Senior leader forum focuses on evolving assurance models for autonomous agent conversation and decision-making
Friday 20 March, Edinburgh, UK: Aveni, the leading AI fintech, today announced the launch of its Agent Assurance Expert Council (AAEC), bringing together senior leaders from across financial services, risk and compliance to tackle one of the most pressing challenges facing the industry: how to assure and govern the next generation of AI-driven agents.
As organisations move rapidly from AI tools that support decision-making to autonomous agents capable of complex interaction and taking action, traditional assurance models are being stretched beyond their limits. These systems introduce continuous, machine-led decision-making at scale—raising fundamental questions for boards, regulators and compliance leaders around oversight, accountability and customer outcome.
The urgency is clear. Industry research shows that 99% of firms plan to deploy AI agents, yet only a small proportion have the assurance frameworks in place to do so safely. As adoption accelerates, the gap between ambition and ensuring an appropriate level of oversight is becoming one of the defining risks for financial services.
Kent Mackenzie, RegTech Adviser at Aveni, commented: “AI agents represent a step change in how decisions are made within financial services. Assurance models and frameworks built for human-led processes are no longer sufficient. The Agent Assurance Expert Council is about bringing the industry together to define how we maintain control, transparency and trust as these systems scale. Collaboration will be essential to ensuring we meet regulatory expectations while continuing to innovate responsibly.”
The AAEC has been established by Aveni as a collaborative forum to explore how assurance frameworks must evolve in response. With participation from senior industry practitioners, the council will focus on practical approaches to governing agentic systems, including emerging concepts such as machine-led assurance and the future of the lines of defence model.
The initiative reflects a growing recognition that industry-wide collaboration will be critical to developing consistent, scalable approaches to monitoring, validating and evidencing AI-driven decisions within customer journeys.
Aveni is well positioned to lead this initiative, combining deep financial services and compliance expertise with proven, real-world delivery of agent assurance. Through its participation in the FCA’s inaugural Supercharged Sandbox, Aveni demonstrated how end-to-end assurance — from pre-deployment testing through to live monitoring — can enable the safe deployment of AI agents in regulated environments.
With regulatory focus increasing and adoption accelerating, the AAEC marks a significant step towards establishing the frameworks and machine-based oversight needed to support safe, accountable and scalable use of AI agents across financial services.
ENDS
Notes to editors
For more information about Aveni please contact Kate Forster, Head of Communications kate.forster@aveni.ai or 07787 534999.
About Aveni
Aveni is an award-winning AI fintech on a mission to embed safe, ethical, and high-performance AI into the heart of financial services. Specialising in domain-specific large language models and advanced natural language processing, Aveni builds enterprise-grade AI solutions – Aveni Detect and Aveni Assist – which intelligently automate complex processes across financial services workflows. From risk and compliance to adviser processes and operational oversight, Aveni technology flexes and scales around each organisation’s needs—enhancing productivity, ensuring regulatory alignment, and delivering actionable insight.
Aveni partners with the UK’s leading financial institutions to solve industry-specific challenges and support transformation with precision-engineered AI. At the core of this is FinLLM – the UK’s first large language model built specifically for financial services. Developed by Aveni Labs – a team of world-leading NLP scientists and engineers, FinLLM sets a new benchmark for secure, explainable AI adoption in regulated environments, aligned with FCA guidelines and the EU AI Act.
Aveni originated as a University of Edinburgh start up venture. Lexi Birch, co-founder and Chief Scientist at Aveni is a Professor in Natural Language Processing in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.
