Looking for an Aveni alternative?
Aveni is a Scottish AI company built for UK regulated financial services, spanning adviser productivity through to automated case review, with its own financial-services language model behind it. CallGuard AI is deliberately narrower: compliance scoring for calls and whole sale journeys, with plans quoted per seat for your team. Both of us are UK-first, so the usual "we understand the FCA and they don't" line does not apply here. This is the honest comparison.
Aveni is the closest thing we have to a genuine peer.
Most comparison pages in this category lean on a US-versus-UK argument. That argument is simply false about Aveni, and pretending otherwise would insult the compliance director reading this. They are UK-native, FCA-literate and in several respects further ahead than we are. Four things they do well:
Built around UK regulation, not localised into it
Consumer Duty and FG21/1 vulnerability sit in the foundations of the product rather than in a configuration layer bolted on for the UK market. If your shortlist criterion is "does this vendor speak our regulator's language", Aveni passes it as comfortably as we do.
A suite, not a single product
Aveni Assist joins client meetings, captures the fact find, drafts suitability reports and populates the CRM, and a free companion app for iPhone and Android records face-to-face meetings and queues them for upload when the adviser is back in signal. Aveni Detect handles automated case review and quality assurance coverage. Assure adds real-time risk monitoring, and Approve tests AI agents before deployment. CallGuard AI does none of the adviser-productivity half at all, and nothing at the kitchen table.
Their own domain-specific model
FinLLM is Aveni's own language model for financial services. Owning the model gives them a kind of control over behaviour that we reach a different way, through per-tenant calibration on top of Claude. Both are legitimate; theirs is a bigger engineering bet and worth respecting.
Standing in the AI governance conversation
Aveni is a participant in the FCA's Supercharged Sandbox and convened an Agent Assurance Expert Council on AI governance, alongside a deeper enterprise and wealth footprint than ours. If your board wants a supplier already visible in that conversation, that is a real advantage and we are not going to talk you out of it.
Where the two are shaped differently.
None of what follows says the product is weak. It describes how the two companies sell, and what each one is shaped to do. Five differences that matter most if you are a smaller or mid-sized firm rather than a national wealth manager:
No integration project to begin
Share your existing scorecard and we set up your account. We put a DPA in place before you share any real recordings, and connecting a dialler or CRM can follow once you are happy with the results. We will not tell you how long an Aveni rollout takes, because they do not publish it and we have not run one.
Where the sale starts
Aveni Detect reviews a whole customer case, bringing calls, emails, webchat, SMS and supporting documents together. CallGuard AI starts from the sale instead: when the sale is recorded in your CRM, it scores the calls from that customer's phone number within the sale window together as one compliance unit, so what was said on call one and on call three are both in front of the AI when it scores the sale. Theirs covers more channels; ours is voice, tied to the sale in your CRM.
Dialler-native ingestion
A built connector for CloudTalk, SFTP pickup of your dialler's own recording export, and a REST API for pushing recording URLs. On the Pro plan, calls can also stream in live from Twilio Media Streams, from Amazon Connect through a small Lambda bridge you run, or over a generic WebSocket protocol. You can start on recordings with no integration project.
Evidence, not opinion
Each criterion returns pass or fail with the transcript evidence it was decided on, or a note that none was found, so a reviewer can agree or overturn without relistening to the whole call and the audit file assembles itself. The output is written to be read by your compliance officer and, eventually, by a regulator.
Corrections shown as scoring examples
When your compliance officer overturns a verdict, that correction becomes one of up to five recent examples the AI sees the next time it scores that criterion, for your firm alone — so the AI sees how your firm has read "suitable" and "clearly explained" before, not only the scorecard's words. They are examples, not rules: it can still reach a different verdict on a call that genuinely differs.
Aveni versus CallGuard AI
| Capability | Aveni | CallGuard AI |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Adviser productivity and compliance across a suite | Compliance scoring for calls and sale journeys |
| Suitability report drafting | Yes, in Aveni Assist | Not offered |
| Face-to-face meeting capture | Free companion app for iPhone and Android, records in person and uploads to Assist | Not offered, telephone and dialler audio only |
| Pricing | Bespoke quote per customer | Starter, Growth and Pro, quoted per seat |
| Time to first scored call | Not published | Demo, quote and DPA first; no integration project to begin |
| Beyond the single call | Case-level testing in Aveni Detect: calls, emails, webchat, SMS and documents from one customer case, reviewed together | Sale scoring: starts from the sale in your CRM and scores that customer's calls in the sale window together |
| Live in-call layer | Real-time risk monitoring in Aveni Assure | Live breach detection on streamed calls (Pro plan): rolling transcript re-checked every 30 seconds, webhook sent at 0.75 model confidence or higher |
| Dialler ingestion | Not published | Any dialler: CloudTalk connector, SFTP pickup, recording upload and REST API, plus live streaming from Twilio, Amazon Connect or WebSocket |
| Scoring model | FinLLM, their own financial-services model | Claude, shown your firm's corrections as calibration examples |
| Try before you buy | 30-day free trial of Aveni Assist | Demo scored on synthetic calls against your scorecard |
Pick the right tool for your actual situation.
Pick Aveni if
You want one supplier covering both the adviser's admin burden and the compliance function, so fact-find capture, suitability drafting and CRM population as well as case review. You have the procurement capacity for a suite-wide rollout, you value a vendor with its own domain-specific model, and visible standing with the regulator matters to your board.
Pick CallGuard AI if
Your problem is specifically the calls: scoring all of them against your scorecard with transcript evidence, live breach detection on streamed calls, and judging a multi-call sale as one compliance unit. You are a smaller or mid-sized firm that cannot absorb an enterprise procurement cycle, and you want a plan quoted per seat for your team size.
Common questions, answered.
Is CallGuard AI UK-based like Aveni?
Yes. We are a UK company, customer data is stored in the UK, we publish our DPA and sub-processor list, and a UK advice firm's scorecard would typically cover ICOBS 5 demands and needs (and suitability where advice is given), FG21/1 vulnerability and the Consumer Duty outcomes a call can evidence. What we are not going to do is claim to be more British than Aveni. They are a Scottish company built specifically for UK regulated financial services, and nationality is not the difference between us.
Can CallGuard AI draft suitability reports or capture a fact find?
No, and it is not on our roadmap. That is what Aveni Assist is built for. CallGuard AI scores conversations for compliance and turns them into evidence, breach alerts and coaching. If lifting the adviser's admin burden matters as much to you as the compliance function does, Aveni covers ground we simply do not.
How does pricing compare?
Neither of us publishes a price. Aveni quotes per customer, and offers a 30-day free trial of Aveni Assist. CallGuard AI's Starter, Growth and Pro plans are quoted per seat for your team size, with volume discounts and no multi-year minimum. What each plan includes is on the plans page.
What does journey scoring actually mean?
When a sale takes four calls over three weeks, CallGuard AI starts from the sale recorded in your CRM, takes the calls from that customer's phone number within the sale window and scores them as one compliance unit rather than four unrelated conversations. What was said on the first call and on the third are both in front of the AI when it scores the sale, the way a file reviewer would read the whole sale, rather than each call being scored in isolation.
Can we run CallGuard AI alongside Aveni?
Yes, and the overlap is smaller than it looks. Nothing stops an adviser using a productivity assistant in the client meeting while CallGuard AI acts as the scoring and evidence layer across your telephony, with per-criterion verdicts, transcript evidence and a breach register. They listen to conversations for different reasons.