Understanding of Vertical AI Agents: Unlocking The Potential of Purpose-Built AI

The artificial intelligence market is undergoing a shift from broad, general-purpose AI solutions towards more specialised, purpose-built AI tools. As demand grows for system tailored to specific needs, AI vendors are increasingly offering solutions designed to address the distinct challenges and opportunities within individual industries.

This article explores the emergence of vertical AI agents and their potential to transform business operations. It also highlights a real-world use cases from the finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail sectors, demonstrating hos such AI agents may help reshape the future of work.

What are Vertical AI Agents?

Vertical AI agents are specialised artificial intelligence systems developed specifically to perform tasks, generate insights, and address challenges within a particular industry. In contrast to a general-purpose AI agents, which designed to operate across a broad range of sectors, vertical agents are purpose-built to automate complex workflows and processes unique to a given field. This focused approach enables businesses to deploy vertical AI agents from day one, without the need for extensive integration or customisation to meet industry-specific requirements.

Trained on industry-specific data, vertical AI agents draw upon in-depth sector knowledge to make well-informed decisions and more effectively support human employees in their day-to-day responsibilities.

The Value of Implementing Vertical AI Agents

Vertical AI agents are designed to address industry-specific challenges and deliver distinct advantages that often go beyond the scope of more generalised AI systems.

Key benefits of vertical AI agents:

• Improving operational efficiency: vertical AI agents are designed to automate repetitive, routine, and time-consuming tasks tailored to a specific industry. This targeted automation enables businesses to streamline their operations, improve overall productivity, and minimise human errors associated with manual work.
• Enhancing customer experience: with in-depth knowledge of a specific industry and its customer, vertical AI agents are able to deliver highly personalised and context-aware services that contribute to improved customer satisfaction.
• Supporting data-driven decisions: trained on domain-specific data, vertical AI agents draw upon in-depth industry expertise to provide data-driven insights and support informed decision-making.
• Improving regulatory compliance: in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, finance, and legal services, vertical solutions assist organisations in meeting stringent compliance requirements. AI systems can monitor policy changes in real time, ensuring businesses remain up to date with the latest standards, while automating compliance checks to reduce the risk of non-compliance.
• Accelerated time to value: as vertical AI solutions are purpose-built and often pre-trained with industry-specific knowledge, they can be deployed and integrated into existing business systems, such as ERPs, CRMs, EHRs, more swiftly and with minimal disruption. This streamlined implementation enables organisations to realise ROI more quickly than with customising general-purpose tools.

Vertical AI Agents Use Cases

Vertical AI agents can be deployed across a range of industries, such as finance, healthcare, insurance, and retail, drawing on deep domain expertise to carry out specialised tasks. The following examples highlight how industry-specific AI agents can deliver meaningful impact in everyday operations.

Finance

Within financial services, vertical AI agents can strengthen fraud detection, enhance security measures, and deliver more personalised customer experiences.

Fraud detection and prevention

Effective fraud detection is paramount within the financial sector, and vertical AI agents are poised to transform how banks and other financial institutions approach this process.

AI agents in finance are capable of monitoring and analysing transactional data in real time, around the clock. This continuous oversight allows for the swift identification of even subtle indicators of fraudulent activity. From detecting anomalies, such as unusual spending patterns and unauthorised access, to automatically blocking suspicious transactions and alerting analysts about potential fraud attempts.

Unlike traditional rule-based systems, which rely on manual adjustments, AI agents continuously learn from feedback and comparable cases. This self-improving capability enhances detection accuracy and reduces the rate of false positives, all while improving overall efficiency.

Credit scoring and risk assessment

Traditionally, loan processing was a time-consuming task, often requiring several days, or even weeks, as financial specialists manually reviewed all the data and documents. With the introduction of AI agents tailored for the finance sector, this process can be completed in a matter of minutes.

Vertical AI agents assist financial institutions in assessing customers' creditworthiness with greater speed and precision by rapidly analysing relevant data. When evaluating credit risk, these AI agents consider a range of factors, including spending habits, transaction history, and social behaviour. By managing the bulk of the data analysis, vertical AI agents enable banks and credit unions to make more accurate and faster lending decisions.

