Copilot Readiness for Financial Services: How Intersys Can Help Boost Your ROI from Copilot

Summary

In this blog, you will find out how Intersys’ bespoke offering — Copilot readiness for financial services — can help organisations in the BFSI (Banking, Finance Services and Insurance) sectors ensure a safe and optimised rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot. 

We’ll cover the benefits and limitations, potential for return on investment and take a deep dive into our tailored service for the financial sector. This includes an overview of our Copilot readiness tools, methodology (including security guardrails), deployment strategies, and case studies. 

We will also cover regulatory considerations from the FCA, PRA and ICO, and demonstrate how our Copilot readiness service supports your compliance objectives. 

This blog is useful for those organisations that have already bought the Microsoft Copilot license and are looking for expert help in deploying the technology, as well as those businesses that are considering investing in Copilot and would like to investigate support options for deployment.

Introduction

Many enterprise organisations in UK BFSI sectors have enthusiastically embraced  Microsoft Copilot.  Nationwide, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group have all been early adopters. It’s easy to understand why, with promises of clear returns on investment, such as Lloyds claim of Copilot saving its staff 46 minutes per day, as well as Microsoft itself promising savings of nearly two weeks per year. 70% of early adopters said the tool made them more productive.

But many  IT leaders/decision makers have genuine concerns about data security, shadow AI,  compliance with FCA/PRA regulations and whether they are using their Copilot license to its full functionality.

Intersys offers a thorough Copilot readiness service, which is tailored to the needs of highly regulated, data-sensitive financial services environments.

How Copilot can help financial services organisations

In Microsoft’s own words, Copilot is being used by the financial services sector to ‘modernise operations and compliance, improve data analysis and usage and transform the customer experience’. 

Banks are using it to speed up research and prepare audits; insurance companies are using it to automate routine tasks and boost claims settlement; and capital markets are using it to improve risk and compliance management.

Our own clients in the financial services sector are using Copilot to improve productivity by automating routine tasks such as drafting communications, analysing spreadsheets, conducting research and preparing reports. It has freed up their staff to focus on higher‑value advisory work.

Intersys’ Copilot readiness for financial services organisations

Intersys’ Copilot readiness for financial services is a security‑first, compliance‑led assessment and enablement programme designed to help regulated organisations adopt Microsoft 365 Copilot safely, confidently, and with measurable ROI.

 The service includes optimising licensing, technical enablement, data governance, access control, regulatory risk, and real‑world usage. These are all critical areas in FCA‑ and PRA‑regulated environments.

Our Copilot readiness service is explicitly positioned for organisations where client confidentiality, auditability, and controlled communications are mandatory. This can include financial advisers and wealth managers; insurance brokers, MGAs, and insurers; and Fintech and regulated professional services.

Why financial services need a different Copilot readiness approach

From our work with clients in the BFSI sector, we regularly see how Copilot introduces amplified risk in regulated environments. The tool can:

• inherit existing permissions without correcting them
• surface information without understanding regulatory intent
• summarise or present sensitive financial or client data if access exists.

These risks are not hypothetical and have been a central concern for our clients in the financial services sector.

Says Mark Kirby, Professional Services Director, “Our Copilot readiness offering is designed to answer one core question: ‘Can Copilot be enabled without increasing regulatory, data leakage, or conduct risk?’”

Core components of our Copilot readiness for financial services offering

Copilot Readiness Assessment (technical and licensing)

We begin with a structured readiness assessment using a combination of a Copilot readiness tool, such as inFORCER (used to assess licensing, usage patterns, departments, and likely use cases) and a consultant‑led technical analysis (with an in-depth understanding of permissions and the concept of least privilege).

This assessment identifies:

• whether Copilot licences exist and how (or if) they are being used
• which departments are most likely to benefit and which pose a higher risk
• if Copilot could index inappropriate content based on current controls.

2. Data Governance and Permission Risk Review

A defining feature of our offering is the deep review of SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive permissions, which Copilot relies on for content discovery.

In regulated financial environments, Intersys specifically assesses:

• over‑permissioned SharePoint sites
• public vs private Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups
• broken inheritance from legacy structures
• old or unmanaged sharing links
• content containing client, financial, or market‑sensitive data.

This work is designed to prevent Copilot from unintentionally surfacing information that would breach FCA conduct, confidentiality, or GDPR expectations.

3. Regulatory and Compliance Alignment

Our service ensures that the principles of good data hygiene underpin the MS365 environment, which Copilot will be referencing. By doing so, we help clients align with regulatory needs such as:

• FCA and PRA expectations
• UK GDPR requirements
• Audit and evidencing needs

Rather than claiming Copilot is compliant, our approach recognises documented limitations. For instance, Copilot cannot determine regulatory compliance, nor can it judge whether content is market‑sensitive or client‑confidential. It also cannot validate the accuracy or appropriateness of outputs.

Bearing in mind these limitations, we provide risk assessments, decision logs and data access evidence packs designed to support both internal governance and external audits.

