The pressure these CIOs and CEOs face
The regulator sits in every room you're in. You can't ship AI, can't migrate the core, can't consolidate vendors, can't touch the underwriting model without clearing SR 11-7 model risk, OCC Bulletin 2013-29 third-party risk, GLBA and NYDFS 500 on the privacy stack, and the state-level AI bias rules that arrived last year. Your CCO or CRO has veto authority your CFO doesn't.
Meanwhile the CEO came back from Money2020 talking about AI agents. The board wants a defensible plan in 60 days. The last core or policy-admin conversion went sideways and is still in the room with you. If you sit at a PE-backed insurance-services or specialty-finance platform, the sponsor's operating partner has already written "AI-enable underwriting" into the value-creation plan and assumed the margin.
That's the seat. That's why the work is hard.
The three jobs we help with
Stand up an AI and automation layer the model-risk team will approve. Use-case selection, control design, vendor governance, MRM documentation, examiner-ready evidence — built the way former CIOs who have personally signed the attestation would build it. The goal is shipped capability, not a framework deck.
Modernize the core, policy admin, or LOS without the failed-implementation chapter. Jack Henry, FIS, Fiserv, Guidewire, Duck Creek — most CIOs in the seat today have lived through one bad conversion. We run the program independent of the platform vendor, with a former operator scoping the data, the controls, and the cutover the way someone who has owned the result on Monday morning would scope it.
Build a fraud, AML, and underwriting AI story the next exam won't punish. Turn the AI work from a board topic into a documented, controlled, examiner-ready program. The buyer who walks into the next OCC, FDIC, NCUA, or state-insurance exam should be able to defend every model in the room.
How we approach it differently
Versus the Big 4. They bring the board cover and a deck. We bring former CIOs who have personally taken AI and modernization programs through MRM review. We ship in weeks, not quarters, and we don't need a 40-page SOW to start.
Versus the core or policy-admin vendor's professional-services arm. They sell you the platform and the implementation. The conflict of interest writes itself. We are independent of every core, every policy-admin system, and every LOS in the market. When your vendor is the problem, we'll say so.
Versus the AI-only build shop. They ship fast and can't get a model through MRM. Former CIOs on our bench have signed model-risk attestations and know where the auditor is going to push.
The councils behind this work
Three of the six THG councils feed directly into financial-services engagements: AI Operations (what's actually deploying in regulated environments), Cybersecurity (the controls posture every FS examiner now expects), and Emerging CIO (peer-level signal from CIOs one and two seats ahead of yours). These are working rooms, not webinars. The intelligence in your engagement comes from peers in the seat.