Equity Trustees implements new AI compliance solution

According to Equity Trustees, the Haast AI automation platform enables “seamless streamlining” of compliance requirements across written text, audio, video, and images.

On Tuesday, the firm clarified it had been examining the application of AI across the business to determine where it can best deliver value.

“Trusteeship is a very traditional concept,” said managing director Mick O’Brien. “In some ways, given our sound foundations we have a great opportunity for innovation and our culture allows us to focus on innovation without compromising the core business of governance and compliance.

“It’s not a solution for everything. The foundation for client service – especially in a complex service area like ours – depends on people speaking to real people and understanding their requirements and circumstances.”

However, O’Brien said there is “no question” that technology will have a significant role moving forward.

“The sheer volume and complexity of regulation is relentless and ever-changing. This is doubly important to Equity Trustees, as a highly regulated professional trustee. The expectation is that we keep up with the pace of change so we maintain the highest standards of governance – and that means our systems and processes must as well,” O’Brien said.

Equity Trustees believes that, following the implementation, the business will see team productivity increase by some 80 per cent and will reduce the time to review vast volumes of documents and online content.

Namely, Haast aims to ensure compliance across all digital assets by leveraging an AI engine that can scan and detect potential issues across text, video, and images and can be used, for example, to identify potential greenwashing claims.

Among other things, Equity Trustees said that Haast is capable of automating a range of checks of fund manager marketing content and superannuation fund marketing material and allows pre-checking of documents containing information that must carry specific content so that errors are prevented before they make it into the public domain.

Executive general manager of corporate and superannuation trustee services (CSTS) Andrew Godfrey said that the system supports Equity Trustees’ compliance and operations teams to meet the trustee service commitment.

“This is a game changer for content compliance, allowing us in just minutes to scan, detect and possibly act upon a number of potential issues, saving what would take a person hours to do – and many more hours to correct if the wrong thing is published online and shared,” Godfrey said.

Haast’s co-founder Jason Watling said: “The boom in digital marking in recent years against an ever-changing regulatory backdrop has made it increasingly difficult for organisations to manage compliance across their digital content, with many organisations having thousands of constantly changing pieces of content across documentation, websites and social media.

“Harnessing the power of AI can save businesses time and money while helping them remain compliant.”