Sibos 2026: Microsoft Urges Banks to Embed AI in Core Workflows
At Sibos 2026 in Miami, Jacqueline O'Flanagan, head of financial services Americas at Microsoft Frontier Co, emphasized that banking and finance companies need to integrate AI into their core workflows. She argued that access to AI models alone will not provide a lasting advantage for institutions.
O'Flanagan pointed out three key factors that will underpin this approach: institutional reputation, proprietary intelligence, and the ability to make that intelligence available to employees, clients, and partners. She described the next stage of AI adoption as connecting context, execution, and control.
Context includes institutional and market data, relationship histories, risk signals, documents, and operational knowledge. Execution involves using AI agents and applications to coordinate work across workflows, rather than simply answering individual questions. Control covers areas including identity, permissions, observability, auditability, resilience, and human accountability.
Microsoft's role is to provide an integrated foundation that helps financial institutions retain control of their data and compound their intelligence across cloud, data, AI, security, and collaboration, O'Flanagan said. She highlighted several existing deployments as examples of how this approach could be applied, including BNY's use of its Eliza platform and LSEG's use of Microsoft Fabric.