Compliance
Compliance Corner: Regulatory Change Management Costs Seen Rising

The latest compliance news: regulatory developments, punishments, guidance, permissions and authorisations for new product and service offerings.
CUBE
A global survey of more than 2,000 senior compliance and risk
officers from 1,300 financial institutions around the world finds
that almost two-thirds (60 per cent) of them predict that the
cost of regulatory change management will rise in the next 12
months.
The findings, from CUBE,
which provides automated regulatory intelligence and
regulatory change management, come in its Cost of Compliance
Report 2025.
Some 98 per cent of respondents said they have “some degree” of
automation in their regulatory change management process; 21 per
cent said their regulatory change management process was
“somewhat and/or highly ineffective.”
At a time when compliance rules, relating to anti-money
laundering for example, continue to evolve to stop illicit
financial flows, firms are increasingly having to consider
technology to help square the circle of rising costs to
improve the client experience and drive revenues.
In other findings, the report said 16 per cent of
respondents report potential regulatory change directly to their
executive teams or board, which has traditionally been seen as an
area of weakness in firms’ approach to compliance and risk.
The report “reveals a surge in AI regulation, with 157 new laws
and rules in a single year,” Ben Richmond, founder and CEO
of CUBE, said. “Add to that trade tensions, tariff shifts and
conflicting legislation, and it’s clear compliance teams are
under unprecedented pressure.”
Concerningly, the report said that it still takes organizations,
on average, more than a year to fully implement a regulatory
change.
Artificial intelligence
AI itself will remain under heightened scrutiny from regulators.
Between June 2024 and May 2025, CUBE captured and published 157
financial services regulatory insights relating to new laws,
rules and regulations relevant to the use of AI – almost double
the volume from the previous year. This increase reflects ongoing
uncertainty on how best to regulate the use of AI to ensure
financial services institutions remain compliant when adopting
this transformative technology, it said.
CUBE has operations across Europe, North America, Canada, Asia,
and Australia.
In March 2024, CUBE announced the acquisition of
US-based Reg-Room; it also announced the acquisitions
of Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence and Oden products
and businesses in May 2024. This was followed by the purchases of
Acin and Kodex AI in 2025, adding non-financial risk and AI agent
capabilities to RegPlatform™.