Aiscension: an AI tool to ensure effective risk management by detecting anti-competitive practice

Aiscension is our award winning compliance monitoring tool. Using neural-net AI it has been developed and trained to detect cartels and anti-competitive behaviour within your organisations data. It reduces the cost of reviewing your compliance efforts and ensures you are the first to know of any potential regulatory breaches.

"To help our clients avoid anti-competitive behaviours we developed Aiscension, and we are delighted to share this case study which evidences how valuable a tool Aiscension is to any compliance regime." - Ilan Sherr, Executive Director, Aiscension.

Anti-competitive activity has been rife in companies for centuries and there are many who like to take the ostrich approach and bury their head in the sand. However, it is known that this approach to risk management is ineffective should the regulators come looking, and with fines of up to 10% of global turnover, it is a big risk to take. However, it is known that this approach is ineffective should the regulators come looking, and with fines of up to 10% of global turnover, it is a big risk to take.

The company implemented a huge internal cartel prevention programme after being fined USD15 million; and ordered to pay USD150 million compensation for antitrust violations.

The company General Counsel was concerned that the absence of active identification of cartel risks was a serious weakness in their compliance program. They use Aiscension to solve this problem.

The Aiscension audit of communications and documents identified issues in the content of some emails. If taken out of context, these emails could be misinterpreted to imply prohibited activities.

“Measuring Aiscension’s benefits is easy. We were fined millions of Dollars (for previous anti-trust violations). We had to pay compensation of USD150 million, and the cost on our reputation. When you look at those costs, I think this solution is very cheap. If we could have applied Aiscension ten years ago then we may have been able to identify the problem early.” -General Counsel, global pulp and paper company

Company objectives

• Implement an effective compliance programme which prevents and actively identifies cartel risks.
• Take active measures to identify:
• Evidence of rogue employees, aware of the rules but willing to break them;
• Accidental or unwitting non-compliance.

How did Aiscension meet those objectives?

Aiscension audited almost half a million communications and documents from company employees using neural-net AI. The AI had been trained on real evidence and behaviours from a wealth of previous cartel investigations and cases. This took less than 1% of the time a standard technology assisted review would have taken.*

The audit identified problematic emails which were then reviewed by DLA Piper lawyers. Aiscension’s processing time was 95 hours rather than the ~3,180 to 7,952 hours a legal team would need.

“ We will be proud to tell people that we did this process and we took it seriously, and we think it was worthwhile... We will definitely do another Aiscension audit next year.”- General Counsel, global pulp and paper company

Aiscension audited

“Failing in this area is an event which has a very low probability of occurring, but when you fail you massively fail.” - COO, global pulp and paper company

“Aiscension can help us sleep better at night.” - Commercial Manager, global pulp and paper company