4. Risk‑Focused Recommendations and Remediation Roadmap

Following the assessment, clients receive clear, prioritised recommendations, typically covering:

• permission restructuring and least‑privilege access
• external sharing and link controls
• data classification and content hygiene
• guardrails to reduce Copilot‑driven data exposure.

For some of our recent clients, this has resulted in actionable remediation steps before Copilot was enabled, rather than retroactive fixes after deployment.

Case study for Copilot Readiness Assessment

Intersys recently delivered a Copilot Readiness Assessment for a financial advisory firm. We delivered a structured review focused on SharePoint governance, permissions and data security.

The engagement identified risks where Copilot could surface sensitive client data due to explicit permissions, external sharing and inconsistent data governance.

We also conducted an in-house workshop to train users to use Copilot effectively and answer any questions they had.

We provided clear, actionable recommendations to strengthen access controls, improve auditability, and establish a secure foundation for Copilot adoption in a regulated financial‑services environment.

Limitations of Copilot

When we chat to clients and prospects about using Copilot, we hear clear anxieties about the need for guardrails for this incredibly powerful productivity tool.

While Copilot can spin out a presentation in minutes and crunch numbers in an instant, there are clear limits to its functionality.

1. Copilot cannot guarantee accuracy

If data is unstructured, incomplete, or outdated, Copilot may produce incorrect outputs.

2. Copilot cannot determine compliance

It cannot identify whether content breaches FCA/PRA rules or violates UK GDPR.

3. Copilot may reveal sensitive information unintentionally

Copilot will surface any content a user has permission to access. Misconfigured settings, which are often common in SMEs, could expose confidential data.

4. Copilot inherits your existing governance

Copilot does not fix the problems of oversharing, poorly labelled data, weak identity protection or inconsistent access policies. These must be remediated before enabling it.

5. Copilot cannot protect data shared with external AI tools

While data correctly labelled and secured within the Microsoft 365 Copilot environment remains within the organisation, it’s important to know that Copilot is not a security tool and can’t prevent accidental exposure to other AI tools.

All these limitations underscore why readiness is essential and why financial services organisations cannot afford to skip governance preparation.

Why trust Intersys with Copilot readiness for financial services?

We have provided regulated sectors with secure IT for 30 years. Our association with the BSFI sector is strong; many of our clients include financial advisory firms, insurance tech providers and capital investment companies. We know the importance of regulatory and compliance alignment for your sector.

 We are ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials certified and are currently designated a CREST Pathway+ organisation. We are also a Supplier Member of the Managing General Agents Association (MGAA).

In terms of Microsoft expertise, we currently hold Microsoft Solutions Partner for Modern Work, Data and AI (Azure),  Infrastructure (Azure) and Digital & App Innovation designations.

We have also securely integrated Copilot within our own organisation and use it regularly for a variety of functions such as a policy writer tool, research assistant and finance admin. The list is constantly growing!

How does Intersys’ Copilot readiness for financial services support compliance with the regulators?

Regulators such as the FCA, PRA and ICO expect specific outcomes, such as requiring an organisation to be more secure, controlled, auditable and resilient rather than approving or disapproving of specific AI technology.

 Intersys’ Copilot readiness service aims to support clients in meeting FCA, PRA and ICO expectations. However, ultimate compliance must remain with the regulated organisation itself.

Our service directly targets the operational control areas that regulators repeatedly look for, such as data classification, access control, sharing governance, auditability, third‑party assurance, and resilience.

We run a security‑first, compliance‑led readiness assessment designed for FCA/PRA‑regulated environments, combining an automated readiness review (licensing/usage and security checks) along with a structured review of the client’s SharePoint/Teams data landscape, permissions, and sharing posture to reduce oversharing risk before Copilot is deployed.

We then produce an audit‑ready executive report with prioritised recommendations and a remediation roadmap spanning data governance, access controls, and user enablement. Clients who have used this service have found that their Copilot adoption is measurable, controllable, and aligned to regulatory risk expectations.

• FCA: We apply existing governance and operational control expectations to AI, because the FCA says it will rely on existing frameworks rather than AI‑specific rules. We treat Copilot as a change to information flows and dependencies that must be mapped and tested under operational resilience rules.
• PRA: We explicitly cover SS2/21 themes such as data security, access/audit rights, continuity and exit because SS2/21 sets clear lifecycle expectations for third‑party risk.
• ICO: We implement data protection by design and risk‑based AI controls, using ICO AI guidance and security/minimisation thinking.

Mark Kirby, Professional Services Director, “We help financial services firms by removing the anxiety around using Copilot within a highly regulated organisation. Business leaders can confidently say yes to the question ‘Are we not only licensed, but also ready, secured and safe when it comes to Copilot deployment?’”

If you would like to find out more about our Copilot readiness for financial services, book a discovery call here.

For help in planning AI governance within your organisation, download our AI governance policy template here. You may also want to read about our Managed Intelligence Service, which helps organisations power up their operations with AI.