Podcasts · CFO Weekly

General-Purpose AI Agents Are Not Built for High-Stakes Finance

· 20 min · Episode 293

Episode General-Purpose AI Agents Are Not Built for High-Stakes Finance

0:00 20:01

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Jeremy Ung, Chief Technology Officer at BlackLine, joins Megan Weis to explore why general-purpose AI agents are not automatically safe enough for high-stakes financial operations. Jeremy brings more than two decades of software engineering, product management, and enterprise technology leadership, including senior roles at Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Apptio.

At BlackLine, Jeremy oversees the company's global technology direction, focusing on connected data, AI-powered platforms, and what BlackLine calls Agentic Financial Operations, where digital AI workforces operate alongside finance teams with explainability, governance, and human oversight built in. Jeremy unpacks why deploying AI agents is closer to onboarding a new employee than installing new software, why finance demands a higher bar for auditability than almost any other business function, and how BlackLine is reimagining its own platform for a future where the primary users of finance software may be agents rather than people.

What You'll Learn:

• Why AI agents should be treated as workforce augmentation, not traditional software • The real costs and risks of building AI agents in-house versus buying purpose-built solutions • Why explainability, governance, and human oversight are non-negotiable in finance • What full auditability and transparency actually require from an AI system • How finance teams are shifting from doing the work to steering teams of AI agents • How BlackLine is evolving its platform for a future built around agentic users

Learn More About Jeremy:

• Jeremy Ung on LinkedIn • BlackLine Website

Episode resources:

• Personiv's Website • Personiv on LinkedIn • Personiv on Facebook • Personiv on Twitter

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Previous guests include: Tom McDermott, CFO at Career Certified, Claire Bramley, CFO at Teradata, Chris Miles, Founder of Money Ripples, Ranil DeSilva, CFO & COO at CARE, Jordan Grumet, Financial Independence Expert & Host of Earn & Invest & William Washington, Global CFO at Baker McKenzie

Check out some of our most recent episodes:

• Driving Value Beyond Finance with Tom McDermott • Why CFOs Are the Chief Everything Officers with Claire Bramley • Why Traditional Financial Advice Fails and What To Do Instead with Chris Miles • NGO Finance Secrets: CARE’s $900M Strategy with Ranil DeSilva • What Lights You Up? with Jordan Grumet • Become a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with William Washington

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