In this interview from Appian World 2026, Leonardo Vivas Muñoz, account executive for LATAM at Appian, joins Alejandro Arias, continuous value team leader and project manager at Bancolombia S.A., to talk with theCUBE's Dave Vellante and co-host Alison Kosik about how Colombia's largest financial institution is embedding AI into core banking workflows to automate document processing at scale. Arias opens by framing Bancolombia's reach — 36 million customers, 24,000 employees and about 50% of all financial transactions in Colombia — before detailing how the bank deployed a fully functional AI-powered processing system in just 13 weeks. That system now handles 80,000 documents per month with high accuracy. Vivas explains how the implementation unified fragmented databases and disconnected systems under a single Appian platform combining AI, RPA and human-in-the-loop workflows, reducing time spent on manual processes by 70%.
The conversation also explores how Bancolombia treats AI transparency not as a feature but as a governing principle. Arias is direct: if a decision cannot be explained, AI cannot be involved in it. Full audit trails, confidence scores and end-to-end traceability are mandatory for every document that passes through the platform. Vivas connects this to Appian's process intelligence capabilities, noting that embedding AI within the process — rather than alongside it — protects data integrity and reduces human error. The discussion also examines the broader adoption landscape, where Arias warns that financial institutions rushing to deploy AI without a process-centric foundation are making costly mistakes. From managing the operational complexity of a 115-year-old institution to envisioning a future where Bancolombia shifts from reactive banking to anticipating client needs in real time, the interview illustrates how trust-first AI governance is becoming a competitive advantage in highly regulated markets.
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Dave Vellante and Alison Kosik sit down with Leonardo Vivas, Account Executive Latin America, Appian & Alejandro Arias, EVC Leader and PM, Bancolombia S.A., at Appian World 2026 at the JW Marriott Orlando, Grande Lakes, in Orlando, FL.
In this interview from Appian World 2026, Leonardo Vivas Muñoz, account executive for LATAM at Appian, joins Alejandro Arias, continuous value team leader and project manager at Bancolombia S.A., to talk with theCUBE's Dave Vellante and co-host Alison Kosik about how Colombia's largest financial institution is embedding AI into core banking workflows to automate document processing at scale. Arias opens by framing Bancolombia's reach — 36 million customers, 24,000 employees and about 50% of all financial transactions in Colombia — before detailing how the ban...Read more
>> Welcome back to Appian World 26. We are streaming live in Orlando. I'm Alison Kosik alongside Dave Vellante, and we've got a partnership to highlight here between a bank and Appian.
Dave Vellante
>> Yeah. There's a theme emerging, right? Appian's focused helping companies, particularly those in highly regulated industries that care about trust and care about safe AI.
Alison Kosik
>> Absolutely. And getting it right. Let's bring in Alejandro Arias, the EVC leader and PM of Bank of Columbia. Welcome to The Cube.
Alejandro Arias
>>
Alison Kosik
>> And Leo Vivas, account executive with Latin America. With Appian, welcome to The Cube. So great to have you both.>> Thanks. Thank you.
Alison Kosik
>> Talk about the partnership that is here. How long have you had this partnership and what's it been like?
Alejandro Arias
>> Well, before anything else, I'd really to thank you for having us here. It's our first interview ever.
Alison Kosik
>> Oh, okay.>> So this is awesome.
Alison Kosik
>> That's great.>> Well, before I enter into our partnership with the bank, let me explain who is Bank Colombia. So Bank Colombia is the largest financial institution in my country in Colombia with over 36 million customers and about 24,000 employees. And about 50% of the whole financial transactions crosses the bank is by far the largest bank in my country. So we partnered with Bank Colombia because we found a need in which they would like to automate and modernize their processes. So we approached them. We found the opportunity to work together and that's it. Viola. We had the ability to put our technology into production.
Dave Vellante
>> So Alejandro, my understanding is that you built a fully functional product essentially in a very short time. And part of that was now able to process 80,000 documents a month with very high accuracy rates. Explain how you did that and maybe what it meant to your business.
Alejandro Arias
>> Okay. Thank you so much for having me here. The biggest transformation, it was only technical. It was with the people, with the operation team. That kind of transformations needs a lot of improve of our skills or of our platform or our technology. That special case, it was one of the first big impact things that we do with Appian in our bank, but it was only 14 weeks, 13 weeks. But not only that transformation generate any kind of innovation. We need the humans in the edge case because we don't want only get information from our customers. We want to give more than information. We want to create an ecosystem that allows to bring special information, orchestrated information, coordinated information, coordinated process. And this was our first, I don't know, maybe one of the first biggest challenge to improve our model to use Appian in the bank.
Alison Kosik
>> And Leo, can you talk me through that integration of the AI skills with generative AI and then with the human in the loop? Talk about how that integration transpired with Bank of Columbia.>> Sure. Well, at the beginning, we found many challenges, right? Very despair databases and disconnected systems within the architecture. So first, we put our specialist and our team to understand what was the main problem and how to solve the disconnection? So we put all together, we put all Appian platform into production using AI, RPA, and all the features to work with humans to improve the speed and the processes of all documents. So that's a huge transformation for the bank. Reducing time spend in manual process, almost in 70%. So it's just an amazing journey with the bank.
Alison Kosik
>> Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
Dave Vellante
>> Okay. there's a problem in AI. We call it the black box problem. My Spanish is terrible. , is that the right way to say it?
