Payments Fintech Equals Reports 92% AI-Written Code, Tightens Agent Permissions and Audits

James Simcox, Chief Product Officer at fintech company Equals, revealed at Okta's annual user conference in Las Vegas that more than 92% of the company's code is now written by AI, up from zero less than 12 months ago. Simcox described the company's journey through three phases: "no AI, AI everywhere, and then back down to AI for tasks that actually make sense."

Internally, Equals experimented with a multi-agent "courtroom" model for handling customer complaints, where one agent argues for the customer, another against, and a third assesses the arguments. Simcox believes this approach can produce fairer outcomes and speed up processing, though human review remains part of the process. This internal testing provided a learning ground before extending agents to customer interactions.

However, not all scenarios benefit from agents. Simcox noted that for straightforward tasks like euro payments, basic automation is more useful and cost-effective than spending tokens on an agent. Agents are better suited for structured challenges between simple automation and complex human investigation. In terms of governance, Equals treats agents like staff but grants them much narrower permissions. For instance, an agent tasked with changing an email address only has permission to read and modify that specific field, allowing actions to be attributed to that specific agent.