Moving from Hype to Impact: Preparing for an Agentic Future

The capacity of AI systems to autonomously plan, decide, and act across multi-step workflows is no longer a future prospect, but already being deployed across financial institutions today. Yet the gap between ambition and execution has never been wider. According to KPMG, 99% of companies plan to put AI agents into production, but only 11% have actually done so.

This report, produced in partnership with Zühlke, distils the conversations from an invite-only GFTN Insights Forum roundtable that brought together senior leaders from global banks, regulators, technology firms, and multilateral institutions.

The consensus that emerged was that the dominant challenge has moved from technological to institutional. Fragmented governance, siloed data, misaligned expectations at the executive level, and the absence of interoperability standards are stalling progress far more than model capability ever has.

Drawing on those discussions, the report offers grounded, practitioner-tested perspectives and five clear imperatives to help organisations navigate the agentic transition responsibly and at scale.