STRATEGIC COMPLIANCE TRANSFORMATION: NAVIGATING RISK AND DRIVING VALUE
R&C: How can strategic compliance transformation add value in a challenging business, geopolitical and regulatory landscape?
Burke: We often hear compliance officers state that they want to evolve compliance programmes and functions to be strategic advisers to their organisations. In today’s challenging macroeconomic environment, with regulatory uncertainty, geopolitical shifts and rapidly changing business operations, this transformation is critical. In a soon to be released survey by FT Longitude on our behalf, three-quarters of businesses stated that the complexity and volatility of the current environment makes it harder than ever to keep pace with change. Yet only half of companies feel able to quickly respond to emerging compliance risks. The research suggests that businesses which transform their compliance functions for the future are better positioned to react quickly and effectively to today’s most pressing challenges and risks. Transformation includes rethinking the role of the compliance function in the organisation, investing in new technology including generative artificial intelligence (genAI) and other automation tools, and ensuring the function is more integrated into the business so it can assert its authority as a recognised risk leader.
R&C: How are compliance teams leveraging emerging technologies such as AI, automation and regtech to proactively identify and manage complex risks globally?
Burke: Emerging technologies are fundamentally changing and disrupting compliance operations. Available technologies, once limited to making simple observations, can now provide dynamic insights in near real time. Organisations are increasingly turning to AI and genAI for real-time risk detection triage cases, as well as to draft reports and answer policy questions via chatbots.
Oct-Dec 2025 Issue
EY