HSBC UK Private Banking is the first major UK bank to adopt Addepar’ software platform designed specifically for wealth managers. The Addepar platform provides an enhanced client reporting experience, with complex aspects such as alternatives and account aggregation. Relationship managers and investment advisers can provide clients with bespoke, comprehensive performance data and insights on their investments with just a few clicks. Additionally, the platform can also aggregate performance for clients who hold investments with other wealth managers, meaning clients can see a full picture of their entire investment portfolio. Charles Boulton, Head of Private Banking, HSBC UK, said: “Addepar’s platform will mean that clients have the best possible insights at their fingertips to manage an increasingly complex financial landscape. Being able to present a client’s entire portfolio to them so they have a holistic view of their wealth across multiple currencies and multiple wealth managers will be a big step forward for us.” James Thomson, Head of Investment Counselling, HSBC UK Private Banking, said: Our new reporting capabilities will mean our investment advisors can deliver deeper insights and greater transparency to our clients in a more efficient way, meaning they can spend more time on what matters most: providing our clients with high quality advice supported by robust analytics.”
Intuit’s agentic AI can get customers paid 45% faster, an average of five days sooner through automated transaction matching and invoice review enabling it to offer personalized experiences in real-time
Intuit has been working on a generative AI revolution for over a decade, culminating in the creation of Intuit’s GenOS, launched in June 2023. GenOS powers all of Intuit’s generative AI and agentic experiences, abstracting away the complexity of various underlying systems to allow for large-scale deployment of AI agents. The system now powers production-ready AI agents, including accounts receivable and accounts payable agents designed to automate cash flow management tasks. As chief AI and data officer Ashok Srivastava, Intuit’s agentic system can get customers paid 45% faster, an average of five days sooner, thanks to automated transaction matching and invoice review. This tangible outcome matters more than the underlying model count, as it allows Intuit to personalize AI experiences in real-time, delivering cash flow forecasts, intelligent recommendations, and context-aware automation tailored to the customer’s immediate needs. Intuit’s commitment to open source is another pillar of its strategy, with projects like Admiral, NumaProj, and Agroproj contributing to the broader community and leveraging the best available technologies. Intuit has received the End User Award from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation twice, and its platform powers a suite of widely-used products including QuickBooks, TurboTax, Mailchimp, and Credit Karma. Srivastava believes that AI agents can help small businesses and consumers do better, as many US firms are under pressure from economic changes and face reduced access to capital. He also remains optimistic about the use of AI in the field of art, seeing it as just another medium, not a replacement.
Accenture survey shows consumers are forming emotional bond with AI, with 93% of active gen AI users stating they have or would consider asking the technology for help with personal development goals
55% of consumers were open to AI making purchases on their behalf last year, according to Accenture. Now, they are more emotionally invested: 36% active gen AI users – defined as people using gen AI tools at least weekly for personal and/or professional reasons – think of gen AI as “a good friend.” 93% of active gen AI users have or would consider asking the technology for help with personal development goals, and one-in-10 (9%) consumers rank gen AI as their single-most trusted source of what to buy. 72% consumers have used standalone gen AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude, or engaged with gen AI through social media or search. Accenture’s new report also detailed consumer sentiment overall. 54% report feeling unusually high levels of uncertainty, a sentiment that has doubled in the past year (24% in Dec 2024) and three times the level reported in 2023 (18%). Consumers are 1.5-times as engaged, 2.3-times as likely to recommend a brand online, and 1.7-times as likely to accept a higher price from a brand or retailer that provides emotionally-engaging experiences. More than one-third (34%) of consumers would switch from a preferred brand to one that makes them feel special. Loyalty programs are key for driving return visits as well. Accenture’s data found that members of loyalty programs are 1.6-times more likely to be experientially or emotionally motivated, more willing to share data and engage with personalized experiences. They are 1.4-times as likely to help brands refine new products and services. “For some time, our view has been that AI will become the most important guide for consumers to decide what and where they buy,” said Oliver Wright, Accenture’s global lead for consumer Industries. “Our findings confirm that this is happening faster than we expected because of the emotional bonds that humans are forming with AI. Retailers and brands now stand at the next inflection point with generative and agentic AI. This technology provides an unparalleled opportunity to steal a march on the competition by providing relatable and relevant experiences tailored to the individual in a more friendly and helpful way.”
Migrating payment processing to the cloud and seeking cloud-native solutions from tech vendors with a global footprint, built-in ecosystem and PaaS capabilities can help mid-tier banks scale payments
Banks in the mid-sized category can leverage their unique strengths, such as deep client relationships and personalized service to differentiate themselves in a crowded, competitive landscape. 1) One major opportunity for mid-sized banks is the small and mid-sized business client segments. To capture this market, banks need to understand the needs of these clients and tailor their plans accordingly. Offering integrated solutions that address primary hurdles like integration complexity, the need for automation and technology costs can also help mid-sized banks position themselves to deliver value to their customers. These banks should create an integrated financial services ecosystem through payment hub solutions that offer pre-integrated value-added services such as sanctions screening, fraud detection, alternate cross-border payments and integration with ERP systems to drive faster speed to market and innovation. 2) Banks will also need to make a strategic choice of managing payments systems in-house vs. going with a SaaS solution that offers the best outcomes without complexity so that banks can focus on their core competency of delivering customer value. Mid-sized banks need flexibility, reliability, and a foundation to support rapid innovation and seamless scaling. Cloud technology delivers on these fronts.
