Dive Brief: 

• AI model advances and maturation of enterprise tools for agent design and deployment will let the banking industry take greater advantage of agentic AI in 2026, according to Accenture’s Top Banking Trends for 2026 report published Wednesday. 
• Banks will turn to platforms from major cloud providers in order to build artificial intelligence agents that align with their brands, compliance and service standards, the report said. AI agents are already improving performance for the financial services industry in software engineering, risk management and customer service. 
• “Executives must empower employees to reimagine workflows and co-design intuitive human-AI interactions that elevate work rather than replace it,” Andrew Young, Accenture’s global talent and organization lead for financial services, wrote in the report. 

Dive Insight: 

Banks are already reaping the rewards of agentic AI and will be working to add to the tools’ scope and capabilities throughout 2026. 

“Leading banks are deploying AI agents across operations, where they work alongside employees and independently handle defined tasks,” Young said. 

BNY has invested heavily in AI, with plans to build 150 AI-powered offerings to address issues throughout the bank’s operations. It has leveraged its AI platform, Eliza, to allow employees to design AI agents that can accomplish different tasks and integrated AI-powered “digital employees” that can execute on tasks with oversight. 

Over the next three years, 57% of banking executives expect AI agents to be fully embedded in risk, compliance and audit functions, as well as fraud detection and transaction monitoring, according to the Accenture report. Another 56% believe AI agents will reach broad adoption in credit assessment and loan processing, as well as “know your customer” functionalities. 

AI adoption is anticipated to drive up to 20% in net cost reductions for banks, according to a report from McKinsey & Co. published last year. However, the extent of banks’ cost reductions partially revolves around the industry’s ability to become fully agentic, the firm said. 

It will be critical for technology leaders to support workers along the AI journey, as many employees over time might manage teams of specialized AI agents to improve productivity, according to Accenture. Indeed, nearly half of banks and insurers are creating roles to supervise AI agents, according to the World Cloud Report for Financial Services 2026, published by the Capgemini Research Institute. 

Most CIOs expect AI agents will operate under a central governance model. CIOs will need to enable real-time monitoring and telemetry tracking of AI agent activity and system interactions, as well as implement safeguards such as multiagent validation for sensitive tasks, according to Accenture. 

“As AI agents become embedded across banking operations, they must be integrated into the enterprise technology stack with defined identity and access controls,” the Accenture report said. The firm recommends executives establish an agent identity framework enabling authentication, authorization and permission across operations.