We Asked Risk and Compliance Professionals How They’re Managing the Volume and Velocity of Regulatory Change. Here’s What They Said.
Regulatory evolution continues to happen at a breakneck pace, making it difficult for most organizations to keep up. New regulations land daily; regulators issue news, guidance, and complex rule changes at unprecedented rates; and the pressure to do more with the same level of resources accelerates.
To find out how financial services firms and other regulated industries are managing this reality,
AscentAI surveyed risk and compliance professionals across FinTech, Tier 1 banks, regional banks, investment firms, and FinTechs spanning North America and Europe. We asked about their technological maturity, their biggest day-to-day challenges, how they’re managing regulatory change, and what they think about AI.
The results were eye-opening.
The industry is moving fast
Today, 58% of respondents operate at what can be described as ‘Basic’ or ‘Dependent’ maturity, which means compliance processes are primarily manual, spreadsheet-driven, or heavily dependent on outside counsel and consultants. Only 16% have reached ‘Advanced’ maturity, with highly automated compliance operations across a fully integrated tech stack.
But here’s what’s striking: that Advanced tier is projected to more than double to 35% within 12 months, with 67% of Tier 1 banks expecting to reach the Advanced tier within that timeframe.
Manual processes remain the #1 pain across every role and segment
We asked respondents about their biggest challenges in managing regulatory data:
- 57% percent cited time- and resource-intensive manual processes as their top issue.
- 39% percent flagged fragmented data and the lack of a single source of truth.
- 30% admitted they weren’t fully confident they had all the information required to remain compliant.
The consistency was striking. The same pain points were cited at almost equal rates from senior executives and managers all the way down to analysts. It seems compliance pain knows no class. It runs from the C-suite to the cubicles.
Regulatory change management: no easy answers
We asked participants to rank the most difficult steps in their regulatory change management processes. While the responses were highly varied, two things stood out:
- EMEA respondents and large institutions like Tier 1 banks ranked operationalizing regulatory changes within the business as the most challenging change management task.
- Regional banks and investment/broker firms ranked monitoring regulators for updates as their most difficult step.
AI shows promise, but needs to prove itself
- 46% described AI for compliance as ‘amazing transformational technology.’
- 41% saw the value in AI for compliance but found current market offerings underwhelming or unconvincing.
- 8% said they did not believe the AI hype.
That means 87% of respondents saw current or potential value in AI for compliance. That’s a pretty overwhelming majority.
74% of respondents plan to invest in new compliance technology within the next 12 months. That includes 90% of FinTechs, 87% of Tier 1 banks, and 80% of regional banks. Based on survey results, AI-based tools will probably be on the shopping list.
What comes next
This benchmark survey is the first in a series of AscentAI research studies designed to track the evolution of the compliance automation landscape. Over the coming weeks, look for information on each of the survey’s major themes, including compliance maturity, manual process costs, monitoring challenges, operationalization, enterprise data management, and AI adoption.
Download the full benchmark report to explore the complete findings, including cross-tab analysis by industry, geography, and seniority level.
| Download the full 2026 AscentAI RegTech Benchmark Survey |
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