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Meghan Day Image
Meghan Day
Principal Solution Designer

Work smarter across risk & audit: How our AI innovations are making every review count

January 16, 2026
0 min read
Discuss Diligent's recent AI innovations for risk and audit professionals

If you work in GRC, you’re expected to spot issues early, keep pace with regulation and provide clear assurance — even as risks grow more complex and workloads keep expanding. 

Throughout 2025, Diligent focused on making risk and audit professionals’ lives easier. That means reducing manual work, bringing clarity to complexity and using AI where it adds real value — not noise. 

From AI-powered risk identification to intelligent evidence collection and clearer risk scoring, here’s how our latest innovations help audit and risk teams move faster, work smarter and stay confidently in control. 

Launch ERM faster with AI: AI Risk Essentials

As risks multiply, many organizations still rely on spreadsheets and ad hoc processes that make ERM slow and reactive. AI Risk Essentials gives risk professionals a practical, defensible way to identify, assess and mitigate enterprise risks with the help of AI-powered benchmarking — without a complex implementation.

Rather than starting from scratch, teams can use AI-powered benchmarking to surface relevant risks from a library of 200,000+ real-world risks drawn from external data sources, including SEC 10-K filings — building a consistent foundation for assessment, oversight, and governance in days, not months. 

How this helps risk teams:

  • Identify potential enterprise risks earlier using AI-powered risk identification and benchmarking
  • Establish a consistent approach to assessing and documenting risks with a guided, three-step workflow
  • Strengthen governance and regulatory readiness with a centralized risk library and interactive heatmaps for clearer visibility 

What else is new in our risk products?

Resolve what matters, faster: Issue Manager

Across audits, risk assessments and compliance reviews, issues can easily fall through the cracks. Issue Manager brings everything together in one place, giving teams a unified way to track, prioritize and resolve issues — no matter where they originate. 

With standardized workflows and real-time visibility, risk and audit leaders gain confidence that issues are being addressed consistently and on time.

How this helps risk & audit teams:

  • Centralize issues from audits, risk assessments, and controls testing
  • Define ownership, priorities and timelines with configurable workflows
  • Track progress with dashboards showing overdue items and bottlenecks
  • Strengthen accountability and accelerate remediation

Clearer risk insight: Risk Rating Aggregation

When risks are assessed multiple times, clarity can quickly disappear. Risk Rating Aggregation gives risk professionals a transparent, standardized way to consolidate assessment results into a single, meaningful risk score. 

No spreadsheets. No workarounds. Just a clearer, more defensible view of risk.

How this helps risk teams:

  • Combine multiple assessments into one consistent risk rating
  • Choose aggregation methods such as Average, Minimum, Maximum or Median
  • Preview results before applying them to ensure accuracy
  • Improve comparability and confidence in risk reporting
Risk rating aggregation

Cut audit admin, not corners: AI Request Agent for Internal Audit

Evidence collection is essential — but it shouldn’t consume weeks of an audit cycle. The AI Request Agent was built to remove the manual friction that slows audit teams down, without sacrificing control or traceability. 

By automating how evidence requests are created, tracked, and followed up, internal audit teams can spend less time chasing documents and more time delivering assurance.

How this helps audit teams:

  • Automatically draft clear, context-aware evidence requests
  • Route requests to the right owners and track responses in real time
  • Handle reminders, overdue follow-ups, and escalations automatically
  • Maintain a complete, auditable trail of requests and responses
AI Request Agent

What else is new for audit professionals?

AI-powered audit analytics, without the complexity: ACL AI Studio

Advanced analytics have long been powerful — but often limited to specialists with scripting skills. ACL AI Studio changes that, bringing sophisticated audit, risk and compliance analytics within reach of every professional, no coding required.

By combining natural-language querying, AI-guided test recommendations and full compatibility with existing ACL Analytics scripts, ACL AI Studio removes technical barriers while preserving organizations’ existing investments in analytics. Teams can analyze millions of records, surface anomalies quickly, and produce audit-ready results with confidence.

It’s AI-powered GRC analytics — without the complexity.

How this helps audit, risk & compliance teams:

  • Run advanced analytics using natural-language queries — no scripting required
  • Analyze large, complex datasets and surface anomalies faster
  • Get AI-guided recommendations for relevant tests and procedures
  • Preserve and extend existing ACL Analytics scripts and investments
  • Maintain complete, audit-ready documentation of all analytics activity

Why these updates matter for risk & audit professionals

Taken together, these innovations are designed to solve real, everyday challenges for audit and risk teams:

  • Less manual work, more time for analysis and insight
  • Earlier visibility into emerging and AI-driven risks
  • Stronger assurance through consistency, traceability, and clarity

AI isn’t replacing judgment — it’s helping professionals apply it where it matters most. 

Start exploring 

If you’re already a Diligent customer, log into the Diligent One Platform — or talk to your account team — to explore how these AI-driven capabilities can streamline your risk and audit workflows.

Not a customer yet? Request a demo → and see how Diligent helps risk and audit professionals stay ahead — with confidence.

Getting started FAQs

What’s live now?

These capabilities are available today for entitled customers — contact your Customer Success Manager to confirm and activate the right modules.

Do I need to set anything up?

Yes, some features (like automated workflows, AI capabilities and integrations) require admin configuration and appropriate user permissions before they’re available to your team. 

Where can I find training or templates?

Access the Governance, Risk & Compliance Education & Templates Library at diligent.com/platform/governance-risk-compliance-education for role-based learning, templates and best-practice guidance, and use Diligent Academy for product training on Diligent Risk & Audit apps. 

Can I use these features on mobile?

Yes. Many Risk & Audit workflows are available through the Diligent One / HighBond mobile app for iOS and Android, so entitled users can review tasks, respond to requests and update items on the go (subject to your organization’s configuration and policies). 

Not yet a Diligent customer?
Visit diligent.com to request a demo and see how our Risk & Audit solutions centralize ERM, audit, controls and monitoring in a single, AI-enabled platform.

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