Beyond ‘Buy versus Build’: Compliance in the Era of AI-Assisted Software Development

AI has changed the economics of building software. It has not changed the economics of expertise.

The Stakes of Getting Compliance Wrong

Financial institutions are using AI-assisted development to build compliance solutions faster and at lower cost than ever before. But speed of delivery is not the same as fitness for purpose and in CLM, the cost of getting it wrong is high. In 2025 alone, regulatory fines on firms in EMEA rose by 767%.

Buy & Build? The Conversation is Changing

In this whitepaper, Fenergo's Andy Mantzios, Global Head of Client Solutions, examines how the buy-versus-build debate has fundamentally shifted. The conversation has moved from "should we buy or build?" to "what can AI realistically replace, and where does specialist domain expertise remain essential?"

AI Software Development is an Accelerator, Not a Domain Expert

AI coding tools dramatically reduce build time, but they cannot independently design enterprise-grade KYC or AML operating models. Without deep domain expertise, in-house builds risk missing regulatory nuance, failing audit requirements and creating brittle architecture that surfaces problems at the worst possible time. CLM, KYC and AML are domain challenges, not software challenges - and that expertise is accumulated through years of global deployments, not generated by an agent.

What You'll Learn

• Why AI changes the build equation but not the expertise equation
• How to identify where in-house development creates genuine competitive advantage
• The hidden costs of rebuilding mature compliance capabilities from scratch
• How to evaluate whether a vendor has the domain depth your firm needs

Download the whitepaper to find out how leading financial institutions are combining buy and build intelligently to go confidently into the agentic future.