Seekr and Stephano Slack Develop AI Agents for Financial Data Extraction

Artificial intelligence (AI) solution provider Seekr and Wayne, Pennsylvania-headquartered regional accounting firm Stephano Slack have partnered to build AI agents for financial auditing and advisory services.

The collaboration started with advanced 401(k) plan auditing and financial data extraction, and it will grow across other core advisory and audit workflows, the companies said in a Tuesday (Dec. 23) press release.

One of the solutions developed through this partnership and powered by Seekr’s generative AI platform, Seekrflow, automates the ingestion, validation and structuring of financial documents.

This solution reduces the amount of time spent on manual extraction and reconciliation work from 50 hours to two hours, according to the release. In addition to accelerating this work, Seekr’s AI agents ensure accuracy and confidence in the audit process by enabling auditors to sample beyond the minimum regulatory thresholds, the release said.

Seekr and Stephano Slack aim to develop a complete suite of AI agents to facilitate forensic analysis, compliance and financial assurance for middle-market firms, per the release.

“Together with Stephano Slack, we are transforming how advisory firms scale AI to improve client outcomes, starting with AI agents that deliver faster, accurate annual audits for firms of any size or complexity,” Seekr President Rob Clark said in the release.

Stephano Slack Managing Partner Mike Stephano said in the release that when AI is applied responsibly, the technology can enhance how professional services firms serve their clients.

“Seekr is a strong partner in this effort, bringing secure, explainable AI capabilities that support our teams in delivering accurate, compliant and scalable assurance and advisory services,” Stephano said.

A study from Stanford University and MIT found that accountants at small to medium-sized companies said that generative AI makes them more productive and lets them finish tasks faster. Among the benefits of the technology: Accountants using AI handled 55% more clients per week than those who did not use it.

In another recent development in this space, Digits said in June that it added AI agents to its AI-native accounting platform, Autonomous General Ledger (AGL). These Digits Accounting Agents run entire accounting workflows, pausing only when human judgment is needed or desired.