Not RPA. Not a generic AI agent. The regulated middle.
A browser agent gives you a transcript. RPA gives you a brittle script. iPaaS stops at the API you don’t have. North Stack is the one quadrant a regulated back-office can put into production: a mapped process with a ledger. Here’s the honest side-by-side.
North Stack vs generic AI agents
Operator, Claude computer-use and Lindy can click around your systems. They can’t prove what they did or why, and they’ll take a different path on run two. Predictability and auditability as the buying criteria.
North Stack vs RPA (UiPath / Blue Prism)
RPA replays scripts against screens that don’t change. Broker back-office work is judgement over a messy inbox, and when Acturis changes a screen, the bot breaks. Blue Prism logs every action; we log every decision.
North Stack vs Zapier / Make / Workato
iPaaS needs an API on both ends. Acturis doesn’t have one you can use, so the connector plumbing stops exactly where the real work is. We drive the UI a handler uses, no API required.
Fast but unaccountable. Accountable but brittle. Or both.
Generic AI agent = fast but unaccountable. RPA = accountable but brittle. iPaaS = tidy but blind to your legacy system. North Stack = predictable and auditable, the only combination a regulated broking back-office can put in front of the FCA.