Alejandro Arias
>> Yeah. That's right.
Dave Vellante
>> Okay. So you need transparency.
Alejandro Arias
>> Yeah.
Dave Vellante
>> How did you ensure that transparency? What did you do about the black box problem? How do you know what's going inside the black cup or the black box? How did you address that?
Alejandro Arias
>> Okay. For the bank, if you cannot explain decision, you cannot involve AI in that decision. So it's important to us. That's our principle. So every document pass through AI functionality, we need to get a lot of traceability, a lot of audit trails, maybe confidence information, guided information, how to what's being classified. If we have that kind of information in the process, that process is important or is possible to became created or migrated to this kind of orchestration platform. Transparency is not negotiable for Bank Colombia. The regulators, the auditory fields, the AI fields or AI teams that create confidence for us, this information, it is possible to from the first step at the last step, if that information is possible to be trustability or to have a trustability, that information is possible to give or to have to move to Appian. Trust is not only a value, it's a principle, principle for Bank Colombia. So if the process complains or if the process got this kind of values... I'm sorry. Appian give us that kind of principles for use that kind of functionality and orchestrations.
Alison Kosik
>> Leo, connect this to process intelligence for us. How does this transparency that Alejandro is talking about, how does that allow the bank to identify and solve these operational bottlenecks in real time?
Alison Kosik
>> Yes. As I said, when you have many manual processes, there is a lot of risks involved and complexity and time spent. When you put AI into production, and especially using document center or the feature that Appian can read through the documents and produce good results, then the accuracy and the transparency of the document and the less involvement in human errors in the middle will produce a good result. So that's what is going on at Bank Colombia. This is taking us to a next step, which we will massificate all these processes using Appian.
Dave Vellante
>> Bank of Columbia, a very large and sophisticated bank.
Alejandro Arias
>> Yes.
Dave Vellante
>> How do you think that their use of AI compares to perhaps other banks? Are they more mature in the middle of the curve? They have more resources, so maybe they can go faster, or what about smaller banks? Can they benefit from this technology? What are you seeing in the industry?
Alejandro Arias
>> Oh, that's a very interesting question. Personally, what I've noticed is that many financial institutions are trying to make a rush. AI is a noise and you have to run through it. I have to catch it. Otherwise, I'm going to lose the race. But the reality is that some of the banks that I know are making so much mistakes because of that, because they're trying to tell everyone, "You need to use AI to do all the things." But AI is not usable for that. It's something that is really happening not only in Latin America, but globally speaking. Appian and the way that we work with AI ensure that the documents, information, and processes are into the process itself, not outside. So that secures, protect, speed, and secure the way you use the information within the company. So that's my way to look that. So what we are doing in Bank of Colombia is to advise, as an advisor, to advise how to approach and get used to AI. Why? Because Bank Columbia is a large bank. So they have noises coming from other manufacturers of AI all the time. But what we are telling them is, "Okay, AI is good technology, but you have to use it in the way that can produce good results." Right? So that's it.
Dave Vellante
>> Yeah. Every vendor wants to sell to them.>> Yeah. Everyone.
Dave Vellante
>> You got to be hyperscaling. Buy our AI, buy or use our agents.>> Exactly.
Dave Vellante
>> Wait a minute. You have to step back and be careful.
Alejandro Arias
>> I want to add something if it's possible. That is not only for the bank, there are small banks growing, there are new competitions in the market, so they are digital from the beginning. Bank Columbia have 115 years with creating technologies, upgrading the technologies. So it's important to us have this kind of technology to orchestrate and automate our workflows.
Dave Vellante
>> What about crypto? Is that a big thing in your world?
Alejandro Arias
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have one unit called Wenya. Wenya is one of our banks working with that. This is the first bank crypto in Colombia, and this is part of this grand Bank Columbia.
Dave Vellante
>> Wow. How about the future? Where would you guys like to go? What's your vision? Maybe a year from now, what you'd like to be able to say, and then long term, what you'd be able to say?
Alejandro Arias
>> Okay. This project is not only document automation, this project looking for move Bank Colombia forward to another level. Our vision is, I think, is clear. Move from reactive to a system that anticipate the needs of our clients. We are client centricity. The client is the first. The needs of the client is the first. And what we're looking for is that AI become trustly, becomes, I don't know, maybe the first... We see the future as maybe a coordinated technology. We are looking for that kind of innovation for our clients.
Dave Vellante
>> The way I look Bank Colombia is it's a happy customer using good technology, producing good results, with less time involved in processes and back office, to put that time into how to solve their clients necessities. So this is my view. And I'm working hard to help these guys to come up with that.
Dave Vellante
>> He's doing a good job for you?
Alejandro Arias
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.
Dave Vellante
>> What do you want them to do better?
Alejandro Arias
>> The trust. The trust is very important to us. And Leo represent the trust for Appian for Bank Colombia.
Alison Kosik
>> Thanks so much for your time today for stopping by The Cube. We appreciate it. Great conversation.
Dave Vellante
>> No.
Alejandro Arias
>> Thank you so much.>> It's an amazing opportunity. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us here.
Alejandro Arias
>> Thank you for having us.
Alison Kosik
>> And you're watching The Cube, the leader in high-tech enterprise analysis and live coverage. We'll be right back.
Alison Kosik
Dave Vellante