At Iress, we're building toward becoming an AI-native organisation, where AI is foundational to how we create value for clients. This is a yearly transformation, and it starts with our people.
Our mission is to deliver smarter, faster, and more personalised outcomes for our clients through the intelligent use of data and technology. That's why we're investing in building an AI-ready workforce, equipped not just with access to cutting-edge tools, but also with the mindset, skills, and support to use them meaningfully.
Through internal initiatives like Iress' AI Immersion Day, which is taking place across our offices globally, we're turning AI from a buzzword into a practical capability embedded across the business. The response from our teams has been encouraging.
Brandon Swiderski, Iress Network Engineer, said: “Having never used any form of agentic AI before, I was extremely impressed with how fast I was able to produce a functional prototype from just a handful of prompts. I see AI tools like v0 (AI prototyping) drastically reducing (or completely removing) the barrier to entry for software development for many people, allowing anyone to begin building exciting projects.”
Catherine Lavender, Iress Senior Relationship Manager said “My favourite part of the immersion day was the really practical hands-on approach, the space to learn and explore and be able to open up to all the creativity these tools can enable, the collaboration and knowing this was happening company wide was great. My next step with AI is to learn more and experiment because I have some ideas. I definitely want to try and use AI for my work.”
Why AI is a strategic imperative
The rise of AI isn’t just a technological shift, it’s a business imperative. Across the financial services industry, expectations are rapidly evolving, and our clients expect digital experiences that feel seamless and intuitive. At the same time, businesses like ours are navigating rising complexity, tighter margins, and increasing regulatory demands. That’s why Iress is investing in AI as a strategic enabler. We’ve identified four core reasons AI is critical to our business:
- Customer value
AI helps us deliver more timely insights, greater personalisation, and simplified processes that enhance the experience for our customers. - Internal operational efficiency
Whether it's automating document review, extracting insights from unstructured data, or supporting internal teams with smarter tools, AI allows us to redirect effort toward higher-value work - the kind of strategic, creative, and relationship-focused activities that our people tell us they want more time for. Integrating AI and investing in people is key to transforming Iress into a modern, dynamic workplace that empowers, engages, and attracts top talent. - Innovation velocity
Speed to market matters. AI enables us to prototype, iterate, and scale new ideas faster, whether that means building new features in Xplan or rethinking our internal support systems.
4. Trust through governance
We know that AI must be adopted responsibly. That’s why we’ve built our approach on a modern, secure data platform with governance at its core, ensuring our AI is explainable, ethical, and safe.
By embedding AI across our business, from sales and legal, to product and support, we’re not only solving today’s challenges, but building a future-ready organisation.
Building AI literacy
For AI to truly deliver value, it needs to be understood, trusted, and applied by the people closest to the work. That's why we've invested in comprehensive training across the organisation, with over 4,000 hours delivered to date, with particular focus on product, support, and client-facing teams. Over the past few months, we’ve brought our teams together across regions and disciplines for AI inspiration sessions designed to spark ideas and challenge assumptions. These sessions showcased the breadth of AI’s potential within Iress and beyond. We also hosted a series of AI ideation workshops - collaborative forums that encouraged our people to identify real challenges in their workflows where AI could make a difference. The best ideas didn’t come from our leadership team, they came from the people closest to the work.
Today, nearly 80% of our people are actively engaging with our AI tools, demonstrating their confidence in using them in their daily work.
From beginner-friendly explanations of large language models to hands-on exposure to enterprise AI tools like Atlassian AI, Zoom AI, Slack AI, Gemini, and NotebookLM., We’re ensuring our people have both the knowledge and the access they need to engage with AI meaningfully. We're also being deliberate about which problems AI should solve, and which still benefit from human judgment and expertise. Our goal isn't to automate everything - it's to augment our people's capabilities so they can focus on what humans do best: creative problem-solving, relationship building, and strategic thinking.
Immersion Day: Turning ideas into impact
Now we're taking these ideas further with Iress’ Immersion Day - a global hands-on event taking place from October-November across all of Iress’ offices. The Immersion Day is structured to include participants from across the entire organisation, focusing on four high-priority themes: automation, efficiency, documentation, and literacy.
Following a “show, do together, do on your own” learning approach, teams across Iress are using real AI tools to solve real problems in real time, guided by our expert partners from Mantel, AWS, Salesforce, and Atlassian.
Our AI strategy is strengthened through strategic partnerships that bring deep expertise and enterprise-grade capabilities. Working with partners like Mantel, AWS, Salesforce, and Atlassian, we're able to leverage proven platforms while maintaining our focus on security, scalability, and practical business outcomes. These collaborations ensure we're building on solid foundations rather than reinventing the wheel.
What’s next?
Our vision is to create a culture where everyone at Iress is AI-competent and confident, where curiosity leads to innovation, and where the best ideas come from everywhere.
Becoming AI-native is not a month's work or even quarterly work- it's a yearly transformation that will reshape how we compete and deliver value. We're realistic about the road ahead. We'll continue learning, iterating, and listening as we go, remaining optimistic and committed. By investing in our workforce now - their skills, their confidence, and their ability to shape how we work - we're laying the groundwork for the AI-embedded products, intelligent automation, and client experiences that will define Iress tomorrow.
