AI has a huge opportunity to change financial services. But embedding it in decades-old institutions, with intricate processes and legacy infrastructures, will take more than simply deploying the technology. It requires an understanding of how those institutions actually operate.
For Sankar Krishnan, CMO and Head of Investor Relations at Transient, A Nasdaq Portfolio Company, that understanding is central to the opportunity ahead. The company's ambition is to become the preferred AI-powered intelligence layer for capital markets, serving hedge funds, banks, broker-dealers, commodity brokers, and investment, asset and wealth management firms.
The challenge is turning AI's potential into sustainable business value.
Building AI for Wall Street
Transient began with a recognition that AI adoption wasn't progressing as quickly as its potential suggested. As Krishnan explained, AI wasn't going anywhere in 250-year-old institutions because “the kids with the new technology didn't fully know the complex inner workings of these institutions.”
Sreej Menon, Transient's founder and CEO, had worked at leadership roles building trading technologies at JP Morgan, Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse, UBS and Santander He saw a “white space to deploy AI safely and successfully for Wall Street “ and help financial institutions realize immediate ROI.Having a deep understanding of what it took to build cutting edge trading technologies the traditional way, is actually a differentiator in building AI native technology says Sreej.
He gathered a team of experts from Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Citi and LSEG to launch Transient.AI for capital markets.
For Krishnan, the opportunity was equally compelling. “For me, brainstorming with Sreej on unique ways in which AI can be deployed inside Wall Street and reimagine Capital Market workflows to deliver sustainable AI ROI, working with domain-rich teams was very exciting.”
A Career Shaped by Financial Services
Krishnan's perspective reflects decades of experience across financial services and consulting. His professional career began at Price Waterhouse in Madras, India, where he gained exposure to large financial institutions and learned about “what good looks like.”
He subsequently spent more than 25 years across Citi, Standard Chartered, Capgemini, and Carlyle portfolio company Hexaware Technologies.
His 12-plus years at Citi took him across multiple countries and regions. Leadership roles in Dubai, Bahrain, the Levant, Toronto, London, and New York, along with global travel, gave him insight into how businesses operate across markets. Citi’s Transaction Services business now Citi Services was a bedrock for Citi’s growth in the 1990s that continues today where Shahmir Khalik and his team are doing an amazing job.
Citi's Services group was particularly influential. Krishnan describes it as “a powerful learning place for the 'intel inside' of businesses that Citi services across 125 Countries.”
His experience establishing equity and fixed-income research centers in India at a fintech startup also became a foundation for the AI agents being developed today. He has witnessed financial services move from manual processes to automation, the internet, digital technology, cloud computing, and AI.
Solving Problems Before Selling AI
Transient's approach to innovation starts with solving for a specific business problem rather than a broad technology pitch.
Krishnan identifies workflows such as pre-trade credit briefs, predictive index levels and treasury exception queues as examples where AI can reduce manual work under time pressure.
The strategy is to build agents on top of existing data, order management, execution, risk, and research systems rather than rip and replace them. Each deployment can be evaluated against the client's current process, using measures such as time saved, errors avoided, basis points captured, or risks flagged sooner.
Governance remains essential. AI outputs should show their sources, assumptions, confidence, and approval trail so that portfolio managers, traders, and risk officers can review the results and override them when necessary. Also keep everything audit ready for the regulators who can rely on the telemetry protocols to exactly know which human and digital co-worker did “what” and “when” and “why”. “The Opportunity to rewire financial services has never been greater”.
Taking AI Across Capital Markets
Transient is extending its approach across several financial services applications. Krishnan says its predictive index-rebalancing product is 98% accurate and that the company is extending the approach to predicting credit upgrades, downgrades, which bonds get called and where the alpha is for credit traders and quants.
He also says its Allocator IQ product is helping hedge funds “find liquidity from RIA’s while its Caddie AI line of products are making capital markets 90% more efficient in select cases eg crushing research ingestion time. These are company-reported claims, not independently verified results, and performance may vary by application.
The company sees further opportunities on the sell side, including credit recommendation engines, lead-generation tools and compliance agents. Asset managers and exchanges could also use its AI intelligence layer to develop products for existing and new customers. An emerging digital assets strategy is another area of focus. Says Sreej Menon “the power of AI to bring together TradFi and Digital Assets is a new area of focus . He calls out the “Canton Network “ and “Kraken” as examples of value being delivered today on the institutional side.
Why People Still Matter
Despite the focus on technology, Krishnan's business philosophy remains straightforward. His lessons are: “Everyone still buys from people, and not the technology,” “Take care of people and the rest follows,” and “Client first; rest is priority two.”
That people-first approach also shapes his advice to aspiring professionals: “Don't focus on the AI. Focus on what problem you are solving for.”
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