Rewind just a few years and large language models and generative AI were barely on the public radar. Yet the technology has already evolved into its next iteration: agentic AI, a new breed of systems that are semi- or fully autonomous and able to reason and act on their own. And adoption has skyrocketed, particularly over the past year.
According to a recent PwC survey, 79% of senior executives globally say AI agents are already being adopted in their organisations in one form or another, which is a striking level of uptake for such a nascent technology.
One might assume that agentic AI has not yet reached South African shores, but it is already being implemented at scale, particularly in the financial services sector, where early deployments are delivering measurable gains in efficiency and productivity. Many banks have already begun investing in these technologies, particularly in business-critical operations
For customers, it means faster service, more personalised interactions, quicker resolution of everyday banking needs and less time spent navigating routine processes.
Take the customer acquisition stage as an example. Onboarding a small or medium-sized business has traditionally taken several hours spread across multiple days, with relationship managers collecting documents, verifying business registration, conducting “know your customer” (KYC) checks, assessing credit risk and configuring products across different systems. That level of manual work drives up the cost of acquiring each customer, which in turn limits how widely banks can serve the market, often forcing them to prioritise larger, higher-value clients over smaller businesses.