AI at Scale Starts With Strategy: UCITS & AIFMD, Dublin

Give AI to an organisation that does not know what it is trying to do, and you will get confusion at scale.

That was one of three themes I returned to during the AI keynote at this week’s UCITS & AIFMD event in Dublin.

First, AI is an accelerator, not magic. In a well-structured organisation with a clear direction, it helps you move faster. In a disorganised one, it simply amplifies what is already broken.

Second, you do not need to rip out legacy systems to get value from AI. Vendors often insist that organisations must be API-first and event-driven before AI can deliver meaningful results. In practice, that is not true. The integration points your legacy systems already support can be enough to power Agentic AI.

Finally, standalone POCs are not enough. Ad hoc experiments scattered across the business amount to innovation theatre. AI enablement needs to be driven from the top, led by the ExCo, and governed by IT.

That is why we run hands-on hackathons with ExCo teams: to ground strategy in what AI can actually do, and to help leadership teams understand both the possibilities and the limitations.