Finance Process
Banks, brokers, funds, advisors. Equities, fixed income, private markets, wealth management. The system that runs the bulk of the world's capital today.
Tightness Diagnostic — 2/5
The lowest score on the finance industry's 5P. Workflows are jurisdiction-locked, sign-off chains are long, and the handoff from idea to production is the slowest link in capital markets.
- Why 2/5 — IC memos, earnings calls, KYC checklists, NAV files. Manual. Sequential. Paper-trail-anchored. Each jurisdiction has its own variant of every workflow.
- What is broken — The same five-question workflow exists in every firm, but each firm rebuilds the rails. The handoff from quant to dev to compliance to production is where capability dies.
- What is the opportunity — Compression. Idea → memo → committee → decision → execution → reconciliation is the chain. Each link is now compressible by an agent. The firm that publishes its agent-driver-protocol first owns the consulting category.
The Five Workflows
Pick the workflow that matches the seat. Each draws on the same universal methods.
| Workflow | Who runs it | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage and advisory | Investment banking, M&A advisory | Pitch books, fairness opinions, deal materials |
| Research and modeling | Equity research, buy-side analysts | Earnings notes, initiations, models |
| Sourcing and diligence | Private equity, venture, credit | IC memos, diligence reports, portfolio plans |
| Fund admin and finance ops | Administrators, controllers, auditors | NAV, reconciliations, statements |
| Onboarding and compliance | Operations, compliance, KYC teams | Onboarding files, rules-grid output, source-of-funds attestations |
The Pattern
Every workflow follows the same five-step pattern. The names change. The pattern does not.
- Ingest — gather the raw inputs (filings, calls, data rooms, statements, onboarding docs)
- Structure — normalize into the firm's template
- Compute — run the model, the rule, the recon
- Stage — draft the output for review
- Sign off — qualified professional approves before it binds anything
Skip step five and you have output. You do not have a result.
Agent Compression of the Pattern
Each of the five steps now runs faster, but not the same faster. The compression is uneven, which is what makes the workflow design hard.
| Step | Pre-agentic | Agentic compression | Where the gain lives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ingest | Analyst pulls filings, builds dataset | Agent ingests filings + transcripts + news | 50–100× — pure throughput |
| Structure | Junior fills the firm template | Agent maps to template, flags exceptions | 10–20× — pattern matching at scale |
| Compute | Analyst runs DCF, comps, sensitivity | Agent runs the same; same arithmetic | 5–10× — speed, not insight |
| Stage | Analyst writes draft for review | Agent drafts; senior reviewer redirects | 5× — but the moat moves here |
| Sign off | Qualified human signs the bind | Unchanged — must remain human | Zero compression — by design |
The compression is in steps 1–4. The accountability is in step 5. A firm that compresses 1–4 without strengthening 5 has built a faster way to be wrong.
The Agent-Driver Pattern
Every production agent needs a named human driver — a domain expert who is more capable than the agent in the slice the agent operates. The driver:
- Owns the agent's decisions. When the agent commits, the driver is on the hook. No orphan agents in production.
- Reads the receipts. Every state-changing action emits a receipt with inputs, prompt, output, exit code. The driver scans these.
- Tunes the prompt. Drift is the failure mode. The driver corrects the prompt before the loop compounds the drift.
- Bounds the autonomy. What can the agent commit alone, and what must escalate? The driver sets the line and reviews it.
Without a driver, the agent is a project that will not survive. With a driver, the agent compounds — the driver scales beyond their own clock.
What's Covered
The traditional leg covers the methods and workflows of regulated capital markets. It does not cover the firm's specific procedures, branded templates, or jurisdictional rules — those live in firm-specific knowledge bases, not here.
Where Methods Live
The arithmetic and the structure travel with the methodology hub. The workflow context lives here.
- Discounted cash flow
- Comparable company analysis
- Leveraged buyout model
- Three-statement model
- Earnings analysis
- Investment committee memo
- Know-your-customer framework
Business Finance Operations
The "Fund admin and finance ops" and "Onboarding and compliance" workflows above are services that every operating business must procure — not just financial firms. A startup needs an auditor. A growth-stage company needs a fund admin. A listed entity needs a compliance team.
- Financial Operations — The internal loop: cash, compliance, and capital deployment from the business owner's perspective
- Capital Allocation — How a business deploys retained earnings and external capital
- Fundraising — Sequencing and source selection when external capital is needed
Adjacent Reading
- Capital allocation — the lens that selects what to fund
- Crypto finance leg — the same questions, on different rails
Questions
Which workflow seat am I in — coverage, research, sourcing, fund admin, or compliance?
- Have I completed sign-off (step five) before the output binds anything?
- Which method does this workflow draw on, and is the method current?