Wilmington-based banking software firm nCino is releasing its role-based AI agents for bankers.

The first of the agents, analyst digital partner, is debuting this month, the company announced. The tool “accelerates risk assessment and complex financial analysis for underwriters and credit analysts,” according to a news release.

Role-based artificial intelligence is computing architecture in which AI system components allocate duties. Over the coming year, nCino is also expected to release:

• executive digital partner, which will provide strategic insights into markets and portfolios;
• service digital partner, which will identify sales opportunities based on customer and member relations;
• and processor digital partner, which will coordinate documentation, scheduling and regulatory compliance.

The AI agents can be accessed by bankers through natural language questions and commands such as, “What’s the risk profile for this commercial loan?” They join an AI tool available on the account holder side, client digital partner, which operates directly through an institution’s digital banking interface.

Chris Gufford, nCino’s chief product officer, said the agents, accessible through nCino's AI conversational interface “banking advisor,” aren’t meant to replace employees, but rather free up workers for higher-level, more personalized tasks in banking, credit monitoring and commercial and consumer lending, including mortgage service. 

In an email Thursday, Gufford called it a “humans-in-the-loop approach."

As an example, he said, “A credit analyst can ask analyst digital partner to pull a borrower’s portfolio data, recent financials, covenant status and peer benchmarks, and then draft a risk summary. A credit officer reviews the summary, adds judgment on outliers and approves. This turns hours of data gathering into minutes of review.”

In the news release, CEO Sean Desmond touted the intuitive approach to assigning AI roles – in the way banks would normally assign human responsibilities. He said not having to understand the intricacies of subagents that manage the subordinate tasks provides a user-friendly advantage in the growing field of financial institution AI.

“Financial institution leaders tell us they need AI to transform operations, but they're overwhelmed by posturing in the market, hundreds of overlapping agents and incomprehensible frameworks,” Desmond said. “[O]ur customers get AI that makes sense from day one—no AI team required; no technical training needed.”

Will Jung, nCino's chief technology officer, stated in the release, “As our subagents and tools continue to become more robust with time, the Digital Partners’ résumés will only continue to grow.”

Meanwhile, individual customer information remains safe, Gufford added.

“nCino employs a comprehensive data protection framework that ensures customer data remains logically segregated, confidential and accessible only to the customer who owns it,” he said.