Agentic AI Deployment Readiness and Responsible Value Realization in Sustainable Banking

Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) is a consequential technological frontier in banking because it shifts AI from passive assistance and generative interaction toward goal-directed workflow execution. Responsible and sustainable banking transformation therefore depends not simply on whether banks experiment with agentic AI, but on the readiness conditions under which selected agentic capabilities can move from pilots to governed production and responsible value realization. This study develops a configurational forecasting framework for agentic AI deployment readiness in banking. Because comparable initiative-level evidence remains scarce and commercially sensitive, the paper adopts a transparent, case-informed synthetic configurational simulation. The analysis should therefore be read as a theory-development and foresight exercise, not as empirical evidence of actual bank projects or banking-sector prevalence. Drawing on public banking AI cases, technology-diffusion and foresight literature, AI governance research, and role-based stakeholder archetypes, we construct a synthetic dataset of 90 banking-related agentic AI initiatives and apply fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). Within this bounded simulation, production maturity is internally consistent with the conjunction of data readiness, leadership commitment, governance maturity, workflow redesign capability, human–agent collaboration maturity, and low legacy-system complexity. Supplementary analyses indicate that deployment alone is insufficient for value realization in the simulated design: value requires deployment to be combined with redesigned workflows, governed data use, and human–agent collaboration. The results are not causal estimates; rather, they specify falsifiable readiness expectations that future empirical research can test with real initiative-level data. The study offers a reproducible readiness logic for responsible value realization, customer protection, workforce capability, and financial-system resilience.