Transforming Regulatory Compliance with Generative AI

Solving the Structural Growth Constraint in Compliance: From Manual Reviews to a GenAI-Enabled Operating Model

The client is a UK leader in compliance services, built over three decades through targeted acquisitions and trusted advisory support. Compliance has become a determinant of resilience and competitiveness for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and the client’s mission is to help businesses not just meet but sustain the standards required to thrive.

But the compliance sector is changing.

Rising regulatory demands, the rapid growth of SME customers, and the sheer volume of documentation (and other types of data) have exposed structural constraints in traditional service delivery models. Manual reviews, while effective in the past, no longer scale with demand; each new customer or certification added cost and complexity nearly in proportion to volume. For a business built on acquisitions and global expansion, this created pressure on margins and limited the ability to capture market share.

Leadership recognized that staying ahead required more than incremental process improvements.

The client committed to a full-scale transformation of compliance management, embedding generative AI and agentic AI workflows at the core of operations. The goal was not simply to streamline existing workflows but to create an AI-enabled operating model that combines human expertise with intelligent automation. This transformation aims to unlock efficiency at scale, improve accuracy and consistency, and create a GenAI-enabled digital platform capable of supporting both organic growth and future acquisitions.

By aligning operational excellence with AI adoption, the client wanted not only to deliver more value to SME customers but also to reinforce its position as an AI-first leader in a fragmented but quickly growing compliance market.

Two areas stood out as critical to transformation: 1) document validation and 2) compliance assessment in the SMAS and ISO certification services.

SMAS (Safety Management Advisory Services) is a UK-based accreditation scheme that verifies health and safety documentation for contractors, while ISO certification ensures businesses meet internationally recognized quality and security standards. Both require assessors to review large volumes of documents before certifications can be granted. Historically, this manual process was time-consuming and resource-intensive but manageable at smaller scale. As the client expanded its SME base, however, the sheer complexity and volume of submissions turned SMAS and ISO certification workflows into structural bottlenecks. Addressing these became the natural starting point for embedding AI/ML & GenAI into compliance operations.

In the SMAS line of business, each assessment required reviewing extensive safety protocols, risk assessments, and compliance histories for every project and contractor. Manual checks for document validity, date compliance, signature verification, and classification were time- and resource-intensive, creating delays that strained assessor capacity and increased the risk of human error. Though thorough, these processes constrained the client’s ability to manage growing submission volumes, driving up operational costs. This concentration of repetitive, accuracy-sensitive tasks made SMAS an ideal entry point for document management automation with generative AI.

SMAS Assessment Challenges

In ISO certification services, assessors faced similar challenges but at greater scale and diversity. Each certification demanded precise classification of large volumes of documents – by type, domain, or security level – along with date and signature verification and summary preparation. With manual processes, every new client or certification added work in near-linear proportion, requiring additional resources and extending timelines. The variety and complexity of ISO requirements amplified the risk of non-conformities, from missing safety records to out-of-date certifications. These conditions underscored the need for a scalable, AI-enabled operating model that could absorb growth without proportional increases in cost or headcount.

ISO Certification Challenges

For the leadership, it was clear that making AI central to the firm’s operating model was essential for maintaining a competitive edge. Particularly, manual document management for SMAS and ISO services had to be reimagined with AI as step one, in order to protect margins, expand capacity, and maintain the quality SMEs depend on.

The priorities of AI transformation were the following:

• SMAS: Automate validation of safety protocols, risk assessments, and contractor documentation to reduce assessor workload and cut nonconformities.
• ISO: Streamline multi-domain certification checks by automating document classification, date and signature verification, and summary preparation.
• Cross-services: Provide faster feedback and a more consistent, agent-enabled experience for SMEs, while sustaining high standards of regulatory compliance across industries.

Developing and implementing such an AI-driven model exceeded the client’s in-house capabilities. The firm needed a partner with both compliance domain fluency and deep expertise in AI/ML, agentic workflow development, and generative AI. Provectus brought this combination, focusing first on SMAS and ISO document management workflows – the areas of greatest strain and the clearest opportunity for impact. By targeting validation and compliance checks, Provectus created a practical starting point for generative AI adoption that could demonstrate immediate value while laying the foundation for broader enterprise-wide transformation.

Building an AI-Enabled Operating Model: An Agentic AI Platform for Document Management

The collaboration started with developing a solution prototype that validated the efficiency of applying generative AI for such document compliance management tasks as document classification, date verification, and signature checking. This approach allowed to test key functionalities of the solution with minimal initial investment, gather valuable insights for the full-scale implementation, and ensure alignment with business requirements.

The positive outcomes of the prototype phase encouraged the client’s leadership team to expand the partnership with Provectus, leading to the implementation of a full-scale Agentic AI platform.

The Agentic AI platform was envisioned as a set of user-friendly GenAI-powered tools with the following key features:

• Document Classification. Intelligent categorization of input documents by Type and Security Level, to streamline processing workflows.
• Date Extraction. Precise identification, validation, and extraction of document dates and timestamps, to help eliminate manual routine.
• Signature Verification. Automated detection and validation of required signatures in input documents, to reduce manual checking time.
• Document Summarization. GenAI-assisted generation of concise document summaries, enabling faster review by assessors.

