This shift marks the arrival of Agentic AI—a new generation of autonomous software capable of planning, reasoning, and acting independently to achieve defined goals. It also raises one uncomfortable question: when autonomous software makes a costly mistake, who is legally responsible? In lending, autonomous AI agents are beginning to replace periodic credit reviews with continuous risk assessment. For decades, financial institutions have relied upon the “Three Lines of Defense” model: business operations, independent risk management, and internal audit. That is the real risk the financial sector must confront before autonomous software is allowed to manage the world’s money.