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Data For AI
From AI Pilots to Enterprise Scale
Most enterprises can now build an AI proof of concept. Very few can run one in production. Affinity Reply closes that gap by treating AI-ready data as infrastructure, not an afterthought — giving your models, agents and copilots a trusted, governed foundation to draw from, so pilots become platforms instead of write-offs.
65%
of organisations regularly use GenAI in at least one business unit
McKinsey, 2024
30%
of GenAI projects are expected to be abandoned after POC due to poor data, governance or cost
Gartner, 2024
60%
of AI projects unsupported by AI-ready data will be abandoned through 2026
Gartner, 2025
Why Data Foundations Decide AI Outcomes
Most organisations focus on the visible layer of AI - chatbots, copilots, assistants and proofs of concept. Sustainable value comes from what sits underneath: data foundations, architecture, operating model, governance, controls, security, risk management and process integration -
Affinity Reply brings together data strategy, architecture, governance and engineering expertise to build the AI-ready data layer enterprise AI actually depends on — semantic layers, modern platforms and governed data products that scale beyond a single use case.
WHERE WE FOCUS
Data Platform Modernisation to Fuel AI
A semantic layer is a translation layer between raw data and the people or systems using it — defining business terms, relationships and logic once. In short: one definition of a metric, everywhere it's used.
It's the foundation AI agents and RAG pipelines draw on for grounded business context, cutting hallucination risk and producing answers people can trust — and for use cases that need entity relationships mapped explicitly, we can extend it with knowledge graph techniques on top.
We help data teams move from siloed warehouses and brittle, manually stitched pipelines to a code-first, governed architecture that scales — across Snowflake, Cloudera, dbt and the modern data stack.
We've designed and delivered full-stack data platforms across multiple Financial Services clients, adopting a layered architecture that serves data products and AI use cases while respecting data sovereignty and risk posture.
Point solutions don't scale. We help you industrialise reusable, discoverable data products - each with clear ownership, quality controls and measurable ROI - so every new AI use case doesn't mean starting from zero.
That includes the upskilling and new ways of working needed to run them, plus the AI observability to monitor what your models and agents are doing with the data once it's live.
#1 CITED BLOCKER ACROSS FS CDO SURVEYS
6 Key Challenges Driving Data Platform Modernisation
AI is driving renewed focus on data foundations as enterprises recognise the importance of data for scalable AI adoption. Median request-to-delivery for a new data product: 3–8 weeks.
71%
Data in enterprise applications is disconnected
Core banking, CRM, risk platforms and actuarial systems is locked away in system-of-record silos. Extraction is manual, fragile and rarely governed.
Source: MuleSoft 2025 Connectivity Benchmark Report
68%
Data professionals rank silos as their top concern
Without a shared catalog, teams rebuild the same metric logic independently - a ‘Customer 360’ redefined from scratch by every department that needs one.
Source: DATAVERSITY, 2024 Trends in Data Management.
Top 5
Regulatory Data Risk remains top-5 board concern
BCBS 239, GDPR, Consumer Duty, & DORA create data lineage mandates that legacy architectures can't satisfy without manual heroics.
Sources: Gartner — 85% of Big Data projects; IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Data and Analytics 2025 Predictions; MuleSoft 2025 Connectivity Benchmark Report.
15m+
UK Open Banking users - external data shared without competitive return
Organisations share data because regulation requires it, but without the data products to exploit it, they can't reuse and convert regulatory mandates into competitive advantage.
Source: Open Banking Limited, July 2025.
29%
Cloud spend on idle resources - spiralling platform costs with no ROI clarity
Data warehouses grow without governance. Storage and compute bills increase and business value is hard to attribute to specific datasets.
Source: Flexera 2026 State of the Cloud Report.
80%
AI projects fail to deliver value - initiatives blocked by data quality
GenAI and ML pilots stall when the underlying data isn't trustworthy, consistent or accessible. Most FS AI projects die in the data prep phase.
Source: RAND Corporation, 2024.
FROM RAW DATA TO TRUSTED MEANING
The Semantic Layer

One Source of Truth
Eliminates conflicting metric definitions across teams, tools and reports.
Context for AI
Gives LLMs and agents grounded business meaning, cutting hallucination risk.
Governance at Scale
Embeds lineage, ownership and access rules directly into the data model.
Faster Time-to-Insight
Relationships are modelled once, reused everywhere — no repeated joins.
How Affinity Reply Can Support
Ready to move beyond AI pilots and proof-of-concepts? Affinity Reply helps financial institutions design and deliver data for AI from the outset - embedding semantic meaning, quality, lineage and governance into the data layer so models, agents and copilots have a trusted foundation to draw from. From defining semantic layers that give AI grounded business context, to modernising data platforms across the modern data stack, to industrialising reusable data products with clear ownership and measurable ROI, we bring the strategy, architecture and engineering expertise to turn isolated experiments into repeatable, regulator-ready capability.
Let us help you deliver value with AI
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