The Agentic AI platform was designed to deliver comprehensive document validation and compliance assessment functionality through:

• The intelligent document processing component that handles automated classification, categorization, date extraction, signature verification, and document summarization.
• The compliance assessment component that provides automated evaluation of regulatory compliance requirements, consistency checks, and nonconformity detection.
• The integration features that ensure seamless connection with SMAS assessment and ISO certification workflows through an API-first design that enables future extensibility.

From a technical perspective, the platform was built as a highly scalable, cloud-native solution leveraging AWS and third-party services. It employs Amazon Bedrock, with Anthropic’s Claude LLMs, to power the GenAI capabilities. Given the industry’s sensitive nature, quality control and security are critical aspects of the agentic solution. The system maintains high security standards through end-to-end encryption, role-based access control (RBAC), and comprehensive audit logging, while complying with data protection regulations.

The advanced AI/ML & GenAI capabilities were introduced alongside the development of a user-friendly self-service portal that simplifies document work for the assessors. The platform enables them to quickly and easily process audit reports, logs, policies, certificates, risk assessments, health and safety documentation, contracts, HR files, and more. The users benefit from a simple document validation interface with automated preliminary compliance checks and clear visualization of compliance status. They can easily upload the documents to check for signatures, extract dates, and generate summaries. The platform classifies the uploaded documents by Type and Security Level in seconds, significantly reducing manual processing time and minimizing assessment errors.

The Agentic AI platform represents a significant evolution in the client’s compliance services delivery model. By embedding generative AI directly into document management workflows, the client replaced cumbersome manual review with intelligent, consistent processes. This created the conditions for measurable impact: greater throughput without additional headcount, reduced rework, faster turnaround for SME customers, and a more scalable, AI-powered foundation for future acquisitions.

Transforming SME Compliance with GenAI: From Manual Reviews to AI Embedded into Core Operations

The development of the Agentic AI platform was the first step in moving the client’s compliance from manual workflows to AI-enabled delivery across core operations. Traditional processes in SMAS and ISO services had reached their limits, making automation through AI essential to unlock efficiency and accuracy at scale. The platform addressed this challenge, taking over repetitive validation tasks and demonstrating how intelligent automation could be embedded into core workflows. More than a tool, it became the foundation for a new operating model, showing both teams and customers what AI-enabled compliance services look like: faster, more consistent, and capable of scaling without proportional increases in cost or headcount.

With generative AI, the client has established itself as a technology leader in the compliance sector. Key competitive advantages include:

• Streamlined operations and processes, and reduced manual effort
• Lower operational costs through agentic document compliance management
• Improved user satisfaction through intuitive self-service capabilities
• Ability to expand and scale services without proportional resource investment into teams of assessors
• Scalable and robust cloud infrastructure supporting continued innovation with AI/ML & GenAI

This technological edge has helped the client to attract and retain customers with enhanced service delivery, facilitate efficient scaling of operations without proportional cost increases, and quickly adapt to evolving regulatory demands.

The impact of generative AI was particularly notable in the workflows for the SMAS assessment and ISO certification services – the first ones to be reimagined through generative AI.

In the SMAS assessment services, generative AI helped automate routine document validations and checks, and ensured consistent, accurate assessment processes across the team to reduce nonconformities. By leveraging the Agentic AI platform, the assessors can focus on complex evaluations and minimize errors, significantly cutting down rework. This agentic, automation-through-AI strategy has enabled the client to quickly and efficiently handle growing volumes of assessment submissions without increasing its team size.

In ISO certification services, the platform’s self-service capabilities for processing of ISO submissions made a difference. Its key features – document classification, date extraction, signature verification, and document summarization – streamlined and simplified document work for assessors, while elevating customer satisfaction and retention. For the client, the self-service functionality of the platform has become a market differentiator, drawing new clients and solidifying existing partnerships.

The impact of the Agentic AI platform goes beyond efficiency gains in document management. It has become the foundation for reinventing the client’s entire service delivery model, transforming compliance from a manual, labor-intensive process and moving it onto AI-enabled workflows. By embedding AI into core compliance operations, the company is positioned to expand services without proportional cost, sustain the highest standards of compliance, and differentiate on speed and reliability. This foundation positions the client as a trusted partner for SMEs and as an AI-first leader in a fragmented market that is rapidly moving toward digital and data-driven compliance.

To sum it up: The Agentic AI platform for document management has helped the client redefine how compliance services are delivered, turning manual workflows into a scalable, AI-enabled operating model that balances efficiency with rigorous standards. As the client expands its portfolio, it is reshaping compliance into a digital, data- and AI-driven process that combines human expertise with intelligent automation.

Moving Forward

1. Learn more about GenAI’s potential from business and technology perspectives in The CxO Guide to Generative AI: Threats and Opportunities
2. Assess the readiness of your organization to adopt GenAI solutions with Generative AI Readiness Assessment with Provectus
3. Develop high-value generative AI use cases with “Generative AI by Provectus” offering