During the Finance Magnates Africa Summit 2025, Angelos
Gregoriou, the CEO and co-founder of Dynamic Works Syntellicore, took the stage
to deliver valuable insight amid the current hype cycle around
artificial intelligence.
“Everything is changing because of AI, but not
everything is AI,” Gregoriou said in an interview dubbed “The
Intelligent Future of Financial Services: AI, Automation &Brokerage
Innovation,” that was hosted by Ivan Rojas, International Sales Director
at Nelogica.
Gregoriou, whose firm provides the widely used Syntellicore,
a CRM system for brokers, offered a candid and at times cautionary assessment
of how AI is reshaping the brokerage business, while pushing back on the notion
that technology can—or should—replace the human element that drives trust,
conversion, and retention in financial services.
“So we’re trying to eliminate onboarding time for
brokers to zero by utilizing our own KYC online system, backed up with AI,” Gregoriou explained.
“And this goes on mobile devices and the mobile applications that we
built, or mobile applications that are built by others, or other brokers and
developers.”
The Drive Toward Intelligent Automation
Dynamic Works, which counts a growing base of brokers in
Africa and globally, has embedded AI into several layers of its CRM
infrastructure. Gregoriou detailed how the firm is using AI to eliminate
bottlenecks in onboarding, personalize marketing efforts, detect fraud, and
conduct predictive client analysis—all in real time.
“AI comes to optimize their tools for marketing , to
optimize their costs, and improve the quality of their
communication with clients either through marketing or through sales channels, and to optimize the quality of the clients as well to know exactly
which ones of your clients are important, valuable for you, and will bring value
to the business,” he shared.
One key development is the company’s in-house mobile Know Your Customer (KYC) tool, which leverages AI to drastically reduce onboarding
times. Another: AI-powered voice analysis to assess the quality of
client-broker interactions.
“In Africa, what we have seen compared to other regions
is that there are more people, lower deposits. So yes, there is volume compared
to anything else. So for us, because we are also of the relationships we have
with all the brokers, mainly the main local brokers, and of course, the volume
of clients is a very important aspect, and for us as a CRM provider, it is a
very big opportunity.” While these tools are gaining traction, Gregoriou
emphasized that AI should be used to complement—not replace—the human
connection.
The Marketing Paradox
The session moderator pointed out a familiar paradox:
brokers often lavishly spend on marketing while balking at technology investments. Gregoriou’s response was clear: AI is the connective tissue that
binds marketing, sales, and operations, and it delivers return on investment
through optimization.
“AI can show you which of your leads are actually
valuable,” he explained. “It doesn’t just reduce costs—it improves
quality.”
As for client demand, brokers are increasingly requesting
advanced tools that can deliver such intelligence. The firm is now investing in
proprietary AI models trained on internal knowledge bases to offer faster,
self-taught customer support—a critical component for scaling operations.
Africa as a Data Frontier
The discussion also turned to the unique opportunity AI
presents in emerging markets. In Africa, Gregoriou said, the combination of
high trading volume and small deposits creates a data-rich environment for
training machine learning models—and for refining product-market fit.
“Already launched is the AI analysis of the voice
calls. So during this process we listen to a lot of calls between that happen
between the brokers and the clients,” he said. “So we ask for our clients for prototyping
to give us, voice calls to analyze them and extract uh translate them with our
tools extract the benchmarks and the harmonies of the calls.”
“During that process, we learned a lot about the communication between the broker and the client that maybe we couldn’t realize,” Gregoriou explained.
More from the FMAS:25: “If You Take Off Your Logo and Put in Competitor’s and It Works, You Failed”: Marketing Strategies from FMAS:25
Asked whether a fully AI-operated broker—one with minimal
headcount—was on the horizon, Gregoriou was skeptical. “Many ask me:
when can AI agents start calling clients?” he said. “But this isn’t
about replacing people. It’s about making them more effective.”
He rejected the notion of a “one-agent broker,”
saying the industry is too fragmented, regionalized, and relationship-driven
for such a model to work, especially in client acquisition and retention.
AI Realism Over AI Rhetoric
Gregoriou concluded the session with a pointed warning to
attendees: don’t fall for buzzwords. “Be careful with preachers claiming
to have the solution for everything,” he said, referencing so-called AI
tools that offer little more than automation in disguise.
Instead, he urged firms to invest wisely, test rigorously,
and remember that at the heart of every trade there is still a person—one who needs
to be heard.
