By Sandeep Khuperkar, CEO & Founder, DSW Unify AI
Artificial intelligence in BFSI has long been driven by use cases fraud detection, credit decisioning, risk analytics, customer service, and operational efficiency. What has evolved over time is how institutions have approached enabling these use cases at scale.
The journey began with tools, enabling experimentation and early innovation.
It progressed to frameworks, introducing structure, standards, and repeatability.
It then matured into platforms, supporting adoption across teams, data estates, and enterprise functions.
Each phase represented meaningful progress in applying AI responsibly within regulated environments.
Today, BFSI institutions are engaging with a deeper, more structural question:
How do we operate AI especially agentic AI safely, at scale, and in line with regulatory expectations as part of the enterprise itself?
This question does not replace innovation. It reflects a natural progression toward institutional trust, accountability, and long-term resilience.
From AI adoption to AI operation in BFSI
As AI moves from isolated applications into core banking systems, insurance operations, and risk workflows, the focus expands beyond selecting the right tool or platform.
Institutions are increasingly designing for:
* Continuous AI operation, not episodic deployments
* Governance that executes as code, rather than static policy documents
* Data sovereignty and institutional custody by design
* Auditability, traceability, and reversibility at runtime
* Safe integration of a growing ecosystem of models, agents, tools, and infrastructure
In regulated environments, these are foundational considerations. Together, they define what it means to build trustworthy intelligent systems.
This evolution mirrors earlier transitions in BFSI technology from standalone applications to core banking platforms, and from infrastructure components to operating models designed for scale, resilience, and regulatory confidence.
Agentic AI raises the bar for governance
Agentic AI introduces a new capability: systems that can plan, coordinate, and act across workflows.
As this capability becomes operational, governance questions naturally evolve:
Under which policy was an action authorized?
Can decisions be traced, explained, and audited?
Are outcomes reversible when required?
How is lifecycle managed—from creation to retirement?
These are not questions of algorithms alone. They are system-design questions.
As agentic AI becomes embedded in BFSI operations, institutions require governance that is embedded, enforceable, and observable at runtime, rather than dependent on post-hoc review processes.
The role of an Enterprise AI Operating System
This is where the concept of an Enterprise AI Operating System becomes relevant.
An Enterprise AI OS represents a foundational architectural layer that defines how AI and agentic systems are built, deployed, orchestrated, and governed across the institution, independent of individual tools or vendors.
Key characteristics of this approach include:
Governance embedded at the system level, executed programmatically
AI/ML and agentic runtimes operating as governed subsystems
On-premises, private-cloud, and hybrid deployment by design
Full institutional custody of models, agents, workflows, and source code
Freedom of choice across infrastructure and tools, without enforced lock-in
This operating layer enables BFSI institutions to integrate internal systems, partner ecosystems, open-source models, and cloud services under a single governed control plane, aligned with regulatory expectations.
A regulatory-aligned evolution
The progression from tools to frameworks to platforms reflects a broader shift in how BFSI institutions think about technology adoption.
As AI becomes a long-running, decision-influencing capability, institutions increasingly design for operation, continuity, and oversight, rather than one-time deployment.
This evolution acknowledges a simple reality: BFSI institutions do not just need to build AI they need to operate AI as a trusted institutional capability over time. That requires architectural thinking grounded in systems, controls, and governance, rather than features alone.
From platforms to regulated intelligent systems
Platforms help teams build AI capabilities. Operating systems enable institutions to live with AI over years, across environments, audits, and regulatory change.
As agentic AI becomes part of the operational fabric, the future of BFSI will be shaped not only by innovation, but by how intelligently systems are governed, controlled, and trusted at scale.
Designing trustworthy intelligent systems is no longer just a technology challenge. It is an architectural and regulatory imperative.