A Shift from Intent to Evidence: Navigating RegTech Strategy

The conversation around disruption in financial services has reached a more mature chapter. If the last decade was characterised by a frantic race to innovate the front-end customer experience, 2026 is being defined by a grand reshuffling of the back office. 

Industry valuations support this shift: the global RegTech market is projected to reach approximately US$83.8bn by 2033, according to Allied Market Research. At the centre of this shift sits RegTech strategy – providing a much-needed recentering for fintechs that have previously focused on solely building IT solutions around fraud. 

The intentional integration of automation and live data analytics has proved to be the most popular business decision of 2026 and has enabled fintechs to meet regulatory demands preemptively. As global mandates regarding digital assets, AI ethics and ESG reporting tighten, a cohesive strategy is the only thing standing between a firm and a crippling enforcement action.

Beyond the point solution trap

For years, the industry focused on the purchasing of ‘point solutions’ – one specific tool for anti-money laundering (AML) and another entirely separate one for know your customer (KYC). This poses a fragmented data landscape.

The reason a unified strategy is so vital now is that it finally addresses this fragmentation. By establishing a centralised data layer, firms can achieve a single, unified view of risk. 

The use of advanced AI tools for KYC/AML purposes has seen a significant jump, rising from 42% in 2024 to 82% in 2025, according to a report by Fenergo. This surge is most notable in Singapore, with 92% of firms reporting use, followed by the US at 79% and 77% in the UK. As well as this, Research from PwC shows that 51% of financial services companies rank anti-bribery and AML as a number three priority.

When a compliance mindset is hard-wired into transaction processing in real-time, there is a notable shift from reactive reporting to proactive mitigation. It’s the difference between mopping up a flood and installing a smart sensor that shuts off the main valve at the first sign of a leak.

Where strategy meets reality: Key application areas

A strategic shift covers three areas most intensely.

Identity and perpetual authentication:

Strategic KYC has moved toward perpetual KYC (pKYC). Rather than a one-time check that gathers dust for years, firms are deploying biometric and behavioural systems. 

Regulatory reporting 2.0:

The most forward-thinking fintechs are building API-first reporting. Instead of the frantic, manual compilation of spreadsheets at the end of the quarter, they provide regulators with secure, real-time data pipes. A recent report from Coinlaw mentions that more than 70% of global KYC onboarding is automated in 2025 to reduce time spent on manual processes.

Surveillance and market conduct:

In an era of high-frequency trading, strategy now involves deploying natural language processing to monitor internal communications and market sentiment simultaneously. This allows firms to flag potential market abuse errors before they can escalate into a crisis.

The bottom line: Resilience as a product

In 2026, a robust RegTech strategy has transitioned from a defensive cost to a genuine competitive edge. Cloud-based RegTech solutions are being positioned as a ‘go-to’ option for their flexibility and scalability – reflecting a shift toward the elastic, API-based infrastructures required to complete millions of checks in seconds. 

The boardrooms that thrive in the coming years will be those that stop viewing compliance as a hurdle and start viewing it as an architectural requirement. The goal for the modern fintech architect isn’t just to build a faster bank; it’s to build a transparent, resilient ecosystem where compliance is invisible to the user, yet invincible to the auditor. Irreducible uncertainty has seen to it that fraud strategies are fast-becoming the forefront of every business decision.

Wolters Kluwer

Regulatory change is the new business baseline. Wolters Kluwer is staying ahead by pivoting to what it terms Expert AI. The firm is embedding specialised intelligence into global finance infrastructure, shifting compliance from a cost center to a strategic asset.

Art Tyszka, VP & Segment Leader Lien Solutions, Financial & Corporate Compliance at Wolters Kluwer, says: “By embedding Expert AI directly into FCC products, we are delivering first in market capabilities that help customers move faster, improve accuracy and modernise operations without sacrificing governance or control.”

Central to this is OneSumX, a reporting tool turned multidisciplinary engine that bridges the gap between financial risk and regulatory demands. For Tier-1 banks and insurance firms, this means a clear path through the complexities of Basel IV. 

