Add AI Agents on Org Charts and Keep Them Ethical to Boost AI Gains
Banks’ AI Divide: Leaders Pull Away Fast—2.3x Speed!
Thanks for reading the “Cashless” newsletter, an insider’s view on Asia’s fintech, CBDC, and AI for anyone striving to understand “the Asia Century.” I’m Rich Turrin, and these are my hard-hitting insights designed to educate and inform. Subscribe to get these emerging trends directly in your inbox every Sunday. Every week, I scan thousands of articles to find only the best and most valuable for you. Subscribe to get my expertly curated news straight to your inbox each week. Free is good, but paid is better.
Topics:
Adding AI Agents to Your Org-Chart: the First Step Towards Responsible AI
Navigating AI Ethics, Where Angels Fear to Tread
IBM: Focus on Cybersecurity, Ethics and SLMs Brings 32X Gains to Agentic AI
Banks’ AI Divide: Leaders Pull Away Fast—2.3x Speed!
Why Visa’s Stablecoin Lending Dream is a $670B Mirage
The Knowledge Vault: E-Books for Fintech and AI Mastery Premium subscribers only. Become an expert with 2550+ pages of focused best-in-class knowledge to outpace your peers
Money Disrupted: The Definitive Collection of Stablecoin Resources Premium subscribers only. Everything you need to see through stablecoin hype and become an expert to stay ahead of the curve
Bonus Read ✦ McKinsey: Bank Profits to Take $170B Hit from AI —No Tears as Customers Set to Win!
Happy Sunday!
Today’s art shows the fusion of art and advertising and how the Italian futurists believed that art was on the street, not in the museum!
The futurist’s instincts would serve them well with AI today. AI won’t be fought out over McKinsey reports but on the streets, where real users decide whether they trust it or not.
That’s why this week, we look at responsible AI and AI ethics, with real proof from IBM that they work!
You’d think that building responsible AI would be second nature to companies, but it most definitely is not.
In a recent survey, 60% of companies hadn’t figured out who in their company was responsible for their AI.
In another McKinsey survey this year, 72% of organizations using AI report that their CEO is not responsible for overseeing AI governance, and that 83% of boards do NOT oversee AI governance.
So the notion that responsible AI will simply be built because companies care is simply false.
That’s why I lead with the simple suggestion that AI agents have a spot on the org chart and follow this with an article about how important AI ethics are.
If your company can work on these two important concepts in responsible AI, it will be ahead of most!
Proving my assertion is an article from IBM that perfectly shows how AI ethics is key to getting more gains out of AI!
Switching topic, we look at the Evident AI report to show how the AI divide in banking is getting ever wider.
I’ve talked about the AI “haves and have-nots” among banks in the past, but the evidence from this report is irrefutable.
The future for the AI “have-nots” is not at all bright. And as the report makes clear, they won’t catch up but instead, fall further behind.
Visa makes a strategic blunder by handing over authorship of one of its reports to a crypto company that promptly forgets that Visa runs a website that adjusts stablecoin volumes.
The website “visaonchainanalytics.com” shows how stablecoin numbers are inflated.
So what are we to think of a report by Visa using inflated stablecoin numbers, not adjusted?
Talk about a screw up on Visa’s part!
And no, lending is not stablecoins’ killer app!
Finally, today’s bonus read looks at McKinsey’s prediction that banks will lose $170B in the new age of agentic AI.
The amusing part is that this $170B is mostly attributed to agentic AI’s ability to guide bank customers to better deals!
So in a great twist of fate, banks’ loss is customers’ gain!
You may notice that some of my past articles are getting paywalls and that I am producing new premium content. I’ll do my best to keep these weekly newsletter articles open to all for a few weeks, but some may eventually get paywalls.
If you’d like to support my work and explore these extras, consider joining as a premium subscriber.
To all subscribers, my heartfelt thanks for opening your inbox and being part of this journey!
Rich
PS
Thanks for sharing with your friends! It’s a great way to say thanks.
Adding AI Agents to Your Org-Chart: the First Step Towards Responsible AI
AI Agents are more than tools, they’re teammates
We are entering the era of AI Agents who won’t just support work but perform it, taking over roles held by humans or working alongside them, and they deserve a spot on the org chart.
This raises the real question of whether companies are ready to transition to turning AI agents into new employees.
Navigating AI Ethics, Where Angels Fear to Tread
Keeping AI compliant? Simple. Keeping it ethical? Tough.
Brace yourself for the bank or fintech CEOs who will soon say: “My company’s AI broke no laws.” At the same time, their AI violated every ethical rule in the book.
Think it won’t happen in our new digital arena? Look to Apple giving women using their new credit card significantly lower credit limits than their male partners, for no good reason.
IBM: Focus on Cybersecurity, Ethics and SLMs Brings 32X Gains to Agentic AI
Meanwhile, 72% are wasting time using AI to improve existing processes
IBM looks at Agentic AI’s ascent and shows how companies seeking to achieve “top-tier business performance” get a 32X boost if they excel in: cybersecurity, ethics, and small language models.
Note that this week I wrote about the need to focus on AI ethics, and that it shows up in this IBM report as a key feature for successful programs shows its importance!
In a follow-up to the post above on AI ethics, read why IBM thinks they are so important.
Banks’ AI Divide: Leaders Pull Away Fast—2.3x Speed!
Only 3 Banks Dare to Report AI ROI
Evident AI’s Bank Index is always a fun read, and this year provides hard evidence on how AI leaders are pulling away from laggards, creating a world of AI-haves and have-nots.”
