AI is transforming every industry, but few sectors face greater challenges than financial services.
In this episode, Angelique Strauss sits down with Wael Elsahhar, the Co-Founder and CEO of MidLyr to explore how they’re building bank-grade AI infrastructure capable of automating some of the most complex and highly regulated workflows in finance.
Rather than focusing on flashy customer-facing experiences, MidLyr is tackling the operational backbone of banking.
Key Takeaways
- Why compliance is one of the most difficult problems to solve in financial services and why it has slowed AI adoption.
- How MidLyr’s regulatory graph maps business context to the right regulatory requirements in real time.
- The importance of building AI systems that can explain every decision and provide a complete audit trail.
- How banks can automate complex workflows without sacrificing oversight, accountability, or trust.
- The operational metrics that matter most, including reductions in manual work, faster resolution times, and higher efficiency.
- Why successful AI deployments in banking often start with internal operations rather than customer-facing experiences.
- How AI agents learn an organization’s processes by integrating with existing tools, data sources, and workflows.
- What it takes to deploy enterprise AI in weeks instead of the months-long timelines typical of traditional banking software.
- The key risks financial institutions must address before AI can be adopted at scale.
- How human compliance experts remain critical to validating and improving AI performance in regulated environments.
MidLyr is building AI-powered compliance infrastructure for financial services.
As AI agents become increasingly embedded in banks and financial institutions, MidLyr provides the layer that governs these agents and connects them across the broader regulatory ecosystem.
Speakers
Wael Elsahhar
CEO/Co-Founder, MidLyr
Wael Elsahhar is the Co-Founder and CEO of MidLyr, a company building AI infrastructure for regulated financial institutions. Prior to founding MidLyr, he held leadership roles across product, engineering, and operations at Imprint, Amazon, Qualtrics, and McKinsey.
With a background spanning fintech, enterprise software, and banking infrastructure, Wael focuses on helping financial institutions deploy AI safely, efficiently, and in compliance with complex regulatory requirements.
Angelique Strauss
CEO/Founder, AScaleX
Angelique Strauss is the CEO of AScaleX, where she works with companies to improve operational efficiency, accelerate revenue growth, and build strategic partnerships that support long-term scale. With more than ten years of experience leading international teams, she has helped organizations unlock significant business expansion and drive measurable growth.
- 10+ years of experience across B2B technology, fintech, edtech, security & compliance, enterprise technology, and professional sports.
- Venture growth and fundraising leader with contributions to over $50M in combined funding across fintech and edtech companies.
- Generated over $2M in client pipeline from a single integrated campaign.
- Contributed to more than 60% of new business generation in under a year through strategic GTM execution.
- Known for combining operator-level execution with strategic leadership to drive scalable growth.
- Forbes Business Council member and contributor
