arXiv AI

DealsFlow: An Evidence-Gated Agentic Harness for Venture Capital Deal Triage

arXiv:2610. 32380v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) can read startup pitch decks, but letting them emit investment scores directly invites score inflation, run-to-run variance and rationales that are hard to audit.

arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

FinRiskAtlas: Decision-Aligned Evaluation of Large Language Models for Financial Risk Review

FinRiskAtlas is a Chinese-language benchmark designed to evaluate large language models (LLMs) for financial risk review by focusing on decision‑aligned tasks rather than generic financial knowledge. It contains 9,742 instances across 53 task families, including 42 domain‑knowledge families and 11 downstream review operations defined by explicit evaluation contracts. The extended FinRisk‑Ask framework replays 680 pre‑action states from 104 professional trajectories, withholding future evidence during inference to assess evidence‑state control and request targeting. Results across 33 model configurations show that operation‑level evaluation yields distinct rankings and that knowledge‑based shortlisting can incur significant regret, while frequent use of the Ask branch does not necessarily improve evidence acquisition, highlighting gaps in broad financial capability scores.

By Suyang Zhong, Jingzhe Zhu, Qi Xu, Liyao Sun, Yin Wang, Qingqing Sun, Shuai Chen, Tianyi Zhang
arXiv AI
1d ago

The Harness Is the Model: Agent Scaffolding Changes a Fixed LLM's Compliance with Banking Conduct Rules, Unevenly Across Models

The study examines how different harness configurations affect a fixed large language model’s compliance with banking conduct rules. Four open‑weight models were tested across five harnesses on 156 pre‑registered retail‑banking scenarios, yielding 3,120 two‑turn episodes scored for rule violations and over‑refusals. Results show that while overall compliance rates varied modestly (87.3%–92.1%), the impact of a harness differed markedly between models, with some models’ best and worst harnesses differing by over 10 percentage points and a same‑model compliance reviewer reducing violations from 9.6% to 6.4%. whyItMatters":"The findings suggest that validating a model’s compliance requires testing the specific model‑harness pair rather than the model alone, highlighting the importance of action logs over conversation transcripts for accurate conduct assessment."

By Mehmet Murat Huyut
arXiv AI
Oct 5

Knowledge or Calculator? Decomposing the Skill Premium in Verifiable Financial Agent Workflows

The paper introduces FinSkillBench, a benchmark of 2,603 financial AI agent episodes across portfolio construction, risk management, and fundamental analysis, evaluated with deterministic verifiers. Experiments on 9 models and 3 resource settings show that curated skill packages improve performance by +16.2 points, while in‑episode skill generation adds only +0.5 points. Decomposing the premium reveals that executable tools contribute +19.5 points, documentation +5.6 points, and their combination is subadditive, with the effect varying by workflow type.

By Jermyn Zhen Yong Bek, Zhuang Qiang Bok, Zhongtian Sun
arXiv AI
Oct 5

Counterfactual Evidence Audits Predict LLM-Agent Susceptibility to Ranked Context

The paper introduces a counterfactual evidence audit to assess how large language model agents respond to different sets of documents. By exposing agents to two mirrored sets of five documents and measuring changes in six downstream decisions, the authors predict how the agents will behave when presented with a full 45‑document context. Across multiple open‑weight model families and tasks, the five‑document audit accurately forecasts full‑context effects, reducing prediction error by 62% and correctly identifying the direction of most material effects.

By Rana Muhammad Usman
arXiv AI
Oct 21

The More the Better? A Comparison of Single- and Multi-Agent LLM Setups on a Financial Review Task

The study compares single-agent and multi-agent large language model (LLM) setups for reviewing credit assessment memos against specified requirements. In a controlled experiment with 300 synthetic memos, a single agent examined six requirements in one call, while a team of three agents each checked two requirements. Results show the team identified 0.08 to 0.10 more defects on certain models but also produced more false alarms, used 2.2 to 2.4 times more tokens, and had mixed effects on balanced accuracy depending on instruction and model.

By Pei Liu
arXiv AI
Oct 27

Thinking-in-Bets at Test Time Reduces Sycophantic Revisions in LLM Agents

The paper introduces Thinking‑in‑Bets, a training‑free technique where a language‑model agent records its key claims, supporting checks, and confidence before receiving user feedback. By consulting this private claim checklist when challenged, the agent preserves verified work and focuses on uncertain or newly contested parts, reducing sycophantic revisions. Experiments on five Gemini models across eight benchmarks show that pre‑reply claim records nearly eliminate false reversals in patch review, protect report drafts from mistaken pushback, and lower unnecessary edits in multi‑turn coding while improving accuracy and confidence in non‑interactive tasks.

By Nghi D. Q. Bui