AI has moved from an emerging technology to a core part of the compliance conversation, and firms are now grappling with how to turn its potential into responsible, operational impact.
That question anchored the first session of StarCompliance’s three-part 2026 Global Compliance Benchmark Study webinar series, which brought together StarCompliance chief product officer Kelvin Dickenson, NatWest strategic compliance lead Gabby Byrne and Raymond James Financial chief compliance officer Rich Konefal.
The panel’s starting point was governance. As AI access spreads across financial institutions, the debate is shifting from whether staff should use these tools to how that use should be controlled. Discussion covered controlled environments, access protocols, monitoring and training, alongside extending existing surveillance frameworks to AI channels, with protecting material non-public information and customer data remaining a priority.
Access alone is not enough. Employees need genuine AI literacy: knowing how to frame better prompts, supply the right context, spot inaccuracies and judge when human expertise must take over. Used well, AI can compress hours of work, such as assembling trading history and transaction context for a market-abuse alert, into minutes, freeing analysts to focus on risk assessment rather than data-gathering.
Efficiency, however, is not the whole story. StarCompliance’s Benchmark Study found 23% of respondents saw reduced manual effort from AI, but 26% reported increased workloads instead. Faster reporting can generate demand for more reporting, quicker insights can raise expectations for speed, and offloading routine tasks can leave staff with a heavier load of complex, judgment-intensive cases.
AI is also reshaping the build-versus-buy decision. It’s now easier to develop internal tools and automate discrete workflows, but panellists distinguished between solving a narrow internal problem and building compliance technology that must run reliably at scale, with ongoing maintenance, integrations and regulatory upkeep.
The clearest message for firms early in their AI journey: start with a problem, not the technology. Identify a repetitive process or a workflow bogged down by information-gathering, test AI against it, and expand from there, with output quality closely tied to the quality of input and context provided.
Read the full StarCompliance post here.
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