Can banks match fintechs in scaling agentic AI?

Most incumbent initiatives are defined by narrower applications.

Traditional banks are trailing financial technology (fintech) companies when it comes to adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in revenue-driving and agentic use cases, according to McKinsey & Co.

Using data from 4,000 fintechs globally, McKinsey found that fintechs account for nearly 70% of AI initiatives.

“Banks, in contrast, face greater regulatory complexity, fragmented technology stacks, and organizational inertia,” the management consulting firm said in an insights article published in November 2025.

“Whilst fintechs have rapidly operationalized AI in analytics, trading, and portfolio management, many banks remain stuck in pilot mode, testing promising concepts but struggling to move them into production,” it added.

For banks, the fastest growth area mostly involves agentic AI and revenue-driving applications. These include AI-powered multi-asset trading platforms and advanced predictive decision management tools.

One bank openly exploring agentic AI applications is SMBC. The Japanese megabank opened a startup in Singapore that can experiment and test agentic AI applications and services more quickly, sidestepping lengthy regulatory and internal processes.

Banks use AI mainly to improve reliability and trust.

“Most incumbent initiatives are defined by narrower applications such as treasury automation, chat-based banking assistants, and advisory personalization, which, while useful, risk commoditization and miss the transformational upside,” McKinsey wrote.

Southeast Asia’s biggest bank DBS launched a gen AI assistant for its corporate clients, providing them with 24/7 support for corporate banking queries. Earlier this year, OCBC rolled out an AI-powered stock advisory service that was trained in 4,000 stocks. 

In contrast, fintechs use AI and are exploring the use of agentic AI for advanced predictive decision management, AI-driven financial analytics, and multi-asset trading platforms.

For instance, an AI-powered global mobile trading platform used by fintechs enables real-time, algorithmic decision-making, improving trading outcomes, McKinsey said.

Ant International, for example, has embedded an agentic AI travel companion in its digital wallet platform. Alipay+ Voyager can reportedly assist travellers in itinerary planning, booking, and purchasing in-merchant offerings.

Stripe, a global payment processing platform, is also exploring the use of agentic AI to rethink the whole payment flow— from digital shopping to the checkout process.