There is a generation of risk and control professionals in financial services who carry something close to post-traumatic stress from previous technology transformations. As a result their AI caution is understandable. It has also become a serious problem.
Because these are precisely the people best equipped to lead effective AI adoption. They know how to ask the right questions, identify failure modes before they materialise, and build controls that actually hold.
Applied to AI, those skills are not a brake on progress, they are a competitive advantage.
The challenge is that most of them have not been shown how. They are still being treated as the clean-up crew rather than the architects.
Bringing risk and compliance professionals back into the centre of AI initiatives, as shapers, not validators, is one of the most underrated leadership priorities in financial services right now.
More on this in a piece I contributed to MRKT3.0.
If you would like to bring your risk and control colleagues into the centre of your AI plans, I would be glad to help. You can read more about our services or get in touch.
This article was first shared as a post on LinkedIn.
Sources
- MRKT3.0, Why Does AI Leadership Fail? Traditional Leadership Must Evolve, 14 May 2026.