Planto Launches White-Label Agentic AI CFO for SMEs at Money20/20 Middle East
Planto's platform embeds autonomous financial agents in banks' existing digital channels, aimed at business banking in Hong Kong and the Gulf.
Nadia Mansour Nadia Mansour covers fintech across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted -- digital banking, payments licences and the startups building around them. nadia@anecdoted.com
Planto introduced a white-label Agentic AI CFO for small and medium-sized businesses at Money20/20 Middle East. The product runs inside a bank's own digital channels rather than in a standalone application. Planto builds AI-driven banking software.
After the launch, the company was named a 2026 MoneySurge "Fintech to Watch", one of more than 300 fintechs considered worldwide.
The pitch is aimed at banks in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East, which Planto says can move from passive account providers to primary financial partners for their business customers. The platform is white-label and built to scale across markets.
The gap it targets
Running an SME involves far more than watching balances and moving payments, and most small firms have no finance department to do it. Owners switch between spreadsheets, documents and assorted software, leaving records scattered and resources stretched. Neither the business nor its bank ends up with a single real-time picture of performance, a problem Planto ties directly to the widening SME lending gap.
Existing mobile banking offerings do not close it, in Planto's account. Static dashboards and passive charts show history; they do not act. The Agentic AI CFO instead places a set of autonomous financial agents inside the bank's mobile or web experience, so workflows execute and intelligence arrives without the owner managing cash flow by hand.
What banks get
- Primary banking status. When the bank performs routine financial tasks for a client, it becomes part of that business's daily operations. Planto expects this to drive more frequent engagement and longer relationships.
- Product cross-selling. Continuous monitoring of a client's finances lets the bank match and recommend lending, working capital and treasury management products at the moment a business needs them.
- Automation across core back-office work. Reconciliation and bookkeeping, invoice and expense management, payroll processing, and financial analysis and forecasting all form part of the suite.
Why Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 is driving rapid SME expansion, while Hong Kong's role as an international hub is advancing data infrastructure such as CDI and IADS. Banks in both markets are competing to secure primary deposit and lending relationships with business clients. That is the contest Planto is selling into.
"Banks don't need another dashboard with a cash flow chart. They need intelligent agents that actively manage financial workflows for their SME clients," said Jessica Liu, co-founder and CEO of Planto.
Liu said the recognition confirmed that financial institutions in Asia and the Middle East want tools that deliver operational value to SMEs, turning routine banking relationships into scalable revenue, and that it points to a financing shortfall she put at more than USD200bn.
Planto describes the platform as enterprise-ready and built to integrate with core banking systems while meeting the regulatory, data privacy and security requirements set by central authorities in Hong Kong and the GCC.
