Mark Taylor
Senior Editorial Manager
As told to CUBE
What does a typical week hold for a mid-market compliance manager? Each day is different, but loaded with responsibility, the weight of knowing one misstep can mean heavy penalties and the cloud of potential reputational damage.
I’m toggling between systems, wrangling documents, and still relying on manual checks, and it's an understatement to say my updates aren’t in real-time.
Does that feel familiar?
One misstep can mean heavy penalties, reputational damage, and trouble for everyone in the company either directly or indirectly.
And as you can imagine, caffeine is my friend. In my mid-market world, accessing timely regulatory intelligence is not so much an enjoyable companion to my coffee, but more of a relentless hunt in the hope that I’ve covered the right bases.
Here’s how a typical week unfolds...
Monday: Unexpected regulatory change
The morning ritual: coffee in hand, I am scanning the news. The regulatory overload, the endless stream of known and unknown risks, has kept me awake last night.
We’re the largest bank in our state, but we’re eyeing growth across state lines. That means keeping tabs on more than 250 different regulatory agencies. Every day brings a new bulletin, a new requirement, or a new twist. Using technology that can actually capture all the regulatory agencies would be nice.
Finding out about regulatory change can come from the most unexpected of places, for example, sometimes we even find out about dramatic policy shifts through social media.
This morning, I read about a bank of similar size being slapped with a huge penalty by the SEC for “record-keeping failures”. The SEC said traders were using WhatsApp outside the compliance team’s monitoring, easily done.
Communications compliance risk is a good example of something that seemingly came out of nowhere, but it probably slipped under a lot of regulatory monitoring radars having been signposted by the UK’s FCA years ago.
Tuesday: Multi-jurisdictional checks
My day starts with “We just need a quick compliance check.” Sound familiar? Unannounced and in the first meeting of the day, a new loan product concept lands on my desk.
Suddenly, I’m deep into state-by-state compliance reviews. Which jurisdictions classify this as small-dollar lending? What loopholes or conflicts might trip us up?
At my last role, this would have meant days of manual research; scouring regulator websites, downloading PDFs, cross-referencing guidance. Today, even with some digital tools, it’s not that easy. Today is the day, I’ve put some time aside to draft a business case for a regulatory intelligence solution. Because in the mid-market, we can’t afford delays, but we also can’t afford mistakes.
Wednesday: Gauging compliance risks
Marketing pulls me into an urgent meeting about a Federal Reserve disclosure statement for preprinted checks, a campaign scheduled to go live in 30 days.
We’ve got a checklist, but it’s six months old, which is ancient history. I dig through old notes, email chains, and a cluttered document management system, desperately trying to confirm whether the regulator has said or done something we need to know about.
Some tech will let you upload disclosures via AI, with a system that can review, flag risks and suggest fixes in minutes.
I'm sweating over every clause, knowing that one overlooked detail could mean massive trouble. Marketing wants a simple yes or no.
Thursday: Whack-a-mole
2pm. Lunch at my desk. There’s a high-priority alert from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation about something that could affect our loan products. I drop everything to investigate what is a simple regulatory disclosure notice.
Our regulatory intelligence tool sends basic alerts from stuff it has captured over the course of a couple of days, but it doesn’t prioritise them or give any other context. So here I am, mid-bite, chewing over some legalese, drafting memos, and updating management.
All while knowing full well the proposal might never even move forward.
What I would like is horizon scanning, with context and prioritisation, as this would give me all the information I need to update management, in minutes. It would transform how we respond and give me a longer lunch break.
4pm. The complaints log has flagged a potential pattern linked to recent regulatory changes by New York’s Department of Financial Services. They love a late update. I need to investigate whether it’s random noise or a sign of brewing risk.
Clicking the mouse through individual submissions, categorising complaints, and trying to match them against new rules is what eats up hours of my week. I also suspect another department is doing this exact same task, for slightly different reasons.
Colleagues at other banks report similar struggles, but those with real-time compliance analytics and instant risk alerts are miles ahead. We need to close the gap, fast.
Friday: Why compliance never sleeps
6am. Weekend in sight, but the nagging worry remains. Did something slip through the cracks? Are we prepared if a regulator asks to audit mobile communications? Did I miss a critical update?
Our profession has experienced great change in recent years, and more than ever we are expected to be able to use technology to get ahead of problems rather than react to them as they happen.
Walking out the door, I think about how much more time I would have today if I could automate some of the scanning and summarising of regulatory notices.
For now, it’s back to the spreadsheets, manual updates, and lots and lots of coffee.
Next: From struggle to strategy
In part three of our RegPlatform Intel intelligence series, we’ll explore actionable steps that midmarket financial institutions can take to transform regulatory change into a competitive advantage.
