WealthAi has launched an artificial intelligence compliance tool for wealth managers and family offices, aimed at replacing spreadsheet-based monitoring of client communications.

The system uses AI agents to review communications in real time and generate audit records for compliance teams. It is being developed with input from industry partners including Saranac Partners and Patronus Partners.

Compliance monitoring is becoming a bigger issue for wealth management firms as regulators intensify scrutiny of how they assess financial crime and market abuse risks. Recent reviews by the Financial Conduct Authority found weaknesses in firms’ risk assessments and in how controls are linked to day-to-day operations.

WealthAi’s product is built around three agents. One is a compliance portal for chief compliance officers and their teams, with a dashboard of flagged communications and audit trails. Another is a Market Abuse Regulation agent for money laundering reporting officers and surveillance teams, designed to identify signs of insider dealing, market manipulation and front-running in communications.

A third tool, described as a trade surveillance agent, lets firms upload trade data from brokerages or custodians and link those records to relevant communications. This is intended to help compliance staff assess risk at transaction level rather than reviewing messages in isolation.

The system draws data from channels including Global Relay, Microsoft Outlook, WhatsApp and Teams. Its output is designed to meet FCA requirements.

Regulatory focus

The launch comes as wealth managers face pressure to show that their monitoring systems reflect how their businesses actually operate. Sample-based reviews remain common across the sector, but critics argue that selective checks can leave firms exposed if problematic messages or trading patterns fall outside the sample.

WealthAi is pitching the software as an alternative by analysing all communications rather than a subset. It says this reduces the operational risks associated with manual reviews and spreadsheet-based processes.

The company is also working on support for regulators outside the UK, including FINMA, JFSC and Consob, as it expands into Switzerland, Jersey and Italy. Additional agents for transaction reporting and suitability monitoring are also in development.

Jason Nabi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WealthAi, said: “Compliance and risk are the foundation on which client trust in wealth management is built – which is why we made it one of our first use cases. For too long, compliance teams have been asked to meet increasingly demanding regulatory requirements with tools that simply weren’t built for the job. Spreadsheets and sample-based monitoring leave gaps, and those gaps carry real risk. We believe AI can change that, not by replacing compliance professionals, but by giving them the tools to do their jobs with far greater confidence and far less friction.”

WealthAi has set up a steering group with wealth management firms to guide development of the product. Saranac Partners and Patronus Partners are among those involved, providing feedback as the system evolves.

This suggests the company is seeking close engagement with potential users in a sector where compliance processes are heavily shaped by internal controls, regulatory interpretation and record-keeping requirements. Tools that touch regulated workflows often require firms to be comfortable with how alerts are generated, documented and reviewed.

Partner feedback

Support from named wealth managers gives WealthAi early external backing as it tries to build credibility in a market that remains cautious about artificial intelligence in regulated functions. Firms have been more willing to use AI for administrative tasks than in areas directly involving surveillance, record-keeping and regulatory reporting.

Philip Dench, Head of Risk & Compliance at Saranac Partners, said: “WealthAi has the potential to revolutionise compliance monitoring and risk management, saving an incredible amount of time spent manually searching for key data.”

Penny Rooney, Compliance Director at Patronus Partners, added: “WealthAi aims to help compliance teams focus on the higher value key tasks by gathering data and automating workflows that can be time consuming. This offers the promise of far greater focus on proactive support of the business, with confidence in the data governance and robustness of the process.”

WealthAi said the compliance product is designed to fit into existing workflows rather than replace them outright. The wider platform includes tools for portfolio managers and a desktop assistant that links staff to different AI agents across front, middle and back-office work.

The business also offers access to third-party data and service providers through its marketplace and says its data layer connects to more than 250 custodians and banks. Investors include Fuel Ventures and Founders Factory.

The launch places WealthAi in a fast-growing area of financial technology, as firms try to apply artificial intelligence to surveillance, risk management and operational control without removing human oversight from regulated decisions.

KAREN JOY BACUDO

Finance Editor

Online Oceans has raised £4 million to expand its autonomous surface vessel business in a funding round led by Seraphim Space.

The investment will support manufacturing, deployments and rising customer demand across defence and commercial markets. Other investors included Peter Rive, Co-Founder of SolarCity, Quantum Systems founders Frank Thieser and Florian Seibel, and Koro Capital.

Online Oceans builds autonomous surface vessels and fleet software for maritime surveillance and security. Its products are designed for governments and commercial operators seeking longer-duration monitoring of coastal waters, ports, borders, strategic chokepoints and subsea infrastructure.

The company was founded in 2025 by George Morton and Alistair Douglas. Morton leads the business, while Douglas oversees command-and-control software and fleet systems.

Fleet system

At the centre of its system is Scout, a compact solar-powered autonomous surface vessel. It is paired with Tether, a cloud-based command platform that allows operators to manage missions, monitor assets and review data in real time.

Online Oceans has designed the system for dense fleet deployment rather than occasional missions by individual vessels. It argues that existing maritime coverage often depends either on crewed ships with high operating costs or on autonomous systems that are too expensive to deploy at scale.

The funding comes amid growing concern over maritime security, including the protection of subsea cables, offshore energy assets, ports and coastal borders. Pressure on defence budgets has also increased interest in lower-cost systems that can stay at sea for longer.

