There’s no shortage of commentary on agentic AI. To get an idea of what’s at stake for banks, insurers, and other financial institutions, Jame invited Ned Lowe to share his thoughts.
Ned is an ex-banker, programmer at a hedge fund, and former CTO of SingLife during its time as an independent insurtech. He also shares his insights about AI on LinkedIn. Given this background, he’s in a good position to help execs in the financial world get a better handle on what agentic AI means for them. Ned brings a view that straddles incumbents and startups, which is also useful for this conversation. Today he runs his own startup, Mission+, an agentic AI engineering company.
The central proposition is that firms need to understand when to use AI as a product - a thing they prompt to get some kind of output - and when it’s a tool to build a product, which can mean an incredibly productive programmer. None of this is straightforward but it’s all pretty exciting.
We framed this conversation deliberately around AI’s potential. We don’t get into issues around security and reliability, which seemed like a separate conversation. If you’re looking for reasons to shun AI or to focus on its (very real) shortcomings, this conversation isn’t for you. We spent our thirty minutes talking instead about the impact on financial firms, from a technologist steeped in the industry.
Timecodes:
0:00 - Ned Lowe, Mission+
2:48 - “AI as a product” versus “AI to build the product”
6:41 - Governance around ensuring genAI is reliable
8:58 - “Agile is dead” and the new digital transformation in finance
14:29 - Lessons from the trading floor and why AI restores the value of high touch
18:23 - Cost implications of AI, the cloud example, and how to think about cost vs benefits
23:25 - Is AI good or bad for financial incumbents grappling with legacy tech?
26:32 - Is AI going to enable fintechs to return to disruptive innovation?
29:11 - About Mission+
