Everest Group Names Backbase a Luminary in Innovation Watch: Agentic AI in Banking

Independent assessment of 23 global providers places Backbase in the top category on both market performance and ecosystem drivers, citing its banking domain depth and breadth of agentic AI use cases across the banking value chain.

AMSTERDAM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Backbase today announced a new industry recognition. Everest Group named the company a Luminary, the top category, in its Innovation Watch: Agentic AI in Banking 2026 report. The research assessed 23 vendors globally on market adoption, use cases in production, partnerships, and investments.

Everest Group finds that fragmented systems, manual exceptions, data constraints, and regulatory complexity still hold agentic AI back. Yet agentic AI is becoming central to efficiency, compliance, and growth across retail, corporate, SME, and wealth banking.

The report credits Backbase's AI-native Banking OS with moving beyond isolated AI copilots to governed workflow orchestration. The platform gives AI agents and human employees a shared, real-time view of customer and transaction data. Within strict guardrails, agents execute judgment-heavy tasks like KYC checks, document analysis, and exception routing.

These agents are already running in production. At BMO, for example, Backbase Conversational AI resolves up to 81% of inbound customer requests without human intervention. Similarly, BSF has seen onboarding rates quadruple, allowing customers to open accounts and use cards instantly, without a single manual touchpoint.

Banking OS let’s banks configure, test, deploy, simulate, and monitor their own agents across the full agent lifecycle. The report highlights five Backbase production use cases across customer, disputes, payments, lending, and risk operations.

"Every bank has run an AI pilot. Very few have figured out how to scale one," said Jouk Pleiter, CEO and Founder of Backbase. "The real gap is accountability in production: who has authority to act, what gets executed, and what the bank can prove after the fact. BMO and BSF are proof this works at scale, not in a sandbox. Being named a Luminary confirms what our customers already know. We're delivering the blueprint for how banks run on AI."

"As banks move beyond isolated AI pilots, the focus is shifting toward embedding agentic AI into banking workflows where it can operate with the context, controls, and human oversight required in a regulated environment. Backbase is addressing this shift by bringing together customer and operational context, workflow orchestration, and governed AI execution across areas such as onboarding, servicing, payments, disputes, lending, and risk operations. Its acquisition of Kasisto further strengthens this proposition by adding banking-specific conversational and agentic AI capabilities to its AI-native Banking OS. The combination of banking domain depth, a growing set of production-oriented use cases, and continued ecosystem investments positions Backbase as Luminaries on Innovation Watch: Agentic AI in Banking 2026 research," said Kriti Gupta, Vice President, Everest Group.

Banks can download a complimentary copy of the report here.

Everest Group does not endorse any company, product, or service included in its research. It does not advise selection based on the assessment.

About Backbase

Backbase built the AI-Native Banking OS - the operating system that turns fragmented banking operations into a Unified Frontline. People and AI agents now work together across the entire bank, from digital channels to back-office operations. 120+ leading banks run on Backbase across Retail, SMB & Commercial, Private Banking, and Wealth Management. This figure counts banks running the Backbase platform foundation. Forrester, Gartner, and Datos recognize Backbase as a category leader. Jouk Pleiter founded Backbase in 2003. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam. Backbase teams operate across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.