AI Era: The Missing Piece in Many Risk & Compliance Profiles
There is more emphasis than ever from organisations looking for experience, skills and attitude to adopt/ maximise AI when hiring into Risk, Compliance and Financial Crime functions. Simply, because firms are (further) adopting AI as part of their strategy.
Whilst the vast majority of UK Financial Services use AI in some form, the reality is the number of true AI native firms is much lower, but this will increase as will sophistication, so getting ahead, or at the very least, remaining current, is incredibly important as we head further into an agentic world, particularly if you are in, or moving into, senior/ leadership role.
For example, approximate adoption rates across Insurance (95%) and Banking (75%).
- Insurance: Claims processing, predictive risk assessment, and algorithmic pricing.
- Banks / Non-Bank Lenders: Anti-Money Laundering (AML), fraud detection, and credit risk analytics.
This creates an interesting question; Does your profile adequately reflect your practical AI experience, and what should it look like?
Nobody expects you to be able to build models, but Boards in financial services are being driven by the Regulators to ensure Governance, Risk and Compliance measures are implemented around them, reviewed by their Risk/ Compliance leaders and not relying on AI to replace human judgement. This looks like:
Governance – developing AI policies, governance frameworks, accountability or oversight.
Risk – assessing AI/model risk, third and fourth-party exposure, operational resilience, data quality or introducing AI into risk monitoring.
Compliance – using AI to support regulatory horizon scanning, policy reviews, monitoring, testing or regulatory change.
Financial Crime – applying AI/ML to transaction monitoring, fraud detection, sanctions screening, alert prioritisation or identifying unusual patterns.
Our advice
Go beyond listing “AI Governance” under your skills. Be forthcoming and clear about what you have used, introduced, implemented, and how it’s aided the business and your function compliantly.
- What platform(s) have you used?
- How did you use AI and align it to your business?
- What business issues and process problems did you solve?
- What governance or controls did you put around them?
- What was the outcome? (Improved outputs, accuracy or productivity?)
More businesses will become AI-native to varying degrees: we are already being asked to identify candidates with practical and demonstrable AI
experience.
If you are starting to look at your CV, we suggest getting ahead of the curve and include your experience to help you stand out.
Queries welcome: enquiries@grayfields.co
The Mills Review
2026
Key findings
- Retail financial services are moving from human-led, towards AI-enabled, continuous and delegated services.
- AI could reshape the sector by 2030 – changing how firms operate, consumers make decisions, markets compete and risks emerge.
- AI could improve outcomes and support growth by reducing friction and tackling long-standing challenges, such as advice gaps, low switching and protection gaps. But it could also amplify risks associated with fraud, cyber security and consumer harm.
- Consumer adoption will depend on trust, control and access – even though 1 in 5 UK adults are already open to AI making decisions for them.
Artificial Intelligence in UK Financial Services
2024
“The Bank of England/FCA survey found that 75% of financial services firms were already using AI, with another 10% planning to do so. Firms expected the median number of AI use cases to more than double over the following three years”.