Audit, risk, and compliance leaders with a lot on their plates have started exploring the benefits of AI for increased compliance. Expanding threats, regulations, and responsibilities are overburdening their teams, to-do lists, and workloads, and data volumes are exceeding the capabilities of spreadsheets and traditional tools. There is pressure to turn this complex data into intelligent decisions.
But how can executives overseeing audit, risk and compliance functions keep up?
Artificial intelligence (AI) comes to the rescue, sifting through and making sense of data with superhuman speed, processing, analytic power, and efficiency.
Through time-saving automation, lightning-fast analysis, and real-time intelligence, AI empowers executives and their teams to make more informed decisions, build stronger resilience in their operations, and better manage the risks that matter.
Here are four ways AI can help you enhance performance across audit, risk and compliance:
1. Add efficiency and accuracy to audit operations
Getting more audits done with less time and effort is the dream. AI streamlines routine tasks, automates data gathering and analysis, and extends its capabilities to more complex challenges. By handling the initial stages of repetitive work, such as monitoring regulatory changes and assisting in intricate tasks like script creation for advanced analytics, AI bridges the expertise gap within teams. Technology integration enhances accuracy and speeds up processes, thereby reducing the risks of human error and missed deadlines.
2. More effectively anticipate, analyse and manage risk
Today’s internal and external risks organisations face are high-stakes and growing: customer privacy, cybersecurity, business ethics, and environmental violations. Which deserves priority status? Which demands immediate action?
AI-powered automation streamlines the analytics lifecycle — from data acquisition and cleansing to analysis and reporting — and tailors it to specific needs by acting as a coding assistant for auditors. Many auditors lack the specialised coding skills required for complex analytics tasks. With AI, they can simply input a prompt for the desired analysis, and the system generates the necessary code. This capability allows auditors to quickly detect and respond to emerging risks, such as cyber threats before they escalate into significant problems. This targeted approach in analytics ensures precision and efficiency in handling data-intensive processes.
At the same time, AI-powered analysis sharpens your visibility, enhancing the clarity and certainty you need to make informed decisions and achieve better outcomes.
3. How to benefit from AI in the compliance landscape
Given the proliferation of rules, regulations and reporting frameworks in recent years, standardisation across them is good, right? This is not the case when the overlap across these requirements grows, increasing the odds of duplication, redundancy, bottlenecks, and errors.
By sorting and sifting through data at superhuman speed, AI-powered automation quickly identifies what’s new. But that’s just the beginning of its powers.
AI-powered automation detangles the details, empowering compliance teams to track, categorise and decipher these changes more efficiently. This means policies and practices are aligned promptly, and essential deadlines and disclosure don’t fall through the cracks.
4. AI increases compliance, risk and audit effectiveness
Finally, AI enhances activities that span audit, risk and compliance.
Internal controls are one example. AI-powered automation saves time—eliminating the need for manual control testing—and increases peace of mind, enabling the move from sampling to continuous process monitoring. When the regulatory and risk landscape inevitably changes, AI can recommend changes to ensure internal controls alert teams to the right things.
Data integration is another. AI tools can help break down silos and bring data together across audit, risk and compliance for the single umbrella of clarity and shared responsibility strong governance depends on.
Diligent AI: Built for performance
Diligent AI improves the speed, accuracy and effectiveness of audit, risk and compliance operations with:
- Pre-trained models that delve into risk across 26 categories, from greenhouse gases (GHG) to supply chain management and more
- Automated workflows that accelerate and consolidate manual tasks while minimising human error
- Tailor-made summaries that swiftly surface key takeaways for more timely decision-making
- Machine learning that applies prescriptive and predictive analysis across data sources for sharper insights
- Customisable, ready-to-use dashboards that deliver real-time visibility into key audit, risk and compliance metrics
This includes customising features and scaling into the future with minimal stress on IT teams and business users. Diligent AI empowers you to create scripts without coding and offers an AI script assistant that quickly and easily troubleshoots errors when you do code.
Your data remains your own—it’s never shared or mixed with others. Models are trained only for your use. Content is clearly labelled so you can quickly see what’s AI-generated and what’s not.
Check out the platform that combines data, analysis, and a consolidated view of your organisation. Explore Diligent One today.
