Diligent adds agentic AI tools to risk & audit platform

Diligent has added new agentic AI tools to its Diligent One platform for risk and audit teams.

The update is intended to help organisations shift from periodic reporting to more continuous oversight by combining specialised AI agents with reporting tools that draw on live risk and controls data.

The new functions include an orchestration agent that lets governance, risk and compliance staff use natural language to coordinate audit and risk work. The system routes tasks to specialised agents operating across different parts of the audit and risk process.

Those agents are tied to Diligent One's underlying governance, risk and compliance data, allowing them to work with context drawn from regulations, obligations, policies, controls, risks, evidence and actions across an organisation.

Within enterprise risk management, the agent is designed to monitor risk data, clean records, coordinate assessments, follow up overdue actions, escalate issues and identify emerging risks. In internal audit, the tools can identify relevant risks, map them to audit objectives, link existing controls and support evidence collection, testing and findings development.

Diligent also introduced AI reporting features that can generate board-ready reports from live risk and controls data. Users can use conversational prompts or templates to produce reports with source citations.

The move comes as boards and executives face pressure to respond more quickly to changing risk conditions while maintaining oversight and accountability. Diligent positioned the launch around the need for better visibility across organisations and faster decision-making.

Andrew Amos, Vice President, APAC, Diligent, addressed the Australian market in comments released alongside the announcement.

"Australian organisations are operating in an environment where risk can shift quickly, and business leaders increasingly need a real-time view of what is changing and what it means for the decisions ahead. Agentic AI has the potential to fundamentally change how risk and audit teams respond, moving them beyond static, point-in-time reporting towards continuous monitoring that can surface changes, initiate action and accelerate decision-making. This isn't about handing responsibility to AI. It's about using AI to help teams make faster, better-informed decisions, while ensuring strong governance through human judgement, clear accountability, and understanding how decisions and recommendations are reached," said Amos.

Workflow focus

Diligent said the orchestration agent differs from a standard question-and-answer assistant because it is designed to coordinate tasks and approvals as well as respond to prompts. It can direct work to the relevant specialised agents rather than simply return information.

Brian Stafford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Diligent, linked the product changes to longstanding inefficiencies in governance, risk and compliance work.

"For many organisations, GRC work is slowed by fragmented systems, manual coordination and time-consuming reporting processes. Our latest agentic capabilities help teams cut through that complexity by connecting context, surfacing what matters and driving faster execution - while keeping governance and professional judgement at the center," said Stafford.

Data layer

At the centre of the update is what Diligent calls its GRC brain, a connected intelligence layer that links information across governance, risk and compliance workflows. The company said this layer gives the agents enough domain context to explain the rationale behind recommendations and work more like specialist practitioners.

Diligent said this connected layer will become available in select solutions in October. According to the company, the broader Diligent One platform is already used across board, executive and practitioner teams.

Scott Bridgen, General Manager, Risk & Audit, Diligent, said the change reflects a broader shift in what organisations expect from risk and audit functions.

"Risk and audit teams are being asked to look beyond what happened yesterday and give the business the insights it needs to make better decisions today and tomorrow. That means moving from static, point-in-time reporting to always-on monitoring that can identify changes as they happen and trigger action in real time, with the right level of oversight, approval and accountability," said Bridgen.

Diligent said it serves more than 1 million users and 700,000 board members across its software products.