How is RegTech transforming legacy compliance platforms? – Part 2
With regulations growing ever more stringent, RegTech is revolutionising legacy compliance platforms by infusing them with AI, automation, and cloud technology. These advancements streamline outdated manual processes, enabling real-time risk monitoring and efficient reporting. How is RegTech transforming these rigid systems to enhance agility for financial institutions?
For Areg Nzsdejan, CEO of Cardamon, what is being seen is that any systems which provide little to no automation are at the biggest risk – there are quite a few legacy compliance platforms that only provide templates, housing or formatting – but the heavy lifting is still being done by compliance officers.
He said, “Now, especially AI native solutions like us at Cardamon, you have platforms that help automate extremely manual and repetitive workflows end-to-end, freeing compliance officers to focus on higher-value strategic tasks and difficult edge cases.”
Nzsdejan suggested there is still quite a lot of basic infrastructure missing from compliance workflows running on older systems – this may mean that data is still being shared by emails, stored on local devices or best case in a shared drive.
“The first step is to put the infrastructure in place to be able to support any integration efforts via APIs. Interestingly we’re seeing use cases for RegTechs to work together to create these integration opportunities. For example, a GRC provider may work with a different Horizon Scanning provider to connect via APIs and create better customer outcomes. Often the biggest issues we hear from clients is a patchwork of RegTech point solutions that don’t speak to each other,” he said.
What’s the impact of cloud-native compliance on cost, speed, and scalability? For Nzsdejan, cloud-native compliance fundamentally changes the economics and performance of compliance functions.
On cost, legacy compliance often scales headcount and infrastructure linearly with business growth. Also, cloud-native compliance leverages automation, API-driven integrations, and elastic cloud infrastructure to reduce fixed costs and avoid duplicative work, and firms typically see material reductions in compliance overhead – shifting spend from manual effort to scalable systems.
In the area of speed, compliance processes become real-time rather than retrospective. New regulations, jurisdictions, or product launches can be absorbed much faster, since controls are embedded as “compliance-as-code” instead of manual retrofits. This directly shortens time-to-market for new offerings while reducing regulatory lag, claims Nzsdejan.
There is also the concept of scalability. Traditional compliance models break down as data volumes, regulatory obligations, and geographies increase, said the Cardamon CEO, and a cloud-native model scales elastically with transaction volumes and regulatory complexity. Furthermore, adding new modules (e.g., AML, sanctions, MiFID reporting) or onboarding new jurisdictions is configuration-driven rather than rebuild-driven.
As for whether firms are seeing measurable ROI from RegTech upgrades, Nzsdejan firstly believes depends if the underlying solution is actually of a high quality – secondly he thought a lot of the complexity comes from the user interface and experience.
Nzsdejan said, “Think about banking before Revolut – it was cumbersome and confusing. The same can be said for certain legacy solutions. Improving UI is paramount. If those 2 points are met – then absolutely, there is a massive amount of ROI to be had.
“We focus on achieving both of these things – and lean on our UI experience from Revolut to create extremely intuitive user flows so they can extract the maximum value out of the underlying solution. In fact, at Cardamon we price based on ROI – so every time we sell we clearly paint out the ROI for the customer based on their individual circumstance. We call this value-based pricing – often referred to as outcome based as well, finished the Cardamon CEO.
A complete transformation
RegTech is transforming legacy compliance platforms by replacing manual, siloed and reactive processes with AI-driven, automated and connected systems, said Supradeep Appikonda, COO and co-founder at 4CRisk.ai.
Appikonda added, “Compliance teams now benefit from real-time regulatory monitoring, dynamic obligation mapping, and proactive gap management, all within a centralized ecosystem of obligations, controls, and policies. AI co-pilots enable self-service, reducing reliance on compliance experts and accelerating decision-making.”
He added that the introduction of AI-powered and cloud-based RegTech systems, organisations are upgrading legacy platforms to gain magnitude-level efficiencies in real-time data analysis, continuous monitoring, and reporting.
“Agentic technologies link together automated tasks, while placing Human-in-the-Loop steps at critical decision points to ensure accountability and oversight. Additionally, predictive analytics help firms connect the dots by anticipating potential risks before they escalate and positioning compliance as a strategic, insight-driven function,” said Appikonda.