Trust3 AI’s customizable guardrails, integrate with Snowflake RBAC mitigating prompt injection, unauthorized access, and sensitive data exposure
Trust3 AI has unveiled its innovative AI trust layer, focused on improving Cortex AI adoption and providing enterprises with robust tools to address challenges in scaling and managing AI systems. Available as a native app on Snowflake, Trust3 AI key components include—Trust3 IQ, Trust3 Visibility, and Trust3 Guard. Together, these features create a groundbreaking platform that simplifies semantic layer building, enhances contextual understanding, and ensures AI systems’ reliable and secure operation at scale. Trust3 IQ unifies structured and unstructured datasets, delivering a unified semantic layer that bolsters accuracy and enhances retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and Cortex agents. Offering a significant increase in reliability of conversational AI, Trust3 IQ accelerates AI adoption across multiple industries. Through Trust3 Visibility, enterprises gain real-time observability for all AI assets built on Snowflake and other platforms, enabling teams to measure, catalog, and govern systems effectively. This governance layer provides critical oversight for system behavior, ownership, and performance, mitigating risks related to security, legal and operational efficiency. Additionally, Trust3 Guard powers dynamic, context-aware security controls to safeguard structured and unstructured data. Its customizable guardrails, integrated with Snowflake RBAC and guardrails, mitigate risks such as prompt injection, unauthorized access, and sensitive data exposure, ensuring operational trust and compliance. Trust3 AI accelerates AI adoption and builds trust with end users by: Building enterprise context faster with intelligent metadata and semantic models; Delivering real-time observability for proactive risk mitigation; and Enhancing operational efficiency and reducing AI costs with adaptive controls.
IBM is looking to offer pre-built domain-specific agents and connectors for 80+ enterprise apps to support multi-agent collaboration across hybrid environments using open standards, semantic control planes and interoperability
At IBM Think 2025, IBM doubled down on a bold agentic AI strategy to unify digital labor across hybrid enterprises. IBM’s approach stands out by focusing on open standards, semantic control planes and an architecture that invites a diverse ecosystem of agents. The scale and complexity of enterprise ecosystems demand AI agents that are not just intelligent, but also interoperable. IBM’s announcements at Think 2025 centered around this very idea, championing openness as the foundation of digital labor. With watsonx Orchestrate positioned as the orchestrator of the agentic enterprise, IBM introduced a platform capable of managing, coordinating, and integrating agents built with any framework. “Over the next three years, one billion agents will be built on the basis of generative AI,” Rob Thomas, senior vice president, software and chief commercial officer at IBM, said during IBM Think. “They will need to work with each other seamlessly.” The semantic control plane at the heart of watsonx Orchestrate enables AI agents to interpret goals, decompose them into executable tasks and route those tasks to the right digital workers. This allows agents to operate collaboratively across hybrid environments —on-prem, cloud and software-as-a-service — without being trapped in vendor-specific ecosystems. “We help our clients integrate,” Arvind Krishna, chief executive officer of IBM, said during IBM Think. “We want to meet them where they are.” Through its new Agent Connect partner program, IBM is opening the doors for SaaS vendors, integrators, and developers to contribute agents to the watsonx ecosystem, according to Hebner. These agents can be built using any stack and plugged directly into IBM’s orchestration framework, where they benefit from observability, governance and semantic interoperability. Platforms from competitors such as Microsoft Corp. and SAS Institute are actively integrating causal AI, advanced reasoning and knowledge graph capabilities to help AI agents make better decisions, not just automate workflows. With multi-agent collaboration, pre-built domain-specific agents, and connectors for over 80 enterprise apps, IBM is building a semantic operating system for AI agents, enabling businesses to plug and play digital labor as easily as integrating software components.
Deloitte and Snowflake’s governed data platform for banks to offer a single source of truth by removing legacy data silos, generating real-time insights and unlocking use cases across customer onboarding, claims processing and underwriting
Deloitte Consulting LLP’s data leaders say clients want more than strategies — they expect accelerated delivery, real-time insight and a measurable return on investment. Deloitte’s collaboration with Snowflake meets that demand by building a governed data platform designed to speed time to value, according to Bibhu Patnaik, AI and data principal at Deloitte. Legacy data silos remain a major hurdle for financial institutions aiming to adopt AI at scale. Deloitte and Snowflake are working to dismantle these barriers and lay the foundation for a governed data platform that supports both regulatory mandates and innovation goals. The shift enables firms to tap into Snowflake’s scalable architecture while staying compliant with evolving oversight requirements, according to Patnaik. “Bank categorization is changing from a category four to a category three … and that’s where Snowflake shines. That’s where we are partnering with Snowflake to create that governed data platform ecosystem: A single source of truth which people can rely on, mainly for our financials and regulatory purposes as well.” The success of AI depends on harmonized, high-quality data that can be used across multiple functions, according to Sidhu. Deloitte’s work with Snowflake includes building a governed data platform readiness layer, enabling the delivery of real-time insights and unlocking use cases across customer onboarding, claims processing and underwriting. Deloitte sees financial institutions leapfrogging from outdated workflows to agent-based architectures. With Snowflake Cortex AI and a governed data platform supporting multi-agent thinking entering the mainstream, clients are moving beyond robotic process automation in search of more creative ways to reinvent internal operations, according to Patnaik.
