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The World of Risk Management: From Birmingham to Toronto

The World of Risk Management: From Birmingham to Toronto

The past month has been filled with events, conferences, and travel, from celebrating Risk Heroes at RISK London to engaging with the In-House Legal community at Crafty Counsel’s LegalTech Buyers’ Club and vising Toronto again to lay the foundation for Lexverify’s expansion into North America.

Founder and CEO of Lexverify, Cristian Gherhes shares insights and reflections from the recent events we have attended and exhibited at.


Birmingham Tech Week 2024

It was a pleasure, as always, to attend the annual ProfTech dinner organised by SuperTech WM as part of Birmingham Tech Week. We heard from Hilary Smyth-Allen, Executive Director of SuperTech WM on the fantastic progress made in the region, and I had a refreshing conversation with a couple of attendees about the state of the UK business ecosystem—you guessed it, we need to do better; much better.

Birmingham Tech Week was filled with events, and I had the pleasure to attend Fieldfisher’s Roundtable on The impact of AI in the Workplace, which brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to discuss how AI is (or is not) shaping our work lives. Here are a few reflections and learnings from the session.

  • AI has become virtually synonymous with Gen AI—it’s as if the world has forgotten there’s AI and good technologies beyond ChatGPT. The downside: this detracts from useful use cases employing other forms of AI which are truly revolutionising the way we work
  • Gen AI vs classification AI: it was intriguing to see that most of those in the audience did not know the difference between generative AI and other types of AI, such as classification AI—nor that the latter exists and is already being deployed in so many technologies that are changing our work life (e.g., spell checking, risk prevention and risk assessment, email spam filtering, and bookkeeping automation).
  • The current state of play is people are experimenting with (mostly Gen) AI but not really seeing the expected benefits. There is a feeling that Gen AI is being pushed but people struggle to see the promised benefits.
  • One of the key concerns with Gen AI is how do you control people’s input into these systems? Strict controls can only help so much, but you don’t know where your data ends up and how it’s being used, or may be used in the future.
  • We may need to differentiate between different types of AI and understand opportunities and vulnerabilities for each. If all AI solutions are thrown in the same bucket, it risks stalling progress on adoption and use of AI in the workplace.
  • There’s a general attitude of being cautious about adoption as AI is not very well understood.
  • Just because we can (use AI) doesn’t mean we should—we need to focus on real use cases to get the benefits.

Legal Tech Buyers’ Club, London

At the end of October, we attended the Legal Tech Buyers’ Club by Crafty Counsel. It was so inspiring to connect with so many of the In-House Legal community who attended the event. Legal is a critical function in every organisation, yet not always appreciated nor given the necessary resources to support business objectives.

We spoke with people in a variety of roles, from General Counsels and In-House Counsels to Legal Operations Directors and even Trainee Solicitors, learning about the challenges they face in their day-to-day work and exploring how we can make their lives easier. Hint: there’s power in preventing issues from turning into litigation; it allows Legal teams to focus on strategic business objectives and adding value to their organisations, as opposed to having to firefight and defend the loss of value that comes with fines, penalties, and reputational damage when things go wrong. Compliance blind spots can lead to many unintended consequences, and it’s often too late when you find out about them. Our Next Generation Compliance solution gives Legal and Risk & Compliance teams the visibility they need to proactively manage and prevent risks. Compliance blind spots? Not with Lexverify.


AI & Tech in Law, Toronto

The next event was in early November. It was great to be back in Toronto for our second market visit as part of the Global Incubation Programme by Innovate UK and Legal Innovation Zone. A few highlights from my week in Toronto:

  • Being on the ground makes a difference: had lots of great meetings with potential customers, partners, and investors—something tells me it’s not my last trip to Toronto with Lexverify
  • The Canadian regulatory environment is changing (for the better): Canada is catching up on regulations, especially in terms of requirements and enforcement; partially prompted by some prominent corporate failures that made the headlines recently
  • Pitch night was brilliant: AI stole the show (again) and while there are genuine concerns about the technology, it’s not all doom and gloom; fortunately, there are some incredible applications out there (Lexverify included) which are built to assist, not replace, and which take InfoSec and cybersecurity seriously
  • Watching VCs trying to (reverse) pitch their funds to entrepreneurs in less than 3 minutes was more fun than I thought it would be
  • The weather was way warmer than expected; enjoyed a couple of mild summerish evenings
  • Toronto Maple Leafs had a fantastic night on Tuesday, winning 4-0 against Boston Bruins

Lots of work to do after this trip and lots of conversations to be continued.


It has been an incredible couple of months

To wrap up this up, here are some of the things we’ve heard from Risk & Compliance professionals over the 2 days at RISK London in October:

“Some people should not be allowed to send emails. We need this!”

“This is the future.”

“I had no idea this was possible, I wish I had this a few years ago.”

As regulators are increasingly taking a zero tolerance approach, firms need better visibility and data to understand their risk universe and prevent risks.

It’s often the case that companies see compliance spend as a cost that needs to be minimised. Investing in a compliance solution is not a cost, it’s an asset. Employees want to work for organisations that promote a professional culture and respect their workforce, that are ethical and responsible; all this also has a positive impact on the share price.

It was fantastic to meet and celebrate so many Risk Heroes and to see how much the pain points we are addressing resonate with Risk & Compliance community. It’s not easy to work in Risk & Compliance. Nobody notices when things go well, but everyone notices when things go wrong.

Here’s to all the Risk Heroes!

Next Generation Compliance

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