May 19, 2026 3:35:43 PM |
Watch our panel conversation on what agentic AI actually means for accounting firms. This will be a framework-driven conversation that cuts through vendor noise and shows you what agentic AI actually requires, and what it looks like when it works.
In this webinar, you will learn how to:
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Distinguish agentic AI from automation and generative AI, and explain why the distinction matters for technology decisions at the firm level.
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Identify the firm-side conditions (data quality, workflow maturity, and change management) that determine whether an agentic AI deployment succeeds or stalls.
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Explore in-use AI Agents for Audit and how they fit within a firm’s current engagement workflow.
The webinar panel—featuring Christopher Witt (Senior Director of Product Marketing), Amit Nayar (CTO), and Ian Ezra (Head of Product)—opened by highlighting a radical cultural shift within CPA firms. Historically risk-averse to technology, firms are rapidly losing their reluctance due to growing trust in AI, severe and permanent industry talent shortages, and competitive pressures to market themselves as AI-forward. To help firms evaluate vendor claims, the speakers introduced a three-generation framework: Automation (rigid, deterministic, rules-based software), Generative AI (flexible but reactive assistant-based technology), and Agentic AI (autonomous, goal-oriented systems that take ownership of outcomes and adapt when conditions change).
While agentic systems shine when handling messy, unstructured data and applying heuristic judgment, the panelists stressed that it is not a magic bullet for every scenario. According to the team, a reliable AI agent requires data access, clear instructions, the right execution tools, a full audit trail, and a dependable mechanism to raise its hand to bring a human back into the loop when confidence is low. For high-stakes, highly regulated industries like accounting, human judgment remains irreplaceable. AI should never be a "black box" and must not replace human discretion in areas requiring the evaluation of intent (such as qualitative materiality), acting as a final tie-breaker for contradictory evidence, or issuing final audit opinions. Furthermore, the speakers noted that 95% of AI pilots fail due to firm readiness and integration obstacles rather than the technology itself, underlining data integration as a major foundational hurdle.
Moving from theory to practice, the webinar featured a live sneak peek of SureLink’s upcoming "Cloud Testing Suite," showcasing two specifically built AI agents working within an audit engagement lifecycle. The Document Pre-screening Agent automatically checks uploaded client files against PBC requests to verify compliance, while the Data Vouching Agent autonomously cross-references sample selections (like invoice dates, numbers, and amounts) against supporting documentation. Rather than operating silently, the suite flags discrepancies and missing support under a "needs attention" status for human review, mapping out exact document locations to establish a clear line of reasoning. Looking ahead, SureLink plans to expand its agent library to handle version-control for financial statements, disclosure tracking, and broader analytical and calculation procedures across end-to-end audit and tax lifecycles.