Online Oceans says it is already working with initial customers in defence, maritime domain awareness and ocean data. It has also begun data sales, and its first months of production were sold out ahead of commercial deliveries.

Security use

The company is also in discussions about using its autonomous surface fleets for coastal and offshore security missions in the Gulf. Those talks include early warning of incoming aerial threats through acoustic and optical sensing, passive acoustic monitoring of the subsea environment to detect submarines and uncrewed underwater vehicles, and surface intelligence and surveillance tasks such as AIS spoofing detection and visual monitoring.

Online Oceans is part of a broader push in Europe to build defence and security technology closer to home as governments reassess vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. Maritime surveillance has become a particular concern as attacks on subsea infrastructure and wider geopolitical tensions expose gaps in continuous monitoring.

Its approach is based on deploying larger numbers of lower-cost vessels connected to a central software platform. That differs from patrol models built around a smaller number of expensive assets, which can leave stretches of water monitored only intermittently.

Investor view

Seraphim Space is known for backing companies in the space and deep technology sectors. Its involvement adds to a group of investors with backgrounds in clean technology, aerospace and autonomous systems.

Online Oceans says it moved from first builds to a production ramp in little more than a year. That pace, along with early customer agreements, appears to have helped attract investors seeking defence technology with clearer paths to deployment.

Britain and other European countries have placed greater emphasis on maritime resilience as they assess the security of undersea energy and communications links. The issue has expanded beyond conventional naval defence to include surveillance of commercial infrastructure and the detection of covert activity near cables, pipelines and offshore sites.

For border agencies and coastguards, persistent monitoring is also tied to migration control, smuggling and illegal fishing. Autonomous fleets are appealing partly because they can extend surveillance without the crewing costs and maintenance burden of conventional patrol vessels.

George Morton, Co-Founder of Online Oceans, said: “Persistent maritime coverage has been too expensive for too long. That has limited what governments and operators can actually see, protect and respond to at sea. We built Online Oceans to change that. This funding allows us to scale production and support customers who need a far more practical way to monitor critical waters, protect infrastructure and maintain awareness over long periods.”

Haverty, Seraphim Space, said: “Online Oceans is building a category-defining company at the intersection of defence, maritime autonomy and data. The breakthrough here is not just a lower-cost vessel. It is a new coverage model: dense, persistent fleets that can monitor critical waters continuously rather than sporadically. What impressed us was not just the technical insight, but the speed of execution. In little over a year, the team has moved from founding to production ramp, early customer traction and first data sales. We believe they have the potential to build a global leader in this category.”

KAREN JOY BACUDO

Finance Editor

Only 10% of small businesses provide staff with AI security training, according to MoneySuperMarket. Its survey also found that 44% of small business owners worry that using AI without proper safeguards could expose them to cyber threats.

The findings highlight a gap between interest in artificial intelligence and preparedness for the risks that come with it. The comparison site surveyed 250 UK sole traders and business owners with between one and 49 employees.

Use of AI in day-to-day business tasks remains limited among smaller companies. Just 15% of respondents said they use AI to support administrative processes, while 19% have used it to help with marketing strategy.

At the same time, more said they would like to use the technology for routine work. Some 36% want to use AI tools to automate or outsource administrative work, reporting and research, although 44% said they did not intend to use AI for those purposes.

The results suggest many smaller firms are still weighing potential efficiencies against concerns over security and readiness. One in five respondents said they would feel underprepared if their business were targeted by a cyber-attack.

Regional split

Attitudes varied sharply across the UK. Scotland showed the strongest interest in AI among the regions surveyed, with half of small business owners saying they wanted to use it to automate or outsource admin, reporting and research.

The South East followed at 48%, ahead of the South West at 43%. At the other end of the scale, Wales and Yorkshire and The Humber were the least likely to say they wanted to use AI in this way, both at 20%.

Concern over cyber risk also differed by region, although Scotland stood out for combining enthusiasm with caution. In Wales, 60% of business owners said they worried that without the right training, AI could expose their business to cyber threats. The same proportion in Scotland shared that concern.

The mix of interest and apprehension reflects a broader pattern in the survey. Businesses appear willing to consider AI for practical office tasks, but many have yet to put formal safeguards or staff training in place.

Training gap

The low level of investment in AI security training is likely to attract attention as small firms adopt widely available generative AI tools for writing, research and workflow support. These tools can speed up routine tasks and cut costs, but they can also create risks around data handling, staff misuse, and exposure to phishing and other cyber threats.

For smaller employers, the challenge is often as much about resources as awareness. Many have limited in-house IT support and may rely on informal policies when introducing new software, leaving staff without clear guidance on what information should or should not be entered into AI systems.

MoneySuperMarket based its national estimates on a UK small business population of 5.64 million. On that basis, the figures suggest more than 2.48 million small business owners are worried about cyber risks linked to unsafe AI use, while only a small minority have paid for employee training in this area.

The findings come as businesses across the economy test how AI can be used in routine operations. Among SMEs, the early focus appears to be on back-office work and marketing rather than more specialised applications, which may help explain why administration and marketing were the most commonly cited uses in the survey.

Alicia Hempsted, Business Insurance Expert at MoneySuperMarket, said: “AI can be a powerful tool for simplifying admin processes, improving marketing and saving time. The key for business owners that want to utilise it but have yet to start is making sure employees and business owners feel confident and informed about how they use it safely and effectively.”