The trend is so pronounced that Evident shows how the top-10 banks are increasing their AI scores over 2.3x faster year-over-year than their wider set of peers.
This shows just how high-stakes the AI race for banks is and why being a “fast follower,” once considered a valid strategy, is now a death sentence.
Why Visa’s Stablecoin Lending Dream is a $670B Mirage
Smaller markets and hidden FX risks collide.
Visa views stablecoins as the ideal vehicle for on-chain lending, but doesn’t admit that it’s a far smaller and riskier market than it makes out.
Visa wants on-chain lending to go mainstream and, in its enthusiasm, is willing to overlook its own analysis that shows low stablecoin uptake by retail users, and the potential risks of FX exposure with dollarized loans to borrowers.
See why Visa’s love of stablecoin lending misses the plot!
The Knowledge Vault: E-Books for Fintech and AI Mastery
Become an expert with 2550+ pages of focused best-in-class knowledge to outpace your peers
Dear Premium subscriber, thanks for your support! This knowledge vault is a collection of ebooks across four topic themes. Each has been carefully selected; only the most valuable and high-quality material is added to my collection.
Table of Contents
AI
Banking
CBDC/TOKENIZATION/Payments
Asia
Check out the knowledge vault, a live document, by going premium.
Money Disrupted: The Definitive Collection of Stablecoin Resources (Premium Subscribers Only)
Everything you need to see through stablecoin hype and become an expert to stay ahead of the curve
Dear Premium subscriber, thanks for your support! This special article is a curated collection of my best articles that discuss stablecoins. I promised “the good, bad and ugly” and I guarantee that my articles will do just that.
Bonus Read✦ McKinsey: Bank Profits to Take $170B Hit from AI —No Tears as Customers Set to Win!
Rejoice, because banks’ loss is customers’ gain!
McKinsey calls out bank AI disruption: “Over the next decade or so, bank profit pools globally could decline by $170 billion, or 9%.”
But don’t waste a single tear for banks, as most of these losses are due to clients using AI and Agents to shop for a better deal!
If ever there was a statistic that showed what good AI can do, this is it: banks’ losses are customers’ gains!
Consider the impact of agents on deposits:
↳”If just 5 to 10% of checking balances migrated to top-of-market rates, the banking industry’s total deposit profits could decline by 20% or more.”
↳Shockingly: “$23 trillion of the global total of $70 trillion in consumer deposits sits in checking accounts
with near-zero rates.”
↳The real headline is that 20% of banking profits come from zero-interest rate theft!
Agents will break the vicious cycle of bank abuse, and no one will weep for bank losses as customers get the deal they deserve!
👉Agents are predicted to help customers get a much better deal:
1️⃣ Commoditization: getting the best price regardless of institution or brand.
2️⃣ Disaggregation: pull apart the banking products to component pieces.
3️⃣ Disintermediation: Customers will rely on 3rd party agents, not the bank
4️⃣ Democratization: Providing bank value-added services to all, resulting in price compression.
For those who say AI should lower banks’ costs, they are missing that those 15-20% savings will be passed onto the customer as savings to keep up with competition.
McKinsey is clear that size no longer matters; it is precision that counts:
“Precision is the decisive differentiator, separating leading banks from slow movers and reshaping the industry’s performance curve.”
Maybe so, but only if precision results in better deals for customers, which means lower margins for all.
Agents will bring unparalleled transparency to banking markets, and with instant payments, reducing the cost of moving funds to nothing, loyalty will drop to zero.
In the US bank loyalty is already dying:
“Only 4% of new checking account applicants choose their existing bank without first exploring alternatives, down from 25% in 2018.”
Banks were never loyal to me, so I will return the favor!
AI Agents will help customers finally get the deal they deserve in banking services.
Hot Topics for Premium Subscribers only
Imagine having someone combing through thousands of articles, over 50 RSS feeds, and 25 meticulously crafted Google searches—all to handpick the absolute best reports, just for you.
Each week, I distill this ocean of information into five concise, high-value reports, sharing the most essential knowledge you need to stay ahead.
But that’s not all. I also collect additional exclusive, hard-to-find gems, which I put in the section below—all in PDF format with my brief expert commentary.
To download them, no corporate email is required, no searching, and no links to other places are required. With a paid subscription, these insights are just a click away.
Here’s what you’re missing out on this week in the Premium Subscriber-only section below:
Recent CBDC Developments in Asia and Their Implications
Asia’s diverse countries encompass developed regions served by good connectivity and payment infrastructure, to remote or underdeveloped areas hindered by poor digital services and weak access to financial services. Digital currency is a form of currency that exists only in digital or electronic form that may be…..
AI Safety and Governance, The Southeast Asian Way
Artificial Intelligence (AI) safety governance today is largely shaped by global powers like the United States, China, and Europe. Yet, as AI systems grow more powerful and governance models begin to harden, Southeast Asia cannot afford to be a bystander.
Visa: The Rise of Agentic Commerce
While we often explore how AI will reshape payments, far less has been said about the reverse: how payments themselves will shape the evolution of AI. This raises a fundamental question: How will we pay (and be paid) through AI apps and agent workflows?
And that’s just a selection of today’s cache of insightful PDF reports. You’re also missing the infamous Chart of the Day, which today covers: “The World’s Largest Economies, Asia on Top! ”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Cashless: Fintech, CBDC and AI at the speed of Asia to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.