Automation
That distinction is critical. Parulekar isnât selling fear. Sheâs 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. âNo oneâs giving me 500 extra headcount,â she said. âBut that doesnât mean our job to support sales is any less important. So we built an internal Agentforce assistant inside Slack that handles repetitive seller questions.â
Thatâs the promise of agentic AI: giving teams access to digital workers who can support the business in ways that would be cost-prohibitiveâor simply impossibleâwith headcount alone.
Solving the Trust Gap
Still, Salesforce isnât 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 isnât just marketing hypeâitâs infrastructure. âWe didnât have the compute power. We didnât have LLMs at this scale. Now we do.â
But technology alone doesnât build trust. Parulekar sees Salesforceâs edge in the ability to make AI usable and approachable across the org chart.
âWhen customers come to us, theyâre not saying, âI want AI,ââ she explained. âTheyâre saying, âI want to boost sales productivity,â or âI want to reduce support wait times.â Our job is to translate generative and agentic AI into answers for those business problems.â
This translation hinges on one thing: data. Salesforceâs strategy is to bake agentic AI directly into the workflows and compliance controls of Financial Services Cloud. The agents arenât generic botsâtheyâre embedded digital coworkers that follow firm-specific rules, policies, and goals.
A Future Every Department Can Touch
Crucially, agentic AI isnât confined to the IT department. âMy events lead is talking about agents she wants to build,â Parulekar said. âShe saw what was possible from the event, and now she wants to execute. And she canâbecause itâs low-code. Thatâs the difference.â
Itâs a subtle but powerful shift: moving AI from centralized experimentation to department-level implementation. And itâs working.
âSalesforce has the opportunity to not just keep AI in IT,â Parulekar added, âbut to activate it across the business.â
The Bottom Line
The takeaway from Parulekar is clear: this isnât about science fiction. Itâs about giving real people the space to solve real problems faster, better, and with more creativity.
âIn a world where trust, transparency, and speed matter more than ever,â she said, âagentic AI isnât replacing human talentâitâs amplifying it.â
#3 The Digital Co-Worker Has Arrived: How Agentic AI Is Delivering Real ROI in Financial Services

Finally, letâs 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 isnât a far-off concept. Itâs here. Itâs working. And itâs redefining what it means to build capacity in financial services.
âWeâve launched Agentforce for Financial Services with a set of pre-built, role-based templates,â Jacobi told me during an exclusive interview. âYou can quickly spin up an AI agentâwhether itâs for customer service or supporting a financial advisorâand get immediate utility.â
From Hours to Minutes: Where AI Is Already Delivering ROI
For Jacobi, the real promise of Agentic AI lies in freeing human talent from low-value work.
âMeeting prep is a great example,â he explained. âA moderately complex client relationship can take hours to prep forâjust to gather data, check portfolios, and pull insights. Weâve helped customers take that time down from 90 minutes to under 10.â
In other words, Agentic AI isnât theoretical efficiencyâitâs measurable time savings, repurposed into deeper client engagement.
Itâs also enabling faster onboarding for junior advisors.
âImagine someone earlier in their career having access to a digital co-worker who ensures theyâre staying within investment guidelines, preparing effectively, and building trust quickly,â Jacobi said. âThatâs not just productivityâitâs a confidence accelerator.â
Solving the Industryâs Talent Crisis
As I shared above, the timing couldnât 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.
âWe need to make these jobs more scalableâand frankly, more attractive,â Jacobi said. âAgents help solve that. They take the grunt work off advisorsâ plates, giving them more time to focus on what they love: working with clients.â
That kind of support model repositions Agentic AI not as a job killer, but as a force multiplier.
âIf youâre a financial advisor, imagine if you had the budget to hire five people to support your book of business. What roles would you fill?â Jacobi asked. âThatâs how we think about Agentforceâgiving you a digital team that helps you operate at a higher level.â
Why Digital Labor Is A Strategy
Jacobi doesnât shy away from the disruption AI will bring. But he challenges the common fear narrative. âThereâs massive productivity potential here. Yes, it will change how we work. But it wonât eliminate the need for human talentâit will elevate it.â
In a post-pandemic world where financial advisors are expected to be more than stock pickersâplaying roles as life coaches, strategic planners, and wellness guidesâthe need for human empathy, nuance, and insight is greater than ever.
âDigital labor lets humans focus on what only humans can do,â Jacobi said.
What Fintech Leaders Should Be Paying Attention To
The implications for fintech leaders are clear:
AI isnât optional: Itâs quickly becoming the backbone of modern client engagement.
ROI is already happening: The shift from pilot programs to full deployment is well underway.
Scalability matters: As the advisor gap grows, firms that embrace AI will have a serious head start in serving more clients without ballooning costs.
The Bottom Line
In an industry built on trust and relationships, itâs 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.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS
Join us every Thursday to keep up with fintech events!
[HUNTINGTON BEACH] Future Proof Festival: Fintech Feminists Book Signing
Surprise update: I wasnât planning on going to Future Proof this year. But then my publisher Wiley told me theyâve got a booth and asked if Iâd sign and give away copies of my book Fintech Feminists.
So⊠here we are. Thanks to our friends at GoodFin, Iâll be at Future Proof on Monday, Sept 8 â signing books, giving them away, and connecting with this amazing community.
If youâre going, come by, grab your free copy, and letâs hang. Canât wait to see so many of you IRL. đ
đ 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. Iâll update via my LinkedIn in real time on booth location.
[SAN FRANCISCO] Leadership Summit: AI Edition (Officially a part of SF Tech Week!)
Join us October 8th in San Francisco and learn about AI in fintech from the brighest minds in fintech.
Hereâs a quick glimpse at who is taking the stage at the AI Leadership Summit:
Sibongile Ngako (Brex) â Chief Compliance Officer with the spicy takes on AI and fraud prevention.
Asya Bradley (Stripe) â VC Partnerships Lead scaling global fintech with AI
Drew Glover (Fiat Growth) â The investor lens on whatâs really raising in 2025
Anna Joo Fee (GoodFin) â Building fintech for real womenâs communities, not just headlines
Frances Zelazny (Anonybit) â Bringing the AI into the cybersecurity playbook
+20 more founders, operators, and investors leading the future of money.
[NEW YORK] The Emerald Summit
Climate tech is about directing capital toward a livable planetâand 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 isnât only about technologyâitâs 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 isnât the futureâitâs the now. Mark your calendar and join us September 19th!
FINTUNES
A fun and catchy song to close out summer!

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That wraps up todayâs editionâthanks for reading! Until next week, keep innovating and challenging the status quo. See you Tuesday!
Love,
Nicole đ