Personalised investment advice

AI agents for financial services companies are increasingly capable of delivering personalised investment advice at scale. What was once a time and resource-intensive task can now be automated through AI agents specifically trained for this purpose and equipped with expert-level knowledge.

AI agents assess factors such as risk tolerance, market volatility, and individual client goals to provide precise investment recommendations. Their purpose is to provide clients with personalised recommendations that seek to optimise returns while minimising risks.

Healthcare

Vertical AI agents are transforming patient care by alleviating administrative burdens for healthcare professionals, improving diagnostic accuracy, and strengthening cybersecurity.

Medical diagnostics

The healthcare industry is increasingly adopting AI to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of medical diagnosis. AI agents are capable of analysing medical images, electronic health records, test results, and patient histories to identify potential diagnoses. Trained on extensive medical datasets, vertical AI agents can rapidly consult clinical literature and reference similar cases, often recognising illnesses at earlier stages than would be possible through human analysis alone.

By harnessing vertical AI agents to interpret data, medical professionals can accelerate the diagnostic process, elevate the standard of care, and achieve better patient outcomes.

Administrative tasks

Healthcare providers regularly dedicate a significant portion of their time to administrative work. Vertical AI agents can help them reclaim this time by automating routine responsibilities such as updating patient records, scheduling appointments, sending reminders, and filing insurance claims. By relieving healthcare professionals of administrative burdens, AI agents enable them to devote more attention to patient care.

Cybersecurity

Hospitals and medical clinics are no less vulnerable to cyberattacks than financial institutions. As such, they require robust security measures to safeguard sensitive patient data and adhere to strict industry regulations.

Vertical AI agents designed for healthcare organisations provide real-time monitoring, advanced threat detection, and automated countermeasures to ensure comprehensive data protection. Moreover, AI agents continuously analyse historical data and global trends, allowing them to update security protocols and prepare for emerging threats.

Insurance

In the insurance sector, vertical AI agents pay a pivotal role in streamlining claims processing, improving underwriting accuracy, and enhancing customer service by automating tasks and analysing risk factors.

Claim processing

Vertical AI agents for the insurance industry can support efficient claims handling by automatically reviewing submitted claims and evaluating supporting documentation, such as medical records and photographs of vehicle damage. Drawing on this information, the AI agent can assess the claim's eligibility and estimate potential payouts.

By deploying an AI agent, insurance providers can automate straightforward claims processing, enabling human agents to concentrate on more complex cases that demand emotional intelligence and advanced problem-solving capabilities. More broadly, AI agents assist insurances in detecting fraudulent claims with greater accuracy while accelerating the settlement process for genuine cases.

Risk assessment and predictive insights

AI agents within the insurance industry support proactive risk management by harnessing predictive insights. Rather than responding solely to emerging threats, an AI agent can more accurately assess risk by analysing customer data, environmental factors, and market trends, enabling early identification of potential issues before they escalate.

Access to such predictive capabilities allows insurance companies to mitigate risk exposure more effectively and strengthen long-term profitability.

Chatbots for customer support

AI-powered chatbots enable insurance companies to deliver faster, more personalised services at scale. They offer immediate support by responding to common questions, assisting with policy renewals, providing coverage details, and guiding customers through the claims process. By delivering round-the-clock assistance and significantly reducing wait times, these AI-driven solutions contribute to enhanced customer satisfaction.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing companies can leverage AI agents tailored to support their industry to anticipate maintenance requirements, enhance product quality, and optimise supply chains.

Predictive maintenance

Unplanned equipment outages can result in significant financial losses and damage a manufacturer’s reputation for reliability. Vertical AI agents are able to mitigate these risks by reducing downtime and extending the operational longevity of machinery.

AI agents designed for the manufacturing sector are capable of monitoring equipment performance in real time, analysing sensor data in comparison with standard operational benchmarks. Through this analysis, AI can detect patterns that may signal potential faults or upcoming maintenance needs, enabling timely interventions before equipment failure occurs.

