Estate agents are turning to AI for compliance work, but adoption remains early: just 6% of surveyed senior compliance professionals said their firms had fully embedded it. The findings point to a gap between trying the tools and making them part of everyday work.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
A survey by client due diligence provider Thirdfort found that 68% of senior compliance professionals were exploring AI, with firms researching or trialling it for client due diligence. The results were reported by Property Industry Eye on 6 November.
The survey says current uses are mostly administrative. Drafting policies and other documents was the most common, reported by 36% of respondents. Summarising regulations or documents came next at 35%; identity or document checks and risk assessments were each reported by 31%.
Respondents also cited barriers: 41% pointed to data security and GDPR concerns, 32% to transparency and auditability, and 30% to regulatory uncertainty. Thirdfort’s figures are survey findings, not a measure of every estate agency’s use of AI.
Why it matters
Compliance work is a plausible place for AI to save time, particularly on drafting and document review. But the figures suggest most firms are still exploring or trialling tools rather than embedding them across workflows. The concerns named by respondents also show why moving from a useful experiment to routine use is not simply a matter of switching on a chatbot.
Our read
The interesting story is not that estate agents have discovered AI. It is that interest is running well ahead of full adoption, while firms weigh potential help against data protection, transparency and accountability. For compliance work, a draft produced quickly is only useful if someone can check where it came from and whether it is right.
What to watch
- Whether Thirdfort publishes the survey’s methodology and sample size.
- Whether firms report more AI use in specific compliance tasks.
- Whether data protection and auditability concerns ease as tools become more established. Activity teaser: Estate agents are exploring AI for compliance, but just 6% of surveyed senior compliance professionals say their firms have fully embedded it. The most common reported uses are drafting documents and summarising regulations, while data security and GDPR concerns remain prominent. That is a useful snapshot of the distance between an AI trial and a routine workflow. Which matters more for adoption: tools that save time today, or stronger guarantees about data handling and auditability?
Discussion spark: Should firms adopt AI for routine compliance work while its safeguards are still evolving, or wait until data handling and auditability are clearer?
Sources and evidence
- Source update (6 November 2026, 00:30 UTC)
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