BILL Cuts Underwriting Wait From Three Hours to 12 Minutes With AI Agents

Fintech platform BILL, which provides financial operations tools for businesses, reported results from deploying AI agents in its risk team. Speaking on the first quarter fiscal 2027 earnings call on November 5, founder and CEO René Lacerte said the agents save the team more than 1,400 hours per month, roughly the work of eight full-time employees.

What the Agents Do

Lacerte said the risk team has built more than 100 AI agents over the past year that work 24/7 across several functions. Examples include pulling case files, drafting credit assessments and writing model documentation. According to him, the agents complete defined tasks on their own, without constant staff involvement.

How Underwriting Changed

Lacerte highlighted three agents that work together as a suite called Robin to handle underwriting cases. Robin routes each case to the right underwriter, compiles the customer's data into a summary and provides a one-click link to make a decision. Previously, underwriters had to piece each case together from chat messages, email and separate dashboards.

Lacerte said the wait time for each case and customer now takes about 12 minutes instead of three hours. He linked this to faster, more personalized service for small and medium-sized businesses and to team members being able to spend more time on complex tasks.

Other Results From the Quarter

Lacerte also said AI has accelerated product development: the company launched five products during the quarter, and a Visa pilot was built in four weeks. The AI-powered Chat with BILL now handles 45% of customer support conversations.

Context: Company Restructuring

The transformation began earlier. As PYMNTS reported at the time, in May Lacerte said BILL planned to cut its workforce by 30% by the end of the current quarter to focus on AI. A few weeks later, he announced changes to the leadership team as part of the shift toward an AI-native company. On the call, the CEO also referred to organizational measures taken during fiscal 2026. In his words, the goal of these measures was to accelerate the company's transformation into an AI-native business.

The source reports these results based on the company executive's statements; there is no independent verification of the figures in the materials.