Regulatory intelligence tech favored vs employees in compliance function

Compliance leaders are focused on technological solutions in workflow management.

Full-time employees in compliance departments are at risk of losing their jobs as compliance leaders gear towards the usage of regulatory intelligence technology over human resources.

Chris Audet, Vice President and Chief of Research at Gartner, said that compliance departments face a difficult landscape after the pandemic which pushes them to cut costs and make the most of existing resources.

“In compliance workloads, you have an enormous amount of economic volatility, and you have a very competitive labor market. And that's putting a lot of pressure on compliance departments to really make the most of existing resources,” he said.

He explained that compliance leaders are looking more into their existing technological infrastructure after the insource work for their departments became too costly to maneuver.

“We see two ways in which our most progressive chief compliance officers are trying to optimize their spending within their departments. First, they're increasingly looking more at their technology stack to see where they might be able to substitute a full time employee that has maybe attrited in the last several years with technology,” he said.

Audet added that they are also looking at enterprise-wide software over compliance-specific platforms, exemplified by instances of HR platforms being repurposed for tracking conflicts of interest or workflow management tools being harnessed for policy attestation.

“Compliance leaders have really turned to regulatory intelligence technologies to best support that work,” he said, “We've seen a lot of compliance leaders opt for using HR management platforms for maybe tracking conflicts of interest or workflow management software to better manage policy attestation.”

Audet revealed that nearly 50% of compliance leaders are planning to increase their technological investments in 2024, resulting in a rapid acceleration in technology adoption.

He said that while traditional tools such as those managing hotlines, compliance training, and case management persist, the spotlight is now on Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) technologies, as well as third-party Risk Management tools.

“Those platforms receive a lot of oversight from boards and regulators, and increasingly, compliance leaders are coming to us seeking support from making the best purchasing decision to support their compliance risk management function and compliance risk management workflows,” he ended.