Altus Group has earned an international certification for its artificial intelligence (AI) governance practices, a move the commercial real estate intelligence firm hopes will strengthen client confidence in its technology and help differentiate it in an increasingly crowded AI market.

The Toronto-based company recently received ISO 42001 certification. 

“We want our customers to think that we’re being responsible and protecting their information, and in how we’re developing and using AI,” Mike Gordon, chief executive officer of Altus told TechNX in an interview.

Published in 2023, ISO 42001 sets out requirements for establishing and maintaining management systems to support the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence, according to the International Organization for Standardization.

Confidence in managing ‘billion-dollar assets’

Pursuing the certification was a logical step for Altus, Gordon said, considering the magnitude of some of the information it provides for organizations.

“The reason why we decided to do the ISO standard is we felt that was going to be incredibly important, because we do a lot of things around commercial real estate, and the valuations around it, these are billion-dollar assets.”

“And if we’re off by a couple basis points, not a big deal. But if we’re off by three to five per cent, and that sounds not that much either, but that could be millions upon millions of dollars,” he said.

When going through the certification process, it began with an internal audit of its processes, he explained.

“It’s going through our design, our development, our launch processes. Also, the big thing that comes up with it is how repeatable is the AI that you’re using, and how much can you trust in it to give you a good set of answers?”

It also involves proving that the company was “protecting the data around the agents,” he said.

“We have a lot of data that comes through our platforms, and we need to make sure that they have confidence that we’re a good data steward, and that that gives them a lot of confidence around that. At the end of the day, clients should never have to choose between innovation and trust.”

Hoping to stand out in market

Altus hopes the certification will help differentiate it in the crowded AI market.

“There’s a lot of people talking a lot of different types of AI, and it just becomes a very cluttered market. But when it comes down to it, in our business, you have to trust how the business is using the tools, and is it hitting a certain standard?” Gordon said.

Overall, the process took about five or six months to complete, he said.

The certification also covers Altus' flagship ARGUS Intelligence Platform, which can deliver analysis in hours rather than the weeks previously required.

The platform's conversational interface, ARGUS Assist, can generate valuations and forecasts and run comparisons, according to its website, and has 30 years of proprietary commercial real estate (CRE) data.

“It actually sits there and works with the customer as they are going into assets and taking a look at their portfolio and thinking about: ‘If I make these changes to the portfolio, or if I try to run the leases out a little bit longer, or at a cheaper price.’ You can ask it to do those questions and instead of you pulling the data into Excel, doing all that work, you can do it all on our system,” he explained.  

“ARGUS Assist is there to really help the user really understand the analysis.”

Gordon said the certification comes as the commercial real estate market begins to recover, creating new opportunities for Altus' technology.

“People are starting to look at commercial real estate again. We see that tenancy rates are improving. People are going back to the offices. It’s starting: people have gotten to a point where the overhang of what happened in COVID is starting to go.”