Fintech leaders say AI & AML shifts cut finance costs

Fintech leaders are using World FinTech Day to highlight how regulatory and technology shifts are reshaping the economics of finance operations. Executives say agentic artificial intelligence and managed compliance services are changing how large institutions and smaller firms manage cost and risk.

Agentic AI, in which software agents independently handle tasks such as service and back-office requests, has become a focal point for finance chiefs examining structural costs. Interest has grown as vendors pitch automation that goes beyond chat interfaces and ticket logging to close out routine work without human intervention.

Dion Williams, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Australian workflow automation firm Servicely, said finance leaders now view AI through a cost lens rather than purely as an innovation initiative.

"For CFOs, the agentic AI story is really a cost story. When AI can resolve routine service and back-office requests end to end, rather than just logging them, you take cost out of operations without losing the people who add value. But finance leaders should apply the same rigour here as to any investment: know what each AI capability actually costs to run, demand measurable resolution rates rather than vague 'productivity' claims, and treat runaway model consumption as a real budget line. The winners won't be the businesses that spend the most on AI - they'll be the ones that can show a clear return," said Williams, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Servicely.

Williams introduced ServiceNow to the Australian market and oversaw hundreds of implementations before launching Servicely. His comments reflect a broader debate among Chief Financial Officers about how far they can rely on AI-driven autonomy in internal processes while keeping spending predictable.

Agentic AI is drawing attention as finance teams look for ways to cut operating expenditure without reducing headcount in specialised roles. Boards are closely examining whether these systems can handle high-volume, rules-based tasks while delivering tangible savings and clear accountability for model usage.

Governance concerns are rising in parallel. Many finance teams now track model consumption and inference costs as a separate budget category alongside more traditional technology spending on licences and infrastructure.

Regulation is placing similar pressure on the compliance side of financial services. The rollout of so-called Tranche 2 anti-money laundering requirements in Australia has extended obligations beyond major banks to professional services sectors that historically lacked formal compliance structures.

John Nguyen, Founder of AML Partners, said the decade-long rise of fintech competition against the major banks is now spilling into compliance functions.

"Over the past decade, fintechs pushed into a market long held by the major banks and forced the incumbents to move faster and treat customers better. Competition did what regulation on its own rarely manages. That same pattern is now reaching compliance, an area that until recently sat almost entirely inside large institutions. Anti-money laundering used to be something only banks did properly, because only banks could afford the teams and systems it demanded. Tranche 2 has handed that same obligation to real estate agencies, conveyancers, accountants and lawyers, most of whom have never had a compliance function and cannot realistically build one. The old options were to hire expensive specialists, buy generic software that does part of the job, or bet on the regulator being slow. None of those hold up against a live deadline with daily penalties attached. What has changed is that the expertise once locked inside the banks can now be packaged and delivered to a small firm at a price it can justify. At AML Partners we have taken a decade of institutional AML experience and turned it into a managed service a twenty-person agency can actually run. That is competition reaching a corner of finance that never had any, and it is the businesses at the sharp end of the deadline who benefit. Fintechs have reshaped Australian finance by competing in places the major banks had largely to themselves for decades. That pressure pushed the incumbents to move faster and to build products around what customers actually need rather than what was easiest to sell. Customers ended up with more choice and better service, and the wider industry lifted its standard as a result," said Nguyen.

New AML obligations have created an opening for specialist fintechs that package bank-grade expertise into subscription and managed service models. Smaller firms in sectors such as real estate and legal services now face fixed regulatory deadlines and daily penalties, shifting compliance spending from discretionary to unavoidable.

As a result, fintech providers in both AI automation and compliance are competing less on software breadth and more on measurable outcomes such as resolution rates, cost per transaction and risk reduction. Finance leaders and business owners in regulated sectors are moving away from general productivity narratives and demanding direct links between technology use, operating cost and regulatory exposure.