Autonomous AI agents: Your next partner in corporate finance?

Corporate finance executives could soon get help from artificial intelligence (AI) with tasks from managing payments and receivables to tracking cash flow and handling foreign exchange exposure.

Humans would oversee only critical steps while autonomous AI agents handle routine work.

Providing this suite of AI tools, along with loans and financial advisory, is how Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) envisions its future as it ramps up investment in the space.

The Japanese financial group is setting up a new AI venture to develop solutions that streamline corporate finance workflows, said Mayoran Rajendra, head of SMBC’s Asia Innovation Centre. The increasing complexity of finance workflows is a pain point identified over four years of client engagement, he added.

While SMBC has been offering business intelligence consultancy services for four years, its latest initiatives signal a more ambitious push into enterprise AI. Outside Japan, it primarily serves large multinational corporations and financial institutions.

SMBC’s parent company, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG), said in May it has committed an initial 800 billion yen (S$6.76 billion) to accelerate digital transformation across the organisation. Of that, 50 billion yen has been earmarked for generative AI development.

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With over 250 trillion yen in assets, SMBC is one of Japan’s largest lenders.

New AI venture

The agentic AI venture, headquartered in Singapore, will develop solutions for both internal use and for clients. Ahmed Jamil Mazhari, SMFG’s groupwide AI transformation advisor, will hold a stake in the venture.

Agentic AI, which refers to AI systems that can learn, reason and act independently, is expected to accelerate work processes.

Bank customers are increasingly leveraging AI to automate their operations, observed Mayoran. “We need to transform ourselves, first of all, to be relevant, and more than anything, to serve our customers better.”

SMBC will be the venture’s first customer, before the tools are extended to the bank’s clients, starting with their CFO offices, said Mayoran. CFO offices oversee a wide range of financial processes while monitoring business indicators such as the return on invested capital and cash conversion cycles.

It will be showcasing how it is making AI agents more accessible to SMBC customers at its booth at this year’s Singapore FinTech Festival.

Need to experiment

The venture will be set up as an independent start-up to provide talents with more flexibility to experiment and develop solutions, said Mayoran.

Experimentation is key to understanding AI’s capabilities and limitations, he stressed. Users also need to clearly define the business objective and examine processes from end-to-end to identify the real bottlenecks.

While there remain concerns about excessive hype surrounding AI and the potential for overinvestment, Mayoran is confident about its potential. “The expectations for AI are high, but its capabilities are real,” he said.

This was produced in partnership with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Global Finance & Technology Network.

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