Financial services has always been data-rich. But as AI moves from reporting and recommendation to reasoning, planning and guided action, the opportunity is shifting from better predictions to smarter execution.
In this episode of Re(AI)magine Conversations, Deepesh Shrivastava, Data and AI Vice President at Persistent, speaks with Grayson Kimmel, Director, Enterprise Sales, Financial Services at Databricks, about how agentic AI is reshaping banking, insurance and financial services.
The conversation begins with a major shift in how financial institutions use AI. Traditional models have long supported fraud detection, churn prediction, credit scoring, risk reporting and market segmentation. But today, banks and insurers need systems that can do more than explain what happened. They need AI that can help determine what should happen next.
Grayson describes the future of finance as instant, invisible and inclusive. As customer expectations rise and digital channels become the primary interface, financial institutions are rethinking how they bring data, people and intelligence together to deliver faster, more relevant and more trusted services.
The episode explores where agentic AI is creating immediate value across the industry. Fraud prevention and financial crime remain among the clearest business cases, with AI helping institutions reduce losses, lower false positives and respond faster. Hyper-personalization is another major area of focus, as firms move beyond generic campaigns toward next-best actions, contextual recommendations and more relevant digital experiences.
Deepesh and Grayson also discuss the growing importance of real-time risk management, liquidity monitoring, credit exposure analysis, payment intelligence and straight-through processing. As financial services moves away from retrospective reporting, decisions are becoming event-driven, continuous and embedded in the flow of business.
The central theme of the discussion is trust. In regulated industries, AI cannot scale without strong data quality, governance, security, explainability and auditability. Grayson emphasizes that responsible AI cannot be bolted on after a pilot. It must be designed from the beginning, with clear lineage, access controls, model monitoring and accountability built into the operating model.
The conversation also examines how human oversight is evolving. Rather than involving humans in every step, financial institutions are beginning to define where human-in-the-loop, human-on-the-loop and human-out-of-the-loop models make sense. The right level of autonomy depends on the risk, decision type and business context. A customer service summary is very different from a lending decision or a fraud action that could freeze an account.
Deepesh and Grayson go deeper into the capabilities financial services organizations must get right to adopt AI at scale. Trusted data, scalable architecture, unified platforms, operating discipline and change management are all critical. Without these foundations, AI programs can remain stuck in pilots. With them, institutions can industrialize use cases across lines of business and move toward measurable, production-grade impact.
The episode also highlights the role of the Persistent and Databricks partnership in helping customers move from science experiments to business outcomes. Databricks provides the data intelligence platform and unified governance foundation. Persistent brings deep implementation expertise, business context, modernization capabilities and industry experience to help financial services organizations operationalize AI responsibly and at scale.
As agentic AI becomes central to the next phase of financial services, the opportunity is not just to automate workflows. It is to create intelligent, governed and real-time decision systems that improve customer experience, reduce risk and unlock new sources of competitive advantage.
Tune in to learn how Persistent and Databricks are helping financial services enterprises move from AI pilots to production-grade impact with trusted data, governed platforms, real-time intelligence and agentic AI.
Join the conversation. Contact us at podcasts@persistent.com.
Speakers
Deepesh Shrivastava, Data and AI Vice President, Persistent
Grayson Kimmel, Director, Enterprise Sales, Financial Services, Databricks
