AI in – A June 18 webinar will tackle how AI is moving from individual productivity in finance toward enterprise transformation, with Rogo innovation chief Kevin Buehler describing what comes next for firms, workflows, and workers.
Financial professionals are already moving faster—at least on paper, and in the files that fill their days.
Kevin Buehler. chief innovation officer at Rogo and senior partner emeritus at McKinsey & Company. said AI tools are helping junior professionals push through tasks tied to PowerPoint. Excel. communications and analysis. He called it a noticeable change “at the coalface,” where the work is daily, practical, and visible.
But the bigger question—one the industry is still arguing over—arrives after the early wins: what financial firms do with that new capacity. Will AI help them cover more clients, analyze more markets and free up time for judgment-heavy work?. Or will it mostly stay as a collection of individual productivity gains scattered across the organization?.
Those questions will sit at the center of Newsweek’s upcoming “AI Impact Forum” webinar, “AI in Finance: From Individual Adoption to Enterprise Transformation,” scheduled for Thursday, June 18, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern.
The session will be led by Dr. Ranjit Tinaikar, host of the series, who will speak with Buehler about how agentic AI could reshape financial services—and what it may mean for analysts, investors, software companies and services firms.
Buehler’s focus is less on whether AI will replace jobs and more on what changes when firms begin treating AI as part of how the business runs. Faster work at the individual level, he said, doesn’t automatically translate into enterprise change. The decisions still come down to how AI is folded into business processes.
That’s where the conversation is headed next. Buehler pointed to complex workflows such as client onboarding. M&A transactions and lending as examples that could eventually be re-engineered with AI. “How do you use AI to take a process like that and really transform it?” he said. “That’s what I see as the frontier today.”.
Jobs will be part of the discussion. but the immediate issue. Buehler said. is how institutions redeploy the time and capacity AI creates. Some firms may aim for cost savings. Others could use the extra room to expand coverage. deepen client work. pursue new business. or spend more time training younger employees.
To map where firms stand, Buehler described three broad stages of adoption. The first is junior-level usage, where analysts, associates and vice presidents use AI to accelerate everyday work. The second is senior adoption. where managing directors and other senior leaders begin using AI more consistently and learn how to manage teams whose work is increasingly AI-assisted. The third stage is end-to-end workflow redesign.
Most firms, Buehler said, have not reached that final step.
Getting there will require more than enthusiasm. Buehler said it takes an economically driven road map, senior business leadership, better data, talent development and change management. “They probably need data, and that’s often the Achilles’ heel of these programs,” he said. “They need talent. The talent has to be upskilled and reskilled because you’re not going to just hire new folks to do this.”.
The June 18 discussion will also connect what happens inside financial institutions to the broader economics of AI in finance. Tinaikar and Buehler are expected to discuss why human curation and enterprise context still matter. where domain-specific applications may create value. and how commercial models may evolve as AI systems begin doing parts of the work rather than simply supporting it.
In the end, the competitive line may hinge on a simple split: whether AI stays a personal accelerator—or becomes embedded in how the business runs. Buehler said many firms are still in “the very early innings” of that shift.
Registration for the webinar is free, and viewers can sign up today.
AI in finance agentic AI enterprise transformation Kevin Buehler Rogo PowerPoint Excel communications analysis client onboarding M&A lending AI Impact Forum webinar June 18 9:30 a.m. Eastern
So it’s just AI making PowerPoints faster? Cool I guess.
They keep saying AI won’t replace jobs but then it’s “agentic” now?? Sounds like replacement with extra steps. Also June 18 webinar like anyone actually listens to those.
Wait, “coalface”?? Like miners? I’m confused. If juniors are using AI to do Excel and PowerPoint, then why not just let it do the whole finance thing and stop hiring anyone. M&A onboarding or whatever… that’s still just paperwork right?
I saw this and thought it was about stocks going up/down automatically lol. But apparently it’s more about enterprise transformation and workflow decisions. Which is funny because half the firms can’t even get their own processes straight. If AI is “part of the business runs” then who’s even checking the models—like does compliance know what’s going on?