Cordrey The Journal

The Journal

Writing on AI,
automation, and operations

Showing 23 articles

Inside the software factory: what a month of building with AI agents actually looks like

Twelve repositories, around 440 commits, five public launches in 23 days — one person, with AI agents doing the building. What a working software factory looks like, and what the same discipline does inside a regulated firm.

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The future of automation in financial services

The FCA has confirmed it will use existing rules to govern AI, shifting the compliance focus from the technology itself to how you deploy it.

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What the shift from rented AI to autonomous agents means for your firm

The artificial intelligence market is pivoting from rented chatbots to autonomous agents and owned infrastructure. Here is how it changes your strategy.

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Staff at firms using AI agents are losing 6.4 hours a week managing them

Most advisory firms adopting agentic AI underestimate the hidden labour cost of running agents badly. Here is how to implement them so they actually reduce work.

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CEO-led AI gets three times the return. Here is why that matters for advice firms.

Firms where the CEO personally owns AI strategy are 3x more likely to report established ROI. What that finding means for financial advice businesses planning their next move.

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Why modular infrastructure is a trap for fintechs

The collapse of Parker Card shows what happens when a fintech's entire operation depends on third-party APIs and cloud vendors who have no obligation to stay when things get hard.

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Anthropic's strategic breathing room and what it means for AI adoption

Anthropic recently restored access to its Fable model after a significant regulatory negotiation. Here is what that episode reveals about AI adoption risk for financial services firms.

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OpenAI just built its own chip. Here is what that means for your firm.

OpenAI's custom Jalapeno inference chip signals a structural shift in how AI compute is owned and priced. For smaller businesses, the consequences arrive later but matter more.

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The new rules of fintech marketing, and what they mean for financial services firms

As fintech products converge and customer acquisition costs climb, the firms winning attention are competing on brand and storytelling. Here is what that shift means for advice and wealth businesses.

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Agentic AI is moving from experiment to infrastructure. Is your firm ready?

Autonomous AI agents are arriving in financial services workflows faster than governance frameworks are. Here is what firms need to understand before they deploy.

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The case for running AI locally: what the Fable intervention means for your firm

When a government can pull a live AI model from commercial use overnight, cloud-only AI becomes a continuity risk. Here is what local deployment options actually look like for a financial services firm.

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Why automating a bad process makes everything worse

Before you automate anything, you need to know whether the process itself is worth keeping. Speed and scale applied to a broken workflow don't fix it, they replicate it faster.

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What the next wave of enterprise AI actually means for your firm

Enterprise AI is shifting from cheap experimentation to cost-conscious deployment. Here is what the OpenAI and Microsoft announcements this week mean for professional services firms.

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The AI token shortage begins

Flat-rate AI subscriptions are giving way to usage-based billing. Here is what that means for a financial advice firm running AI tools today.

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Why UK financial services firms are reluctant to adopt AI

Regulatory uncertainty, cybersecurity liability, and the gap between AI capability and organisational readiness are keeping many UK advice firms on the sidelines. Here's what that costs.

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What your adviser should know about AI and your investments

How AI is being used in investment management, what that means for your portfolio, and the questions worth asking your adviser at your next review.

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What the FCA and Bank of England joint AI statement means for your advice firm right now

The FCA, Bank of England, and HM Treasury published a joint statement on 15 May 2026 on frontier AI models and cyber resilience.

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Why most AI pilots in advice firms never make it to production

The reason your automation project stalled has nothing to do with the technology. Here is what actually goes wrong and how to fix it.

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Why only 12 percent of firms using AI tools see real business impact

Most firms that adopt AI tools see no measurable return. The gap between the 12 percent who do and the rest comes down to three operational decisions made early.

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What deepfake fraud means for FCA-regulated firms and how to protect client verification workflows

Deepfake voice fraud is accelerating fast. Here is how advice firms should redesign verification workflows before the next attempt hits.

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What an automation audit actually involves

A plain account of what happens during an automation audit, what it costs, and how to run a basic version yourself in under an hour.

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Why your data is the bottleneck, not the AI model

Firms stall on AI projects not because the technology is immature, but because their data is fragmented, inconsistent, and never designed for machine consumption.

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Most 'we need AI' projects end at Level 1.

On why the honest first answer to most AI questions is that you already have a tool that does this.

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