Turning Compliance into a Growth Strategy
Compliance has long been seen as the brake on growth. The fintechs pulling ahead treat it as a capability – investing in policy and data up front, bringing compliance in from day one, and putting AI to work on the heavy lifting. Here’s what that looks like in practice.
For many fintechs, compliance has been the cost centre – the thing that slows launches down and eats into the budget. But the debate is changing. AI is removing the manual, repeatable work that compliance teams have always carried, and practitioners who have been through several large-scale transformations are getting better at making them pay off.
The shift is from compliance as an obligation to compliance as a capability – something that opens markets, builds customer trust and, done well, generates revenue.
“Compliance has a reputation problem, and has had for a very long time. For a lot of fintechs it’s been the brake – the cost centre, the thing that typically slows things down and eats into the budget. But done well, compliance can build trust, you can get growth, you can access new markets and you can have competitive advantage.”
Amanda Harrison, Senior Advisor, fscom
Designing the business around the rules
For Ashley O’Reilly of Corlytics, treating compliance as a growth strategy means being proactive: scanning the regulatory horizon and understanding what the regulator is trying to achieve – a stable and safe environment for financial services – so the business can be designed around the rules rather than surprised by them.
The most direct pay-off is market access. Many Corlytics customers use its platform to enter new markets, because a licence in a new jurisdiction depends on proving command of the local rules. And because so much regulation exists to protect customers, following it well tends to produce satisfied, returning customers.
“It’s very difficult to get a banking licence in a new jurisdiction if you cannot prove that you’re on top of the regulations in that place. Rules and regulation, if not followed, will most likely damage your customer. When followed, they can lead to customer satisfaction – and if you have satisfied, returning customers and recurring revenue, you will be a successful growth business as well.”
Ashley O’Reilly, Head of Growth, Corlytics
Getting the foundations right
Jared Taylor-Davies of Bain says the biggest single factor is involving compliance from day one, rather than bringing it in halfway through – the point where most efforts fail. From there, the capability rests on policy that is streamlined and risk-proportionate. Many firms, even mature ones, are still gold-plating where they don’t need to.
Data is the other foundation. Compliance data collected at onboarding is often spread across the firm; held in a single location, it can be reused for refresh and when selling new products and services. Skip this work, he warns, and the cost arrives later.
“If you didn’t invest in your policy and your data, you will pay the price later. The amount of conversations we have with a firm looking to undergo a compliance transformation and they go, actually, we’re going to pause on that for a little bit. We say, very good, we’ll see you in 18 months. We then see them 18 months later with a compliance problem.”
Jared Taylor-Davies, Director of Financial Services, Bain
AI with an accountable human
O’Reilly argues that AI should take on the reading load – nobody needs to review every regulation, consultation paper or speech by hand. It can also handle the complexity of mapping hundreds of obligations, policies and controls to each other, so an existing policy can cover many obligations without being rewritten.
But regulation is highly subjective, and disputes are settled by people, in front of regulators and in court. That keeps an accountable executive at the centre of the workflow, with professional services and experts working alongside the technology.
“Nobody is going to send their AI agent into court when they’re arguing against an enforcement and have that AI agent say, well, I was the accountable executive. You don’t need to have a human being read every 500-page regulation in your regulation library. But you do need to have within your workflow, with all the efficiency gains of AI, an accountable, living, breathing executive.”
Ashley O’Reilly, Head of Growth, Corlytics
The takeaway
Compliance becomes a growth strategy when it is treated as a capability rather than an obligation. Get policy and data in order first, bring compliance in at the start, and let AI do the heavy lifting under accountable human oversight. Then, as Taylor-Davies puts it, shout about it: in Bain’s experience, firms that undergo a compliance transformation see a two to three point rise in customer NPS.
The Scaling Checklist
Bring compliance in on day one. Involve compliance when the idea is formed, not halfway through. It is where most efforts fail, and the fastest way to turn a “no” into a “how”.
Get your house in order before AI. Streamline to risk-proportionate policy and keep compliance data in one place. Without these foundations, an AI transformation won’t deliver its full value.
Shout about the capability. If onboarding takes less than six minutes, or you are licensed in new markets, market it like any new product or service.
These perspectives are drawn from the Regulation Reimagined panel “Turning Compliance into a Growth Strategy”, moderated by Amanda Harrison (fscom), with Ashley O’Reilly (Corlytics) and Jared Taylor-Davies (Bain).
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