Supply chain optimisation

Manufacturers often collaborate with numerous partners and must remain agile to respond effectively to potential supply chain disruptions. AI agents pay a valuable role in supporting these efforts by continuously monitoring supply chain activity, forecasting demand fluctuations, and optimising supply chain operations in real time.

AI agents can also autonomously manage inventory levels by leveraging historical data and market trends to ensure that stock levels are maintained appropriately.

Quality control and defect detection

Manufacturing companies can also deploy an AI agent to monitor production lines and enhance product quality control. Purpose-built vertical AI agents for the manufacturing industry are well-suited to this task, as they can efficiently analyse images and sensor data without the need for additional training, allowing for the rapid detection of defects or irregularities.

By assigning defect detection to an AI agent, manufactures can ensure that only high-quality products reach the customer, thereby improving customer satisfaction and strengthening brand reputation.

Retail

In the retail industry, vertical AI agents enhance customer shopping experiences, optimise inventory management, and increase the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Personalised shopping experiences

Modern customers increasingly expect shopping experiences tailored to their individual preferences. Businesses that fail to meet these expectations risk loosing customer to more responsive competitors. Until recently, providing truly personalised shopping experiences for each customer was virtually impossible, particularly for larger retailers with extensive customer bases.

Vertical AI agents are now transforming this landscape by enhancing the customer shopping experiences through highly tailored product recommendations. By analysing individual customer data such as browsing history, purchase behaviour, historic transactions, and preferences, these AI agents are able to suggest only the most relevant products. Delivering these suggestions in real time not only boots customer satisfaction but also contributes to an increase in average order value.

Inventory management and demand forecasting

Retailers frequently face the challenge of maintaining optimal stock levels while keeping warehousing costs under control. Advanced demand forecasting capabilities offered by AI agents tailored to the retail industry can help address these issues effectively.

By analysing factors such as seasonality, market trends, historical sales data, and consumer behaviour, AI agents can accurately predict future product demand. Traditionally, retailers relied on intuition or less sophisticated forecasting tools, often yielding inconsistent results. With industry-specific AI agents, stock levels can be adjusted with far greater precision, minimising costly overstocking and stockouts.

Marketing campaign optimisation

Retail businesses can harness AI agents to enhance their marketing strategies. AI agents are capable of effectively segmenting the retail shop's customer base, generating marketing materials tailored to each segment, and automatically send them to customers at the optimal time via the most appropriate channels.

Moreover, AI agents designed for the retail sector can carry out A/B tests to determine the most effective versions of advertising copy, social media visuals, email subject lines, and more. They can then make real-time adjustments based on performance. By leveraging such capabilities, retailers can increase customer engagement and boost ROI, without the need for significant additional marketing resources.

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Creatio’s Vertical AI Agents

Creatio is a global vendor of an AI-native platform to automate CRM and workflows with no-code. It empowers businesses to deliver faster and more personalised experiences through human-AI collaboration and no-code innovation.

Businesses across a range of industries can harness the power of advanced AI agents to automate routine tasks, gain actionable insights, and make data-driven decisions. These intelligent agents operate consistently across various channels, including web, mobile, and productivity tools, serving to support human teams in their daily tasks responsibilities rather than replacing them. Users can collaborate with role-based AI agents tailored to the needs of sales, marketing, and customer service teams to increase operational efficiency and drive unprecedented results.

Creatio provides a purpose-built AI agent designed specifically for banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions. The Financial service agent delivers robust agentic AI capabilities, AI-native automation, and ready-to-use financial workflows to help institutions enhance operational efficiency, deliver excellent customer service, and accelerate innovation. The AI agent for financial institutions is directly embedded into industry-specific workflows, such as client onboarding and account opening, loan origination and credit scoring, compliance and risk management, and many more. Unlike generic AI tools, Creatio’s vertical AI agents are pre-trained on industry workflows, fully integrated into CRM and operations, and require no technical customisation to deliver immediate results. Built from the ground up for financial services, this vertical AI agent enables institutions to launch and scale faster, eliminating the need for additional customisation, integration, or licensing.