Anatomy of an Agentic Transaction

Alex Johnson (0:02)

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Hello, and welcome to the Fintech Takes podcast. Today's episode is a great one. I was delighted to be joined by my friend and frequent podcast guest, Dan Murphy, partner at Allon Advisors, and formerly of the CFPB. Dan, as you likely know, is someone I lean on a lot when it comes to interesting policy questions, particularly policy questions that intersect with really fast moving emerging trends within the Fintech ecosystem. And of course, the fastest moving and most disruptive trend in the Fintech ecosystem right now is AI. And in particular, agentic AI, these robots that are out wandering the industry, trying to help consumers, trying to help small business owners, and in the pursuit of trying to help their users, breaking all kinds of terms and conditions, scraping websites, taking actions, in some cases making mistakes. And the question that Dan and I wanted to wrestle with is, what does that mean for the financial services industry? What does that mean for regulation? What does that mean for policy?

Obviously, Dan has a very deep background in open banking. He was at the CFPB and helped lead the initiative under the last administration to write the rules around open banking in 1033 in the US. I am a passionate amateur on the subject of all things, open banking in 1033 And a lot of what's happening now in agentic AI rhymes with the fights that we've been having in open banking for a decade plus. So in some ways, it's creating these sort of flashbacks and these sort of moments of recognition for people who have been deep in open banking. That was actually something that Dan and I talked about together when we were in Toronto at the recent FData Global Summit, which was entirely focused ostensibly on open banking. But where agentic AI kind of stole the show and was a huge topic of discussion, it's also going to be the focus of the discussions that Dan and I are going to be having at an event that we're both going to in November, the Agentic Readiness Summit that we're working on together with our friends at EJF Ventures, where we're going to be digging into a lot of these same questions that we talked about on the podcast. Things like authentication, authorization, intent, liability, alignment. Essentially, how do we know who these agents are? How do we know what they've been approved to do?

How do we know what to do in the case that an agent makes a mistake, which we know will happen? And ultimately, how do we know who these agents are responsible to? And whose duties and whose loyalty and whose privacy are they watching out for? We don't have the answers to any of these questions. And in this episode, Dan and I don't try to answer these questions. Instead, annoyingly, we just decide to ask the questions. And hopefully, the first step to getting to solutions is to ask good questions about this very fast moving, frequently changing area of Fintech and financial services policy, Agentech AI. So that's what this episode is about. As always, it was a real privilege to get to pick Dan's brain for an hour. We could have gone a lot longer, but I trust that you will enjoy this episode. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Dan Murphy.

This is Fintech Takes, the podcast keeping you in the loop on all the latest Fintech trends, news, and ideas. I'm Alex Johnson, creator of the Fintech Takes newsletter, your host and self-confessed Fintech nerd.

Okay. Dan Murphy, partner at Allon Advisors is here. Dan, thanks for coming back on the podcast and congrats on the new gig. That's very exciting.

Dan Murphy (4:22)

Thanks. Yeah.

Well, first of all, always thanks for having me. It's always great to be here. And good to be here in my new capacity.

Alex Johnson (4:28)

Yeah.

Dan Murphy (4:29)

Sunset was acquired by Allon Advocacy and Allon Advisors. And so Steve Bonds and I, another friend of the show, will be moving forward together under a new banner. And we're excited about it. We think there's a lot of good work to do in the Fintech space, both from the policy side and on the business side. So I think a lot of good things to come.

Alex Johnson (4:47)

Excellent. Well, yeah, if you have hard questions, like you read the newsletter, you listen to the podcast, and you're like, this is great, but I'm not really getting the actual smart answer that I need. Go to Steve and Dan and they'll sort you guys out. So that would be my plug for that.