OpenAI’s AI coding agent can now connect to the web to install dependencies, run tests that require external resources, upgrade packages and perform more tasks that demand internet connectivity while letting the user control domain access
Open AI expanded the capabilities of its Codex software engineering agent that launched last month and also making it available to more users. It’s also making more tools available to developers of voice agents through the OpenAI Agents software development kit. Codex is now able to connect to the web to install dependencies, run tests that require external resources, upgrade packages and more tasks that demand internet connectivity. However, the company said internet access remains switched off by default, and must be enabled for specific environments. Users will be able to control which domains it can access. The capability is coming to ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Teams users first, with Enterprise users expected to get it later. There are several other updates too. For instance, Codex now has the ability to update pull requests when performing a follow up task, and users will also be able to dictate tasks to it, instead of typing them out. Elsewhere, it gets support for binary files when applying patches, improved error messages for setup scripts, and increased limits on task diffs, up from 1 megabyte to 5 megabytes, and higher limits of 10 minutes on setup script durations, up from five minutes previously. OpenAI has also re-enabled live activities for iOS Codex users after fixing a problem pertaining to missed notifications, and removed the two-factor authentication requirement for users with single sign-on or social logins. OpenAI Agents SDK now supports TypeScript, with features including guardrails, handoffs, tracing and the Model Context Protocol, which provides a standardized way for agents to use third-party software tools such as browsers. The Agents SDK launched in March, providing tools for integrating AI models and agents with internal systems. Other updates in the Agents SDK include support for human-in-the-loop approvals, so developers can pause tool executions, serialize and store agent states and approve or reject specific calls, the company said. The Traces dashboard is getting support for Realtime application programming interface sessions, making it easier for developers to visualize voice agent runs. Finally, there’s an updated speech-to-speech model available in the SDK that delivers improved instruction following capabilities, interruption behavior and tool-calling consistency. Developers will also be able to control how fast the voice speaks.
Mass adoption of DeFi requires a requires a shift away from liquidity pools, offering a model where individuals negotiate fixed terms, choose their collateral, and eliminate reliance on centrally controlled oracle pricing
Decentralized finance (DeFi) aimed to create a global, permissionless financial system based on peer-to-peer transactions, free from the constraints of traditional finance. However, over time, DeFi protocols have drifted away from this vision, relying on liquidity pools, external price oracles, and heavily automated market makers (AMMs). These structures have unlocked liquidity but at the cost of user control, transparency, and exposure to centrally overridden “oracles.” Today’s users are boxed into preexisting liquidity pools, often with little say over collateral assets or risk profiles. Even DeFi leaders don’t follow the most basic principles of decentralization, as demonstrated by the recent Hyperliquid exchange exploit. DeFi’s promise of a genuinely independent P2P system has been strayed from its roots, and newer DeFi protocols are abandoning many of the golden rules of decentralization. The Hyperliquid incident shattered the decentralization illusion, as a decentralized platform that retroactively rewrites rules and dictates prices cannot be considered truly decentralized. Mass adoption of DeFi requires a user-centric shift, offering a model where individuals negotiate fixed terms, choose their collateral, and eliminate reliance on centrally controlled oracle pricing. This model will appeal to crypto-native users and newcomers alike, and the demand for DeFi hasn’t gone anywhere despite the rocky market.
CSI partners digital engagement provider WaveCX to enable banks to deliver tailored marketing, tutorials and educational experiences based on user behavior directly within their banking apps
WaveCX, provider of personalized, digital product engagement solutions for financial institutions, announced a strategic partnership with CSI, provider of end-to-end financial software and technology. Through this integration, CSI clients using the NuPoint® and Meridian® core platforms are equipped to increase digital adoption and deliver more dynamic customer experiences directly within their banking applications. The partnership opens new possibilities for customer engagement within digital banking environments, allowing financial institutions to go beyond traditional marketing channels. With WaveCX, CSI clients can now: Deliver tailored in-app marketing and educational experiences based on user behavior; Promote awareness and adoption of underutilized digital features; Proactively guide users with contextual messages, tutorials and announcements at the point of need. Jon Tvrdik, CEO of WaveCX “By reaching users directly inside the app, banks and credit unions can increase adoption, improve education, and ultimately drive stronger engagement and loyalty.”