Regulation is not a side issue for banks, insurers or asset managers. A firm that does not meet its obligations cannot manage money or serve customers. Yet the way most firms keep track of obligations has barely changed in decades while the volume and complexity of regulation has risen dramatically. At Relace, we think the gap between how central regulation is and how it is managed is one of the biggest untapped opportunities in financial services.
Rules are added and rarely removed
Most regulation exists for a good reason. Nobody would want to drive a car without seatbelts or board a plane whose cargo weight was never checked. Rules keep people safe and keep essential services running, from bank accounts to hospital care.
The problem is that regulation is additive. Seatbelts come first, then mirrors, then anti-lock brakes and then traction control. Each rule layers on the last. A manufacturer ends up with a long list of requirements to meet before it can test a vehicle and only some of them still matter for the car it is actually building.
Regulators rarely go back to prune. Their attention is, rightly, on what is new and where the next harm might come from. AI is the current example of this. Reviewing old rules is a question of capacity and that capacity is usually spent on the future. The result is a rulebook that only grows and someone inside every firm has to keep track of all of it.
Why the old way breaks
Today, firms manage the growing rulebook in one of two ways: outside consultants or internal teams. Both depend on what a few people know. When those people leave, much of the knowledge leaves with them and the firm’s grasp of its own obligations rises and falls with its staff turnover.
The tools behind them rarely help. Advice arrives as a document that reflects one moment in time, while the rules keep moving. In a stable environment that might be enough. In one that changes every month, the gap between what a firm thinks applies and what actually applies widens quietly until something exposes it.
What managing regulation actually takes
We built Relace around three jobs that every regulated firm has to do, and that today are done mostly by hand:
- Know which rules apply. Not the whole rulebook. The obligations that bind the firm given what it does, where and for whom.
- Put them into practice across the whole organisation. An obligation only counts when it reaches the people and processes it touches: sales, product, operations and the executive team, not just the compliance function.
- Govern as you go. Boards, regulators and stakeholders need a clear account of where the firm stands. That account should be built in and kept current, not assembled in a rush before each meeting.
These are not one-off projects. The rules change, the firm changes and the work has to run continuously to keep up with both.
Compliance that enables growth
Compliance teams do not want to be the department that says no. They can be pushed into that role by the volume of requests and by interpretations that take too long to settle.
The firms we work with start from the same two questions. How do we comply? How do we comply without holding back growth? Answering the first quickly is what makes room for the second. When a compliance team knows what applies it can brief sales, product, leadership and the board. The conversation moves on to opportunity: an underserved market, a new product or a space opened by competitors who stumbled.
A firm that knows what applies, and has implemented it properly, makes better decisions. It launches products faster and reaches new markets sooner. More and more firms operate across several jurisdictions from an early stage, and clarity matters more with every market they add.
Where to start
For a compliance lead who wants to become more of an enabler, a few steps make the difference:
- Take stock of what applies. List the obligations that bind your firm today and keep a record of why each one does.
- Get knowledge out of people’s heads. Write down the interpretations your team relies on so they stay with the firm when people move on.
- Watch for change, not just new rules. Track what has moved since your last review, and what it means for the products and markets you are in.
- Make governance a by-product. Build your account to the board and the regulator from the work you already do, rather than as a separate exercise.
- Bring the business in early. Share what applies with sales, product and leadership before they ask so that regulation shapes their plans instead of stopping them.
Regulators largely act in good faith and most rules exist to prevent real harm. The rulebook will keep growing. That is what we are building Relace for: so firms can keep up with it continuously and turn knowing where they stand into a way to move faster.