Who Answers for the Agent? Agentic AI, Delegated Execution, and Accountability in the Corporate Finance Function (Perspectives in Social Sciences)
Summary
- The paper presents the Algorithmic Financial Accountability Framework (AFAF) anchored on 9 core propositions to address governance in AI delegation.p.1
- An automated execution failure at Knight Capital on 1 August 2012 resulted in a loss of more than USD 400 million within about 45 minutes.p.2
- A structured database search conducted in month of January 2026 returned 437 records for screening.p.4
- Following a two-stage screening process, 67 sources met all inclusion criteria and were retained for synthesis.p.4
- Out of 370 excluded records, 147 were removed because AI was used solely for prediction or analysis without a decision role.p.5
- The framework categorizes corporate AI interaction into 3 levels of authority: informational, decisional, and execution autonomy.p.6
Key insights
- Agentic AI systems differ from earlier rule-based automation by interpreting general goals, selecting tools at run time, acting non-deterministically, and drifting post-vendor updates.p.6
- AFAF differentiates AI permissions into informational autonomy, decisional autonomy, and execution autonomy based on the power to change financial commitments.p.6
- Agentic financial autonomy exhibits an inverted-U relationship with financial decision quality, where performance benefits decline beyond an optimal threshold.p.17
- Greater agentic financial autonomy directly increases a firm's algorithmic financial risk exposure.p.18
- Effective managerial oversight weakens the positive relationship between agentic financial autonomy and algorithmic financial risk exposure.p.18
- AI governance maturity mitigates the negative impact of agentic financial autonomy on corporate financial accountability.p.19
- Decision irreversibility strengthens risk exposure and lowers the level of autonomy at which financial decision quality is maximized.p.19
- Concentration of third-party AI service providers amplifies risk exposure, especially when external providers are difficult to substitute.p.20
- A positive autonomy–governance gap, occurring when autonomy deployment outpaces governance reconfiguration capabilities, harms subsequent corporate financial accountability.p.20
Topics and entities
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