Apr 27, 2025
Agentic workflows, powered by increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence, are rapidly changing how financial institutions operate. By automating complex decision-making processes, they not only increase operational efficiency but also help firms deliver faster, more accurate, and highly personalized services. In this blog post, we unpack what “agentic” means in the AI space, explore its practical applications, and show how Olymp is embedding this capability into its flagship product, Apollo.
What Does "Agentic" Mean in AI?
In the context of artificial intelligence, “agentic” refers to systems that can make decisions and act independently, based on data and predefined goals, without requiring continuous human input. These AI agents can carry out tasks, interact with users, and adapt their behavior as they learn from new information or changing circumstances.
The term stems from the broader concept of agency, meaning the ability to act with autonomy. When applied to AI, agentic workflows combine this autonomy with the ability to reason, plan, and respond in real time. While the foundations of agentic systems were laid in earlier decades, recent advances in large language models, reinforcement learning, and orchestration frameworks have made them viable for production use across data-heavy industries.
Why Agentic Workflows Matter
Financial institutions, more than most, are burdened with repetitive yet high-stakes workflows. Whether it's onboarding clients, analyzing documents, flagging potential fraud, or responding to thousands of customer queries each day, many tasks require speed, accuracy, and consistency.
Agentic AI can automate large parts of these processes, doing so with precision and auditability. Instead of relying on static scripts or manual processing, agentic workflows continuously adapt to new inputs. They’re trained to follow rules, evaluate context, and adjust their course of action dynamically, all while keeping humans in the loop where necessary.
Some key benefits of agentic workflows include:
Operational efficiency: AI handles routine work so teams can focus on more strategic decisions.
Scalability: Workflows can easily be expanded to handle more users or more data.
Accuracy and consistency: Reduced manual errors, especially in compliance-heavy domains.
Faster decision-making: Instant processing and action on real-time inputs.
Real-World Use Cases in Financial Services
The financial sector is particularly well suited to agentic automation due to its reliance on rules-based tasks, tight regulations, and demand for around-the-clock responsiveness. Here are a few areas where agentic workflows can deliver real impact:
Risk management: AI agents can continuously monitor transactions and behaviors, identifying anomalies and raising alerts within milliseconds.
Customer support: Intelligent assistants now resolve everything from password resets to balance inquiries, without wait times or escalation.
Compliance monitoring: AI helps ensure processes meet evolving regulations by checking for consistency, completeness, and regulatory alignment in real time.
Document processing: Agentic systems can read, extract, and summarize key details from contracts or compliance documents, reducing review times dramatically.
Olymp: Agentic AI Tailored for Financial Institutions
At Olymp, we’re not just applying agentic workflows, we’re building them into the core of our technology stack. Apollo is a purpose-built AI platform developed specifically for the complex needs of banks and asset managers. Our agents are designed to handle a wide spectrum of use cases across financial services, from client relationship management to internal risk evaluation.
Olymp’s approach is highly customizable. Institutions can choose from over 12 prebuilt AI modules or co-develop their own agentic workflows with our team. This flexibility allows organizations to fine-tune AI behaviors, ensuring alignment with their data, policies, and objectives.
What makes Apollo stand out is how deeply embedded it is in the real-world context of finance. We’ve designed the platform in close collaboration with industry stakeholders and in accordance with strict compliance and governance frameworks. That’s what makes it not just powerful, but also safe and trustworthy.
Co-Development, Not One-Size-Fits-All
Unlike plug-and-play AI tools that aim for general applicability, Olymp focuses on close collaboration. We partner with financial institutions to understand their workflows, pain points, and compliance requirements. From there, we design agentic systems that are tailor-made for their internal processes.
This model not only results in more effective AI agents but it also builds internal confidence in their use. Stakeholders across the organization can see how the system was designed, what it can and cannot do, and how it fits into their risk management and governance structure.
How It Works in Practice
Olymp offers several deployment models depending on a client’s infrastructure and security needs:
Hosted in Switzerland on Olymp’s secure Azure environment.
A dedicated cloud instance for organizations needing stronger isolation.
Hosted within the client’s own cloud infrastructure (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP).
Full local hosting for institutions with strict data sovereignty requirements.
Olymp’s team supports every step, from onboarding to fine-tuning and compliance verification.
Document Automation, Risk Alerts, and More
Some of the most popular use cases we see include:
Automated compliance document reviews
Proactive fraud detection and transaction monitoring
24/7 AI-powered client service agents
Real-time portfolio analysis and reporting
AI-guided onboarding for wealth management clients
Each of these agents is trained not only to complete a task, but to flag anomalies, request human input when needed, and log all steps taken for audit purposes. This transparency is essential for regulated industries, and Olymp’s platform was designed with it from the ground up.
The Future of Financial Operations
As AI capabilities mature, agentic workflows will play a central role in transforming how financial organizations operate. They enable scale, responsiveness, and reliability at a level that manual processes simply can’t match.
Olymp is committed to advancing this transformation with technology that’s not only powerful but also governed, explainable, and compliant. We believe agentic AI should assist and not replacehumans, helping institutions operate more intelligently, securely, and efficiently.