Human-centred AI Governance
AI brings extraordinary possibilities: faster insights, smarter decisions, richer experiences. But with that power comes risk and a need for a robust and flexible approach to governance. In highly regulated industries such as financial services, legal or media, inflexible or superficial approaches to AI governance risk both undermining trust and stifling innovation. At Futurice, we see governance not as a checklist, but as the scaffolding for responsible transformation.
How to lean into Governance
AI is a mirror. It reflects the biases, blindspots, and structural quirks built into your data sets, processes and business structures.
In financial services, AI already powers fraud detection, credit scoring, and trading. Explainability is a vital underpinning for this, and features in fairness and compliance frameworks like Singapore’s FEAT principles or the EU’s AI Act obligations.
In the legal sector, frameworks like the US-focused RAILS AI Risk Management Guide provide practical, human-centred steps for embedding oversight in sensitive workflows.
In media and publishing, AI-generated content and deepfake detection bring both creative possibility and misinformation risk. Industry groups such as the Publishers Association are working to ensure AI adoption balances innovation with copyright protection, content integrity, and audience trust.
Financial Services
AI-powered credit scoring can speed up lending decisions, but without explainability, rejected customers may never know why, and hidden biases may unfairly influence who gets rejected in the first place.
Good governance means documenting how credit models work, testing them for fairness, comparing new models against the old ones, and giving customers clear explanations when their applications are rejected. The payoff: regulators are reassured, underserved customers better served.
Legal
Law firms are already using generative AI for contract review and case briefs, and use cases are expanding. Without guardrails, this risks confidentiality breaches and ethics violations.
Governance means responsive confidentiality policies, provenance logs, and redaction workflows. The payoff: firms can handle faster drafting, without compromising privilege.
Media
AI is writing scripts, generating news summaries and headlines, and detecting manipulated content. But credibility and sources are everything.
Governance ensures synthetic content is labelled, editorial overrides are tracked, and misinformation incidents are prevented. The payoff: creative velocity, with audience trust intact.
What we offer: AI Governance & Risk Management
We’ve developed a structured approach that organisations can adopt as a packaged service, enabling you to move fast without breaking trust. The individual solutions are specific to each business, but a shared starting point is this set of questions.
- Do you have a clear governance model that defines who owns AI risk, who makes decisions, and how accountability is enforced across your organisation?
- How are you embedding fairness, transparency, and accountability into your AI development and deployment workflows today?
- Are your AI systems mapped against GDPR, the EU AI Act, and sector-specific obligations relevant to your business?
- Are you able, right now, to see across your workflows where AI is being used, and what risks are associated with each stage of the lifecycle?
- Have you defined evaluation criteria that reflect the realities of your domain, rather than relying on generic benchmarks?
Why Futurice for AI Governance?
- Co-create your approach with real-world doers. We’ve developed 80+ AI products and services, from PoC to full enterprise production. Together we can build governance designed with and by teams who know what it takes to ship, not just theoretical risk officers.
- Evals baked in: We have extensive experience building production AI services with benchmarks and testing frameworks embedded from day one.
- Living frameworks: Our approach to policies means you can evolve as fast as your models and your market.
What comes next
In upcoming posts, we’ll unwrap roadmaps, policy previews, and “Evals 101” guides, practical tools to demystify governance and make it usable.
Can’t wait? Get in touch with us to discuss your requirements and a tailored approach to AI governance.
References & further reading
Matthew EdwardsManaging Director, UK
Aarushi KansalAI Tech Director, UK