During the Finance Magnates Africa Summit 2025, Angelos
Gregoriou, the CEO and co-founder of Dynamic Works Syntellicore, took the stage
to deliver valuable insight amid the current hype cycle around
artificial intelligence.
“Everything is changing because of AI, but not
everything is AI,” Gregoriou said in an interview dubbed “The
Intelligent Future of Financial Services: AI, Automation &Brokerage
Innovation,” that was hosted by Ivan Rojas, International Sales Director
at Nelogica.
Gregoriou, whose firm provides the widely used Syntellicore,
a CRM system for brokers, offered a candid and at times cautionary assessment
of how AI is reshaping the brokerage business, while pushing back on the notion
that technology can—or should—replace the human element that drives trust,
conversion, and retention in financial services.
“So we’re trying to eliminate onboarding time for
brokers to zero by utilizing our own KYC online system, backed up with AI,” Gregoriou explained.
“And this goes on mobile devices and the mobile applications that we
built, or mobile applications that are built by others, or other brokers and
developers.”
The Drive Toward Intelligent Automation
Dynamic Works, which counts a growing base of brokers in
Africa and globally, has embedded AI into several layers of its CRM
infrastructure. Gregoriou detailed how the firm is using AI to eliminate
bottlenecks in onboarding, personalize marketing efforts, detect fraud, and
conduct predictive client analysis—all in real time.
“AI comes to optimize their tools for marketing , to
optimize their costs, and improve the quality of their
communication with clients either through marketing or through sales channels, and to optimize the quality of the clients as well to know exactly
which ones of your clients are important, valuable for you, and will bring value
to the business,” he shared.
One key development is the company’s in-house mobile Know Your Customer (KYC) tool, which leverages AI to drastically reduce onboarding
times. Another: AI-powered voice analysis to assess the quality of
client-broker interactions.
“In Africa, what we have seen compared to other regions
is that there are more people, lower deposits. So yes, there is volume compared
to anything else. So for us, because we are also of the relationships we have
with all the brokers, mainly the main local brokers, and of course, the volume
of clients is a very important aspect, and for us as a CRM provider, it is a
very big opportunity.” While these tools are gaining traction, Gregoriou
emphasized that AI should be used to complement—not replace—the human
connection.
The Marketing Paradox
The session moderator pointed out a familiar paradox:
brokers often lavishly spend on marketing while balking at technology investments. Gregoriou’s response was clear: AI is the connective tissue that
binds marketing, sales, and operations, and it delivers return on investment
through optimization.
“AI can show you which of your leads are actually
valuable,” he explained. “It doesn’t just reduce costs—it improves
quality.”
As for client demand, brokers are increasingly requesting
advanced tools that can deliver such intelligence. The firm is now investing in
proprietary AI models trained on internal knowledge bases to offer faster,
self-taught customer support—a critical component for scaling operations.
Africa as a Data Frontier
The discussion also turned to the unique opportunity AI
presents in emerging markets. In Africa, Gregoriou said, the combination of
high trading volume and small deposits creates a data-rich environment for
training machine learning models—and for refining product-market fit.
“Already launched is the AI analysis of the voice
calls. So during this process we listen to a lot of calls between that happen
between the brokers and the clients,” he said. “So we ask for our clients for prototyping
to give us, voice calls to analyze them and extract uh translate them with our
tools extract the benchmarks and the harmonies of the calls.”
“During that process, we learned a lot about the communication between the broker and the client that maybe we couldn’t realize,” Gregoriou explained.
More from the FMAS:25: “If You Take Off Your Logo and Put in Competitor’s and It Works, You Failed”: Marketing Strategies from FMAS:25
Asked whether a fully AI-operated broker—one with minimal
headcount—was on the horizon, Gregoriou was skeptical. “Many ask me:
when can AI agents start calling clients?” he said. “But this isn’t
about replacing people. It’s about making them more effective.”
He rejected the notion of a “one-agent broker,”
saying the industry is too fragmented, regionalized, and relationship-driven
for such a model to work, especially in client acquisition and retention.
AI Realism Over AI Rhetoric
Gregoriou concluded the session with a pointed warning to
attendees: don’t fall for buzzwords. “Be careful with preachers claiming
to have the solution for everything,” he said, referencing so-called AI
tools that offer little more than automation in disguise.
Instead, he urged firms to invest wisely, test rigorously,
and remember that at the heart of every trade there is still a person—one who needs
to be heard.
This post is originally published on FINANCEMAGNATES.
