The Traditional Deal Execution Bottleneck

Walk into any equity issuance process and you’ll see the same pattern:

• Data compiled from spreadsheets and emails.
• Manual checks of prospectus disclosures, investor allocations, compliance forms.
• Multiple hand-offs between issuers, banks, and regulators.

Even with digitised tools, the process is largely sequential and brittle.

According to an industry review, organisations leveraging AI in corporate finance report deal acceleration of 30-50% through automation of document review and risk analysis. SmartDev

Introducing Autonomous Execution

When we say “autonomous” we don’t mean human-free. We mean workflow-free of hand-offs, where logic, triggers and compliance are embedded.

In an autonomous deal-engine:

• A pipeline ingests issuer, advisor and investor data simultaneously.
• AI-driven validation layers check tickets, allocations, disclosures in real time.
• Execution triggers (e.g., book-build starts, tranche opens, investor allocation) fire automatically across the participants.
• It becomes less about getting to “ready” and more about staying “live.”

Consider a case reported by DealRoom: AI-powered document review cut contract-analysis time by up to 90%. Deliverables AI

That kind of reduction isn’t incremental — it enables entirely new execution windows.

What’s at Stake

If the first wave of automation was about efficiency, this wave is about competitiveness. Institutions that continue with legacy workflows risk being sidelined by those executing faster and cleaner.

BCG’s survey of finance leaders found that median ROI from AI remains at 10%—far below the 20% many target. bcg.com

The message: unless workflows themselves become autonomous, the investment in AI will underdeliver.

Key Takeaways

• Deal execution time is the unspoken cost of modern ECM.
• Autonomous workflows powered by AI aren’t incremental — they create new execution models.
• Modular deployment focusing on ingestion, intelligence, orchestration and compliance yields measurable results.
• Speed + transparency = competitive advantage.
• Institutions that delay become less agile; those who transform gain market leverage.

Sources

• SmartDev – AI Use Cases in Corporate Finance: 30-50% Deal Acceleration (July 2025) SmartDev
• Deliverables AI – The AI Revolution in Deal Document Creation: Up to 90% Time Savings (August 2024) Deliverables AI
• McKinsey – Extracting Value from AI in Banking: Rewiring the Enterprise (December 2024) McKinsey & Company
• BCG – How Finance Leaders Can Get ROI from AI & GenAI (June 2025) bcg.com