Compliance is becoming one of the fastest growing operational pressures in financial services. The latest SteelEye Compliance Health Check shows teams facing rising workloads, expanding data requirements and increasing expectations from senior management. The picture is clear. Compliance is getting harder, but firms are beginning to invest in ways that make the work easier and more sustainable.

This creates a useful moment to step back and look at what is really happening inside compliance functions. Not only in terms of regulation, but in the practical reality of how oversight is managed, evidenced and explained.

Rising pressure

Across the industry, the weight on compliance teams continues to grow. 77% of firms increased their compliance spend in 2024 and a quarter described that rise as ‘significant’. The biggest driver was technology investment, selected by 50% of firms, followed by the ongoing challenge of hiring and retaining the right talent.

The pressure is not coming from sudden regulatory shocks. It is coming from the steady rise in what firms are expected to demonstrate. Boards want clearer evidence. Senior managers want more confidence. Auditors want better data. Compliance is expected to provide insight, not only oversight, and that changes the nature of the workload.

The report shows that using management information effectively is the most commonly cited challenge. It sits at the top for a simple reason. MI is now the primary way firms show that risks are understood, monitored and addressed.

Manual workload

Beneath the headline numbers, the day to day reality for many compliance teams is heavy. 65% of firms say more than a fifth of their staff time is spent on manual or repetitive work. In some organisations the proportion is even higher.

This is not only a productivity issue. Manual processes slow down investigation, dilute the quality of management information and make it harder for teams to stay ahead of regulatory expectations. It is difficult to offer strategic insight when much of the day is spent collecting data that sits across systems which do not speak to one another.

When viewed in this context, the challenge becomes clearer. It is not that teams lack capability. It is that the environment they operate in is fragmented, and fragmentation has a direct cost in time, clarity and confidence.

Fragmented systems

Fragmentation appears throughout the research. Firms point to the difficulty of handling the sheer volume of activity they need to monitor, combining structured and unstructured information and producing management information that genuinely reflects risk.

When systems sit in isolation, oversight becomes harder. Tasks take longer. Reporting becomes more labour-intensive to prepare and more complex to explain. Teams end up stitching information together rather than working from a consistent source of the truth.

These findings confirm what many compliance professionals already experience. The challenge is no longer simply keeping up with expectations. It is creating a unified view of compliance activity that allows teams to work with pace, clarity and confidence.

Investment is increasing

The encouraging trend is that firms recognise this and are acting. 80% plan to replace or upgrade their surveillance systems within the next twelve months. The direction is clear. Organisations want greater integration, fewer manual touchpoints and tools that bring disparate information together.

The early results are promising. Among firms already using AI in their compliance processes, 96% report improvements and more than half say those improvements are ‘significant’. Better systems reduce friction. Time is released. Oversight becomes more forward looking. Management information becomes clearer and more consistent.

There is also a growing awareness of the cost of inaction. Firms that delay modernising their systems will face rising pressure, higher cost per unit of compliance and increasing difficulty in demonstrating control to senior management and regulators.

The research suggests that firms are not upgrading for appearance. They are doing so to improve data quality, reduce manual work and strengthen the way they demonstrate control. It is a practical response to an increasingly complex environment.

A clear opportunity

Taken together, the findings reflect a turning point. Compliance is becoming more demanding, not less. But firms are investing in ways that bring structure and clarity to the work. Better systems. Stronger management information. More integrated data. Tools that reduce manual effort and give teams the capacity to focus on meaningful oversight.

The pressures are real, but so is the opportunity to simplify. As regulatory expectations continue to evolve, the organisations that bring their information together and build more data-driven oversight will find they gain not only efficiency but a clearer sense of control in the way they manage risk.