Podcasthon 2026 Special: The Real Reason AI Is Failing in Finance | Ashley Vassell | Ep 53

Bricks & Banks Podcast is participating in Podcasthon 2026 and we couldn't think of a better way to show up than with an episode that challenges how your organisation thinks about AI. Because here's the truth: AI agents are moving fast — but is your data infrastructure built to keep up? In this episode, we unpack the hidden gap between experimenting with AI and truly building for scale in financial services.Agentic AI is no longer a buzzword — it's reshaping how financial institutions detect fraud, process loans, manage risk, and serve customers in real time. But here's the truth most leaders are missing: even the most advanced AI model will fail if the data beneath it is slow, fragmented, or inaccessible.In this power-packed episode, host Stephanie Onwuemenyi sits down with Ashley Vassell, Senior Product Manager at Hydrolix's Innovation Lab, to break down the data infrastructure gap in agentic AI — and what finance leaders actually need to do about it.Ashley brings deep expertise in cloud computing, distributed systems, and high-performance data platforms. She's built and shipped real AI products — and she's here to give you the practical, no-hype truth.👩🏾‍💻 About Our Guest:Ashley Vassell is a Senior Product Manager at Hydrolix, where she leads the Innovation Lab — a team of 13 engineers building AI-powered products including anomaly detection systems and MCP (Model Context Protocol) server infrastructure. She started her career at GE, built expertise across cloud, distributed systems and startups, and now sits at the frontier of agentic AI.🔗 Connect with Ashley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-vassell/🔗 Explore Hydrolix: https://hydrolix.io