What do banks and other financial institutions need to do in order to ensure that their investments in AI deliver as promised? Why has asking the hard questions and conducting thorough due diligence before implementation become critical to a successful AI deployment? What should banks expect from AI vendors and, importantly, what should banks expect from themselves to make these high-risk, high-reward partnerships work?
In this Finovate Podcast conversation, host Greg Palmer talks with Melissa Solis, CEO of Inbenta, to discuss how the conversation around AI adoption in financial services is evolving. Solis underscores how the focus has grown from pilot projects and explorations of “what’s possible” to demands for AI-powered solutions and services that are “real and effective.” Solis also candidly talks about the struggles many organizations have faced with failed deployments and vendors that did not meet expectations and shares her firm’s partnership experience with Scious, whose founder spent years looking for an AI solution that would meet their requirements for governance, transparency, and performance.
“This year (at FinovateFall) what I heard a lot of was ‘what’s real?’ People had gone out and signed up for PoCs, signed agreements, and deployed solutions, but they were coming back with really hard questions because, in many situations, it did not live up to what people had told them. So what I’ve started to hear people say is, ‘Hey, it didn’t work. We were told this and it wasn’t real. So what do you do?’ I feel this is a great place to be because, at first, people weren’t asking the hard questions. They just assumed what everybody said was true. And I think by having some hard knocks and going through some of those failed deployments or failed PoCs, it’s really pushed people to ask the hard questions.”
As Chief Executive Officer at Inbenta, Solis helps drive strategic growth, foster innovation, and empower teams to deliver impactful solutions. She leverages her expertise in executive management and new business development to collaborate with stakeholders to advance Inbenta’s mission and bolster its position in the market.
Inbenta is a global AI orchestration platform that allows banks and other financial institutions to deploy trusted, self-service AI solutions in days rather than months. Headquartered in Allen, Texas, and founded in 2005, Inbenta offers an enterprise AI platform, Encore, that provides financial services, e-commerce, and healthcare companies with 98%+ accuracy, near-zero hallucinations, full auditability, and more than 850 integrations to prevent vendor lock-in. Inbenta made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2026.