Empathy and AI: The New Frontier in Financial Services

Welcome back to Model Citizens: AI Compliance for Banks and Fintech Lenders, a six-part miniseries from the Fintech Takes podcast in partnership with FairPlay.

In some ways, this is the episode everything has been building toward. We’ve explored AI in customer acquisition, underwriting, and compliance — but we haven’t gone deep on the buzziest, most frontier concept in the mix: agentic AI.

In Episode 5, we tackle the systems that don’t just analyze or predict, but actually act. 

With Kareem Saleh (Founder & CEO of FairPlay) co-hosting, we sit down with Alex O’Rourke (fintech adviser, lawyer, and AI cofounder) and Jay Budzik (AI/ML product and tech leader; Senior VP at Fifth Third) to unpack the implications of letting autonomous agents loose in financial services.

Highlights include:

• Why agentic AI breaks the “rules vs. empathy” binary that has defined human vs. machine roles (and how that opens new risks in compliance, customer service, and fraud detection)

• How AI agents will reshape customer loyalty (expect your robo-butler to switch your accounts for better rates while you sleep)

• Why banks might be more prepared than anyone thinks, thanks to a pre-existing culture of risk management (and why consumers remain the weakest link)

Don’t miss our deep dive into the wild frontiers of agentic AI … and what it means for the future of work, trust, and intelligent systems in finance.

Don’t forget to subscribe and catch the rest of Model Citizens; more insights to come!

This miniseries is brought to you by FairPlay.

FairPlay is an AI enablement company for financial services. They help companies build, test, optimize, validate and govern AI models. Learn more at Fairplay.ai

Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.

Follow Alex: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

Follow Kareem:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kareemsaleh/

Follow Jay:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaybudzik/

Follow Alex:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-villarreal-o-rourke-39631b28/

Learn more about FairPlay here.