Encompass and SFE host AI agent build day for KYC teams

Encompass Corporation and Scottish Financial Enterprise brought KYC, operations and financial crime compliance staff together in London to build working AI agents for everyday tasks. The event showed how firms want nontechnical employees to prototype tools that could save time, improve decisions and support KYC workflows.

Why it matters: - KYC teams spend time on repetitive work like research, data entry and alert triage that can slow decisions and add little value. - The event aimed to show that the people doing the work every day can help design AI agents that improve speed, consistency and decision quality. - Participants did not need technical skills, which broadens who can shape AI adoption inside banks and financial firms.

What happened: - Encompass Corporation hosted an Agent Building Day with Scottish Financial Enterprise in London on November 9, 2026. - The session brought together know your customer, operations and financial crime compliance professionals to build working AI agents for day-to-day tasks. - Participants from six organizations joined an opening icebreaker, then each team selected one workflow problem and planned an agent on a build card. - Teams built and presented their agents with support from Encompass facilitators and technical staff.

The details: - The build prompts fell into two themes: efficiency and efficacy. - Efficiency ideas focused on faster workflows, including replacing manual research with live source access, removing re-keying and duplicate record-keeping, speeding simple requests and chasing stalled cases. - Efficacy ideas focused on better decisions, including more consistent risk ratings, change monitoring, fuller company and ownership profiles, and guidance for new starters. - Each agent could request live company data and documents, including registry records and ownership details, through EC360 via the EC360 model context protocol connector. - The model context protocol is an open standard for connecting AI agents to data sources. - No client or bank data was used during the event. - Three prizes were awarded: Time Back for the largest realistic time saving, Better Call for the strongest improvement in decision quality or regulatory justification, and Would Use It Monday for the most desirable tool for use the following week. - The day ended with demos so participants could review each build and speak with other teams. - Encompass said the event gave participants practical experience with what AI agents can and cannot do. - Encompass also said organizations left with staff-selected agent ideas backed by build cards that described the problem, expected time saving or quality gain, and where a person stays in control.

Between the lines: - The format suggests banks and financial institutions want hands-on AI experimentation, not just vendor demos. - The emphasis on human control and build cards points to a cautious approach to AI in regulated workflows. - The event also signals a push to capture frontline knowledge that often sits with experienced staff rather than in documentation. - Scottish Financial Enterprise CEO Sandy Begbie said the session helped turn industry ambition into practical skills for the next chapter of financial services. - Encompass Chief Product and Technology Officer Terry Dawson said the closest practitioners often see the best opportunities to improve KYC and financial crime work.

What's next: - Encompass said the event builds on its Innovator series, including AI-powered KYC roundtables in New York and London. - The company is using those forums to discuss practical deployment of AI in KYC operations with senior practitioners. - The build day model could point to more hands-on sessions as firms look for usable AI tools inside compliance workflows.

The bottom line: - Encompass and Scottish Financial Enterprise are pushing AI adoption in KYC by putting frontline staff in the builder's seat, with a focus on practical, controlled use cases instead of abstract strategy.**