Case Study: Carne Group

Carne Group’s AI secret? Someone whose job is to own it

Carne Group’s AI journey shows why successful adoption starts with clear accountability, good data and a defined business outcome.

• 670 people in the business
• Chief Data and AI Officer, created at an executive level
• Microsoft Copilot licences rolled out across much of/all of the company
• AI Project of the Year win at the Analytics & AI Awards

When Carne Group decided to get serious about AI, it didn’t go looking for an outsider to run it. It handed the job to someone who knew the business inside out.

Providing fund governance and management company services for the global asset management industry, Carne Group oversees complex investment structures with a team of around 670 people.

Siobhan Fennelly Noble had already spent a few years at the company when she was appointed to a newly created role: Chief Data and AI Officer. Having someone accountable for AI, rather than folding it into another department's remit, was the whole point.

"If AI gets subsumed into operations or IT without someone explicitly responsible for it at an executive level, you lose sight of how it supports your overarching business strategy,” she says. “I expect we'll be seeing a lot more companies create roles like this.”

Two tracks, one strategy

Carne's AI strategy runs on two levels. The first is bottom-up: Microsoft Copilot licences were rolled out across the business, backed by training and team workshops. The goal isn’t to hand staff finished solutions, but to give them the tools to solve their own problems, and to reward them for using AI effectively.

The second is top-down: rethinking entire workflows, like how a new investment fund gets launched, with AI built in from the start.

Getting the data foundations right

Before deploying sophisticated AI agents, Carne Group needed to get its underlying data in order. Asset management relies heavily on unstructured data, from bespoke private market agreements to daily client communications.

Enterprise Ireland’s R&D support helped Carne Group de-risk the data foundations behind its AI strategy. That groundwork gave the company the infrastructure needed to build AI agents, explore fund launch automation and move towards client-facing AI capability.

 “A lot of the work that goes into a successful AI strategy is getting your data foundations right,” says Fennelly Noble. “If you don’t have good information, you can use all the fancy AI tools and agents, but they’re going to be absolutely useless because the information that’s feeding them is off.”

The outcome comes first

Fennelly Noble is determined to always work backwards from a defined outcome, not the latest technology.

“Figure out what good looks like for you first,” she advises. “For us, it’s accelerating our clients’ time to revenue, doing it safely because we’re a regulated company. Everything else… the tools, the agents, are just a means to that end.”

That thinking helps Carne Group avoid a common trap. “Across the industry, you see graveyards of proof-of-concepts that go nowhere because nobody thought about how to apply them to real operations,” Fennelly Noble adds.

For a regulated business, that means keeping human judgement front and centre. Carne Group uses AI to automate repetitive, manual tasks, freeing employees to focus on risk oversight, critical reasoning and client relationships.

“Those AI agents need to be managed," Fennelly Noble emphasises. “We’re in a regulated industry, so there will always be people in the loop. Our goal is not to cut headcount. It’s to make our people’s work more effective, efficient and interesting.”

Driving measurable client value

That approach is already delivering tangible returns. Carne Group’s data and AI team recently won AI Project of the Year at the Analytics & AI Awards for AI-Ristotle, a family of specialised AI agents built on its core data platform to handle complex reasoning and unstructured data ingestion.

Now, Carne Group is scaling those capabilities through its Fund Launch Lifecycle programme, designed to get clients’ new investment funds to market faster. By using AI to speed up workflows from due diligence to financial reporting, Carne Group reduces client time-to-revenue, creating a flywheel effect that drives growth for both the client and Carne Group.

Having proven its data strategy, the company is already working with Enterprise Ireland on the next phase. Its journey shows that responsible AI and commercial impact aren't a trade-off. Done properly, they’re the same thing.

“The technology is here, and it is going to keep evolving,” says Fennelly Noble. “The real job for leaders now is figuring out how to use it for the betterment of their people and their business.”

Wherever your business sits on its AI journey, an Enterprise Ireland Client Advisor can help you figure out what good looks like for you too.

Explore AI supports

Build strong foundations

Use Digital Discovery to assess where AI or digital tools could create value and identify the foundations your business may need.

De-risk R&D

Explore the Research, Development and Innovation Fund to support ambitious projects involving new or improved products, services or processes.

Scale responsible innovation

For larger digital projects, Digital Process Innovation can help businesses improve processes through new digital technologies.

Strengthen capability

Supports such as Key Manager Support, Spotlight on Skills or Training Funding Support can help build the skills and leadership needed to adopt AI responsibly.