The increasing use of artificial intelligence in financial systems is driving the industry towards a model where machines process transactions on a large scale, creating new challenges related to control, oversight, and infrastructure, according to Microsoft and Chainalysis executives. Bill Borden, Microsoft's corporate vice president of worldwide financial services, stated that legacy systems will face growing pressure as transaction demands become more complex.
The turning point is reached when latency, scale, and complexity start to impact a company's ability to compete, forcing firms to reevaluate their system architecture, he said at an event in New York City. While automation has long been a part of finance, Borden noted that the focus is now shifting from capability to trust. The question is no longer whether technology can automate tasks, but whether it can be trusted and audited. Microsoft is developing tools to manage this transition, including systems that assign identities and permissions to AI agents and track their actions.
In regulated environments, firms must be able to demonstrate what controlled a system and whether it followed policy when decisions are made without human input. Jonathan Levin, co-founder and CEO of Chainalysis, pointed out that the crypto sector already provides a working model of automated finance. Blockchain networks process large volumes of transactions through smart contracts and software-driven wallets, creating an environment similar to agent-based systems.
Levin noted that his company's experience extends to risk management, citing efforts to track illicit funds across thousands of wallets as an example of the kind of monitoring needed in a system where transactions occur at scale without human input. Looking ahead, both executives expect a mix of systems to coexist. Levin predicted that the majority of commerce will be settled on public infrastructure in the next decade, while Borden envisioned a more integrated approach linking public blockchains, private networks, and existing systems.