AI is transforming how companies engage with customers but for regulated industries like AI in banking, healthcare, insurance, and iGaming, adopting AI comes with unique responsibilities. It’s not just about automation; it’s about trust, compliance, and control.

Here are six foundational guardrails to look out for when evaluating AI solutions for customer-facing use cases in regulated companies.

1. Control Over Responses

AI should never operate autonomously without oversight. Look for solutions that allow your business to define and control the responses AI provides. This includes configurable rules, tone management, and escalation protocols. Continuous review and optimisation are essential to ensure the AI remains aligned with your brand, policies, and regulatory obligations.

2. Balancing Customer Experience with Regulation Adherence

Delivering a seamless customer experience is important but not at the expense of compliance. In regulated sectors, AI must be designed to avoid breaches such as “tipping off” customers in sensitive scenarios. The right solution will strike a balance between helpfulness and legal boundaries, ensuring that conversations remain both engaging and compliant.

3. Data Security and Subject Control

AI solutions often process personal and sensitive data, making secure hosting and robust data protection essential. Any solution you adopt should offer enterprise-grade safeguards - such as encryption, access controls, and audit trails - whether hosted on-premises or in the cloud. Hosting environments must meet compliance standards and offer transparency around data residency and access

4. Conformity to Broad Regulations

Any AI solution used in regulated environments must comply with frameworks like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the EU AI Act. This means supporting transparency, explainability, bias mitigation, and human oversight. Regulatory conformity isn’t just about avoiding penalties - it’s about building ethical, future-proof systems.

5. Proper Adoption, Not Drop-Shipping

AI should be embedded thoughtfully into your company’s workflows - not dropped in as a standalone tool. Successful adoption involves dialogue design, training teams, adapting processes, and ensuring the AI integrates seamlessly with existing systems, people and processes. This approach reduces risk, improves performance, and ensures the AI delivers value from day one.

6. Continuous Governance and Improvement

AI is dynamic - it evolves with data, customer behavior, and regulation. Look for solutions that support ongoing governance, including conversational analysis, performance monitoring, auditing, and retraining. This ensures your AI remains effective, compliant, and aligned with your business goals over time.

Where to start

For regulated companies, adopting AI is not just a technical decision - it’s a strategic one. By ensuring these six guardrails are in place, businesses can deploy AI responsibly, confidently, and in a way that enhances both compliance and customer experience.

Our AI solutions at EBO are industry-focused and developed to understand the nuances of each sector. Compliance and security are built into the foundation of everything we do. In fact, our UK-based infrastructure is ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certified, aligned with UK GDPR, built on Microsoft’s secure cloud and ready for the EU AI Act. 

If you’re looking to implement AI into your regulated industry, download one of our guides to get started.