Xapien transformation stories is a series of conversations with senior professionals across risk, compliance, legal and intelligence. We asked them all the same question: what does genuinely good due diligence look like now, and what does it take to get there?
Hugo Williamson, Partner and Global Head of Control Risks VANTAGE: AI redefines what counts as the minimum in due diligence
Traditional due diligence has always worked on a trade off between thoroughness and speed. A red flag report can take two or three days, whilst a deeper intelligence report might take a month. Hugo Williamson has spent twenty-five years in the industry, starting in human intelligence and now leading Control Risks’ VANTAGE platform, and is very familiar with the compromise between depth and time. He’s also watched the regulatory burden on compliance teams rise exponentially without the capacity to match it.
AI due diligence tools such as Xapien have changed the landscape according to Hugo. Not only can existing processes run significantly faster (essentially solving the speed/depth compromise), the baseline for an adequate first-pass due diligence check is also shifting. Where a basic screening check might have once been considered sufficient, the expectation is moving toward something far more substantive. Tools like Xapien are what make that new standard achievable without adding headcount or weeks to the timeline.
“AI is going to fundamentally change the baseline — what organisations see as a first-pass necessity to conduct due diligence.”
Hugo is clear about where the market stands. Every compliance team in every listed company has a KPI to adopt AI, but the technology is moving faster than confidence inside compliance organisations. That gap is real, and he doesn’t dismiss it. But he sees it closing as purpose-built compliance tools produce higher fidelity output and compliance teams are able to trust in their accuracy. When that trust is there, it also transforms the way compliance teams are able to allocate their time.
Xapien shrinks the pool of entities that require deep scrutiny, and that smaller pool is where human expertise and time are best spent. When compliance can clear the straightforward cases in minutes rather than weeks, it stops being the thing the business waits for and starts being the thing that helps the business move.
This is the sixth episode in our Transformation Stories series, where senior risk and compliance leaders share how they’re reshaping due diligence at their organisations. Watch the full interview with Hugo Williamson above or on our YouTube channel.
Xapien automates due diligence research on people and companies, delivering fully sourced reports in minutes. By raising the baseline of what first-pass screening can cover, the platform lets compliance teams clear low-risk third parties at speed and focus human expertise where it’s genuinely needed. If you’d like to see what that looks like for your organisation, book a demo today.
