With regulators’ increased use of technology to detect issues, firms need to learn how to adapt regulatory technology (regtech) to ensure compliance and stay off watchlists.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, has been using the National Exam Analytic Tool since 2014 to enhance its examination and oversight capabilities. NEAT enables examiners to process and scrutinize millions of transactions to detect potential violations, and the regulator to conduct more targeted and effective oversight.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority has prioritized the development and deployment of technology tools, including AI and its proprietary BLENDER platform, to detect misconduct, fraud and market abuse.
Robert Baker
In its Strategy 2025-2030, the FCA underscored the importance it puts on technology: “We will invest in our technology, people and systems to be more effective. We assess around 100,000 cases – information our supervisors need to look into – every year. New approaches will allow us to better handle that significant caseload, so we can act faster and more assertively where harm is greatest.”
Similarly, the Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority states in its 2024 Business Plan that it has established itself as a champion of innovation. The agency highlights the importance of using technology both within the FSRA and across its regulated firms to detect crime and misconduct.
Ruth Avenell
Emmanuel Givanakis, CEO of the FSRA, states in the plan, “The FSRA is also building deeper digital capabilities in both regulatory technology and supervisory technology (suptech) to not only supervise but also support the financial services industry’s compliance capabilities and, importantly, reinforce the FSRA’s institutional governance and supervisory effectiveness.”
And the Dubai Financial Services Authority in its 2025-2026 Business Plan committed to detecting and minimizing abusive behavior by enhancing its surveillance capabilities through a variety of techniques and new technologies.
The right technology can help firms identify and resolve problems before attracting regulatory attention. Leveraging artificial intelligence, large language models (LLMs) and robotic process automation (RPA) enables you to aggregate and analyze large volumes of data across diverse systems and formats, providing a 360-degree view of your firm.
This tech-enabled approach to compliance offers visibility into potential risks and misconduct that may be overlooked in manual or siloed processes, enabling you to identify areas of concern quickly and efficiently.
Regtech can help to:
Technology can not only be a game changer for risk monitoring, but it can also prove to regulators and other stakeholders the effectiveness of a compliance program.
The efficiency and responsiveness of a firm, enabled by integrating regtech into a compliance program, can significantly impact its standing, fostering confidence and trust. This is made possible with the ability to document investigations that happen after an issue is identified and to generate and export compliance review and audit trail reports quickly and easily.
As regulators continue to advance the technology they use to enhance oversight, firms must keep pace. The right tools can help you detect risks early, respond quickly, and demonstrate your compliance program’s effectiveness. In a world of data-driven regulation, technology provides the visibility, control and agility you need to maintain compliance and stay ahead.
Robert Baker is a managing director, and Ruth Avenell a director, at governance, risk and compliance advisory and technology firm ACA Group.