What stands out in 2026 is the company’s lean into agentic AI. Solutions like the iLien Filing Assistant handle the heavy lifting of UCC filings, extracting data from loan agreements so humans can act as final auditors rather than data entry clerks. By focusing on data integrity at the source, Wolters Kluwer gives financial leaders a degree of certainty.

Deloitte

Deloitte UK has established itself as a frontrunner with its Compliance Suite, shifting the focus from manual oversight to an integrated, technology-first ecosystem. The modular platform allows UK firms to move away from fragmented legacy systems and towards a unified, automated infrastructure.

The firm’s most innovative products leverage Agentic AI and predictive sensing to stay ahead of the UK’s stringent legal landscape. Notable solutions include:

• ZORA AI: An advanced automation agent, built on NVIDIA, designed for finance operations, capable of extracting and validating complex data with embedded process controls
• The RegTech Universe: A proprietary intelligence database that maps global compliance technologies into five core domains: regulatory reporting, risk management, identity control, compliance automation and transaction monitoring
• Horizon scanning tools: Managed by the EMEA Centre for Regulatory Strategy, these provide predictive intelligence on upcoming mandates like the Online Safety Act and the EU AI Act, ensuring data foundations are AI-ready. 

Oracle

Oracle now delivers a unified data model that goes beyond traditional software, enabling a single source of truth where firms can reconcile instrument-level data and embed risk directly into decision-making.

Oracle’s regtech advice focuses heavily on moving from reactive to proactive compliance. Its Financial Crime and Compliance Management suite utilises advanced behavioural models and graph analytics to modernise AML and KYC programmes. According to Oracle, these AI-driven models can reduce false positives by more than 60% and cut alerts by up to 50% by integrating directly with existing data architecture.

“Oracle is ushering in a new era of banking where AI moves beyond task automation to deliver real business intelligence, agility and trust at scale,” says Sovan Shatpathy, Senior Vice President of Product Management and Development at Oracle Financial Services. “Our agentic platform is not just a set of applications – it’s a foundational architecture for building truly intelligent banks.”

Oracle’s solutions provide a future-proof framework for data ingestion. By combining disparate requirements onto a single, scalable platform, Oracle enables firms to transform compliance from a mandatory cost into a driver of operational efficiency.

Top 10 Vendors

1. Deloitte: One of the Big Four, Deloitte dominates in RegTech by utilising its RegCloud platform to provide end-to-end strategy, helping legacy banks migrate to AI-native compliance frameworks.
2. Wolters Kluwer: It is the gold standard for embedded regulatory intelligence, providing the specialised strategy and automated content feeds that allow B2B fintechs to keep their compliance engines updated in real-time.
3. Oracle: Oracle provides the backbone strategy for massive-scale B2B operations, using its Financial Services Compliance Hub to AML and KYC directly into core banking cloud architectures.
4. Accenture: Using its Platform Strategy, Accenture advises businesses on how to assemble a comprehensive RegTech stack using various APIs while maintaining a unified risk view.
5. Promontory Financial Group: This IBM subsidiary provides high-stakes strategy for institutions facing challenges with regulatory, operational and financial risks.
6. Bain & Company: Focusing on holistic client lifecycle management solutions after its acquisition of JJC FinTech, Bain & Company helps financial services to improve on KYC and AML processes.
7. Fenergo: Fenergo provides an AI-powered FinCrime operating system that unifies onboarding, KYC and transaction monitoring to help financial institutions streamline compliance and accelerate the client lifecycle
8. ComplyAdvantage: ComplyAdvantage provides an AI-native Mesh platform that unifies real-time risk intelligence with agentic workflows to help firms automate up to 85% of routine alerts and neutralise financial crime threats.
9. Quantexa: Quantexa pioneers Contextual Decision Intelligence to empower organisations to automate and augment decision-making across fraud, KYC and risk management.
10. Chainalysis: Chainalysis provides comprehensive blockchain data platform that delivers actionable intelligence, research and software to help government agencies and financial institutions track illicit activity.