Know Your Agent is a governance and operating-readiness framework for banks adopting AI systems and agents inside real workflows. Built by a banker who has been in the operating seat.
Request the KYA briefAI tools that summarize, draft, recommend, route, prioritize, and monitor are entering live workflows. But most institutions have no clean way to describe what these systems are, what authority they carry in practice, or what evidence justifies trusting them.
A system gets described as "assistive," but employees start relying on it as the default answer. A workflow gets labeled "low-risk," but the tool quietly shapes judgment, routing, and customer treatment. A pilot gets approved in one queue, then the pattern spreads faster than governance language catches up.
That is how institutions end up with more machine authority, more hidden dependence, and less clear accountability than they intended. Useful systems are not automatically harmless systems.
Six questions every bank should be able to answer about every AI system in production.
What is this system actually doing? Not what the vendor says. What it does in your workflows, today.
What role is it playing? Is it advising, filtering, drafting, deciding? The label matters less than the function.
How much practical authority does it carry? Where does its output get accepted without meaningful review?
Where is human review real versus ceremonial? A checkbox is not oversight. What does your review actually catch?
Where is dependence already building? Could your team operate this workflow without the tool tomorrow?
What evidence supports trust in this specific use? Not the vendor's case study. Your data, your context, your risk.
A bank-ready set of artifacts that helps leadership see the real operating picture, not just the policy picture.
A structured assessment of where your institution actually stands on AI governance — not where you think you stand.
Every AI system mapped by role, practical authority, and exposure level — so your board sees the real picture.
Cleaner language for board, audit, and supervisory conversations. Defensible positions, not theater.
A practical path from AI ambition to governed adoption, so innovation doesn't outrun accountability.
After the Synapse collapse and Evolve enforcement action, regulators are scrutinizing how banks govern their technology partners. AI agents are the next frontier of that scrutiny.
Every week an AI tool runs unchecked, your team's ability to operate without it erodes. By the time you notice the dependence, unwinding it is expensive and disruptive.
The banks that establish governance frameworks now will set the standard. Those that wait will inherit someone else's framework, designed for someone else's risk appetite.
A practical path from vague AI enthusiasm to a clearer operating and governance posture.
Identify where AI is already entering workflows, who is using it, what role it is playing, and where practical authority is accumulating behind soft labels like assistive or experimental.
Compare the written control story to the actual operating story. Surface where oversight is real, where it is ceremonial, where dependence is building, and what evidence is missing.
Translate the findings into cleaner ownership, sharper reporting, clearer re-review discipline, and language leadership can use with boards, auditors, regulators, and partners.
KYA was built by someone who has sat in the operating seat. As COO and Chief Innovation Officer at OMB Bank, Steve created and built OMBX, the bank's embedded finance platform. He's spent his career at the intersection of community banking and fintech infrastructure, with roles at Jack Henry & Associates, Citi, and AT&T.
Through amBaaSsador, he now advises bank boards on embedded finance and BaaS strategy with a strictly bank-first mandate. KYA is the natural extension of that work: helping banks govern AI adoption with the same rigor they should be applying to every third-party relationship.
That matters because this is not generic AI commentary from the sidelines. It comes from someone who has had to own operating reality inside a bank, not just talk about innovation in the abstract.
Steve speaks regularly at Money20/20 and FinovateSpring, and contributes to Fintech Confidential. He earned his MBA from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.
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Best fit for banks, sponsor-bank programs, fintech-facing institutions, and leadership teams that know AI adoption is moving faster than their governance language.
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Built for regulated institutions that need clearer language around role, authority, oversight, dependence, and evidence.