Jon O’Donnell, Chief Operating Officer at Acuity Knowledge Partners, is spearheading the firm’s latest innovation — the Agentic AI platform, built exclusively for the financial services sector. Leveraging over two decades of domain expertise, Acuity’s Agent Fleet combines AI-driven task automation with no-code workflows to tackle high-effort processes such as research, data extraction and regulatory reporting. With compliance, auditability, and human oversight at its core, the platform represents a shift from general-purpose AI towards tailored, domain-specific solutions designed to drive efficiency, precision and innovation across financial institutions.
Acuity’s new Agentic AI platform is tailored for financial services. How does this differentiate it from general-purpose AI solutions, and what problems is it designed to solve for financial firms in particular?
Acuity Knowledge Partners’ Agentic AI platform is fundamentally different from general-purpose Artificial Intelligence (AI) because it’s built specifically for the workflows, compliance needs and data environments of financial services. While general AI tools focus on generating content from prompts, Agentic AI is designed to reason, plan and execute complex, multi-step tasks. Because of our decades of experience in managing these workflows for our global client base, we are uniquely positioned to understand the intricacies of the process and develop our AI systems to execute these flows more effectively than generic AI.
Our platform uses a multi-agent approach, the Agent Fleet, where each agent has a specialised role, for example data sourcing, analysis, critique and publishing. These agents collaborate to complete tasks autonomously, ensuring outputs are not only fast but also accurate, auditable and aligned with financial industry standards. It’s particularly effective in areas like research and regulatory reporting, and where precision, traceability and domain expertise are non-negotiable.
Could you walk us through a real-world example or use case where your Agent Fleet is delivering measurable value to a financial institution?
One of the most impactful use cases is in automated company profiling. Traditionally, analysts would spend hours gathering data, structuring profiles and formatting them to client standards.
With our Agent Fleet, a sourcing agent pulls data from internal and external sources, while a structuring agent organises the information. A critique agent also reviews for consistency and compliance, and a publishing agent formats the final output in the client’s template.
This process, which used to take several hours per profile, now takes just minutes, delivering huge productivity gains while maintaining quality and auditability. It’s a clear example of how the Acuity Agent Fleet can free up people for higher value work.
With growing scrutiny from regulators and stakeholders, explain how Acuity’s approach to domain-specific, agentic AI helps financial services firms manage risk and remain compliant while unlocking new opportunities for innovation?
Compliance is built into the foundations of Agent Fleet and our agentic AI platform. Each agent is designed to operate within defined rules, providing audit trails and quality checks. Unlike other AI models, our agents provide transparent, explainable outputs where outputs are scored for the level of confidence that the Quality Assurance reviews indicate. This is crucial for financial institutions facing increasing regulatory scrutiny. By embedding compliance logic directly into the workflow, firms can reduce operational risk while continuing to innovate.
The real differentiator for Acuity Knowledge Partners, is our human in the loop approach. We believe in a People + Tech approach, where our domain experts provide supervision of the process and review all outputs. This ensures we provide the highest quality intelligence to our clients, in a safe, sustainable and scalable way.
Having led large technology initiatives at both IBM and now Acuity, what do you think is the most significant hurdle financial firms face when integrating AI into their operations, and how can they best overcome it?
The biggest hurdle isn’t the technology; it’s the organisational mindset. Some firms treat AI as a side project or a proof of concept, rather than integrating it into their core operations, while other firms want to look to fundamentally change their whole operating model. There needs to be a balance.
At Acuity Knowledge Partners, we advocate a workflow-first approach: identify high-effort, repeatable tasks, embed AI into those workflows and train teams to work with AI as an integrated solution. We believe that rather than integrating AI into existing workflows, the greatest gains are achieved from designing AI-native workflows without constraints based on existing ways of working.
Understand what can be automated easily, and start from there, learn, iterate, then scale and take people on the journey. Teams will need to learn new skills, adapt to change and look differently at outputs. There should be a system in place to support people through this change.
Looking forward, how do you see agentic AI evolving within financial services over the next 12–18 months, and what role do you think Acuity will play in shaping that future?
Over the next 12–18 months, we expect Agentic AI to evolve from a productivity tool to a strategic partner. Agents will become more proactive, anticipating needs, suggesting actions, and adapting to real-time changes in data and regulation. Every effective knowledge worker will have a team of agents helping them in two years-time.
Acuity Knowledge Partners will continue to lead by expanding our Agent Fleet with capabilities in visual AI, deep research, and real-time analytics. We’re also investing in training and change management to help clients embed AI into their culture and operations. Our goal is to make Agentic AI not just a tool for automation, but a foundation for transformation in financial services.
