Australian businesses are under growing pressure to maintain robust internal controls amid ever-changing regulatory demands, a challenge I’ve wrestled with as a Risk Management Professional. Designing and updating these controls is time-intensive and costly, often derailed by shifting priorities or limited resources. Without consistent maintenance, controls grow outdated, leaving organisations vulnerable to fines, data breaches, or reputational harm. Generative AI (GenAI) is quietly revolutionising this landscape, streamlining the process of control design and sustaining effective controls to drive compliance and resilience.
GenAI: A Catalyst for better Compliance
GenAI can analyse regulatory frameworks, industry standards, and organisational data to draft tailored controls, dramatically reducing design time and costs. For example, a bank could use GenAI to develop CPS230-compliant controls for operational resilience, significantly cutting design time while aligning with APRA’s scenario-testing requirements. GenAI could also help automating updates to ensure controls remain current and effective.
New Risks
Over-reliance on GenAI can also introduce new risks. AI may lack the contextual understanding needed to tailor controls to an organisation’s unique culture, leading to ineffective solutions. It also lacks the ethical judgement of humans, potentially producing controls that are compliant but misaligned with values. GenAI may miss emerging risks that weren’t part of the historical data, leaving businesses exposed. While AI can meet compliance requirements, it may focus too much on ticking boxes rather than addressing real risks. Additionally, biases in training data can result in flawed or ineffective controls.
GenAI should be an accelerator, not a replacement for human insight and direction.
Human Expertise: Delivering Effectiveness
We see AI-generated controls as a strong draft that requires human validation to ensure they are effective, practical, ethically sound, and strategically aligned. While GenAI can create controls quickly, human oversight is key to refining them, reducing biases, protecting data privacy, and ensuring compliance. This collaborative process results in more efficient, flexible controls that are better suited to the unique needs and evolving risks of the business.
Real-World Impact and Future Horizons
Australian businesses are already exploring GenAI to support compliance with CPS230, anti-money laundering, and Privacy Act obligations, boosting efficiency and quality. GenAI’s integration with real-time risk and controls monitoring enables dynamic control frameworks that can anticipate threats and deliver long-term resilience.
A Collaborative Future
GenAI is revolutionising control design by reducing costs, uplifting compliance, and enhancing efficiency. By blending AI’s power with human expertise, businesses can build agile and resilient GRC frameworks that meet both regulatory demands and operational needs.
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