Sarita Singh  

Yes. The era of unquestioned financial automation is giving way to a more mature, accountable model. Early fintech success was built on automating decisions for speed, scale, and cost efficiency. Automation removed friction, reduced human involvement, and enabled rapid growth. But what once created advantage is now exposing structural risk.

Automation has shifted from differentiation to assumption. When everyone automates, failures become more visible and more damaging. Algorithmic credit bias, false fraud flags, robo-advice failures during market stress (we have seen many examples reported via media) and the absence of human recourse have eroded trust. In financial services, where decisions are high-stakes and emotional, trust is foundational.

At the same time, capital markets, regulators, and customers have raised expectations. Regulators increasingly demand explainability, audibility, traceability and clear accountability for automated decisions. Customers want to understand outcomes, challenge mistakes, and know that a human is ultimately responsible.

This has forced a shift from decision replacement to decision augmentation. Automation still handles speed and scale, but humans remain accountable for judgment, exceptions, and edge cases. Evidence shows that fully automated systems perform worst at the margins thin-file customers, volatile small businesses, stressed markets where losses and reputational damage concentrate. Hybrid, human-in-the-loop models often outperform pure automation both economically and ethically.

Organizationally, unquestioned automation fails before it fails technically. When no one “owns” automated outcomes, errors scale silently. Mature institutions now redesign governance, metrics, and culture: models are treated as hypotheses, not truth; friction is reintroduced as risk containment; and success is measured by reversal rates, complaint resolution, and long-term customer value, not just speed.

Generative AI has accelerated this reckoning. Its confident but fallible outputs make accountability unavoidable. Financial institutions can no longer hide behind “the system decided.” Responsibility must be human, explicit, and auditable.

The next phase of financial automation is not less technology, nor a return to manual processes. It is intentional automation: explainable systems, tiered decisioning, human escalation paths, and clear ownership of outcomes. The winners will look less like pure tech companies and more like trusted institutions that use advanced technology responsibly.

Automation remains essential but unquestioned automation is ending. Trust, accountability, and profitability now outrank speed as the defining measures of success