The Great Big Financial Systems Upgrade: Towards Agentic Infrastructure or a Slowdown?

Banks are racing toward agentic infrastructure. Few can rebuild core banking, payments and risk management at once without the upgrade itself becoming the systemic risk. As autonomous agents move from pilots into production, institutions face a real choice: accelerate the rebuild, or slow down until controls and supervisors catch up. The panel pressure-tests both paths: what a credible migration sequence looks like, where legacy risk controls break under autonomous decision-making, and when deliberately slowing down is the smarter strategic call rather than a failure of nerve.