"A human checked it" is not the safeguard you think it is
For 22 years, the comptroller of Dixon, Illinois did every transaction manually. She also stole $53.7 million.
Rita Crundwell created 159 false invoices "from the State of Illinois," opened a secret bank account under the name of the city, and told council members the budget problems were the state’s fault. It is the largest municipal fraud in US history, and it only got caught because a colleague finally asked to see bank statements while she was on holiday.
Meanwhile, the biggest objection to AI in finance is still: "I do not trust it as much as a human." But humans are where most financial fraud, error, and leakage happen — the email that went to someone on holiday, the invoice nobody followed up on.
Rita Crundwell picked up the bank statements herself for 22 years. No system flagged it, and no counterparty could see it, because she had all the context.
Agents are not perfect. But with full context and a persistent audit trail, you cannot just pick up the mail and make it disappear.