Which legacy compliance systems are being replaced or reengineered first? Here, Appikonda explained that compliance systems being replaced are those tied to regulatory change management, obligation mapping and compliance monitoring.
He said, “These systems are often manual, fragmented, and rely on periodic, point-in-time assessments based on stale or incomplete information spread across disconnected formats. Such tools can no longer meet the demands of modern compliance. They’re increasingly being reengineered or replaced with AI-powered RegTech agents and modules that enable real-time regulatory tracking, dynamic obligation mapping, and continuous monitoring that enable faster insights, improved accuracy, and greater audit readiness.”
Meanwhile, how are APIs and modular RegTech tools integrating with old infrastructure? Here, APIs and modular RegTech tools are enabling seamless integration with legacy infrastructure, allowing firms to modernize without a full system overhaul.
Appikonda stated that as regulations grow more complex, particularly around trust, privacy, and cybersecurity, modern RegTech platforms offer an agile alternative to outdated systems. “Through APIs, RegTech tools can harvest data from legacy applications, enriching libraries with more accurate, up-to-date information and enabling real-time compliance management,” he claims.
He went on, “Beyond the benefits of AI and cloud scalability, many firms are driven to act quickly due to the rising risk of reputational damage, regulatory fines, and erosion of trust. Modular deployments and API-driven integration allow organizations to phase in new capabilities while preserving business continuity, bridging the gap between legacy and future-ready compliance ecosystems.”
The 4CRisk.ai COO believes that cloud-native compliance platforms substantially reduces cost, speeds up deployment and scale effortlessly across complex organisations.
Appikonda remarked, “With elastic cloud-based solutions, organizations can expand or scale their capabilities up or down using flexible ‘pay-as-you-go’ subscriptions that allow growth without large upfront investments in infrastructure or applications. Deployment is faster, with seamless updates that put new features and capabilities quickly into users’ hands, accelerating compliance processes and delivering business benefits sooner. Most importantly, cloud-native systems are built to scale across jurisdictions, business units, and regulatory domains, enabling firms to adapt rapidly to regulatory changes and manage compliance as an integrated, enterprise-wide function.”
He concluded that with AI-powered RegTech, businesses are able to see an ROI in less than a year, with teams able to leverage more accurate results up to 50 times faster. By automating manual compliance tasks, enabling reduce operational costs and regulatory penalties.
Clear limitations
Many financial institutions try to layer modular modernised AML tools onto outdated infrastructure to minimise disruption, claims Kevin McGuinness, head of GTM at Napier AI.
McGuiness said, however, the limitations of such overlays make it clear as to why augmentation of legacy systems is not the answer.
He said, “They cannot deliver the precision, configurability, or scalability needed for a truly risk-based approach. APIs and modern AML components are bridging the gap during transitions, enabling incremental integration with old systems, but the most forward-looking institutions are opting for full replacement with cloud-native, purpose-built solutions.
“These NextGen platforms offer integrated sandboxes for live-data testing, enabling firms to simulate regulatory changes in advance and deploy new configurations without introducing compliance blind spots and expensive, unwanted technical debt.”
McGuiness also took the time to say that cloud-native compliance technology helps reshape and address the cost conundrum. “Bulky legacy platforms often require duplicate systems, data subscriptions, and infrastructure just to maintain basic functionality.”
In contrast to this, modern AML solutions can be deployed quickly, use significantly less processing capacity, and reduce over-screening through configurable screening parameters cutting down API calls, false positives, and alert review workloads, said McGuiness.
“This considerably adds to the reduction of the total cost of ownership when maintaining compliance systems,” he said.
Legacy replacements
Michael Thirer, chief legal officer at Muinmos, outlined that the legacy systems that are being replaced first are the point solutions – the solutions which perform only one or two actions which are required as part of a larger process.
He said, “For example, in client onboarding, solutions that perform only IDV or screening are replaced by solutions that perform both of them, as well as eIDV, liveness, KYB, risk assessment, client classification etc.”
Thirer said that there has been several cases recently in which this caused institutions to be fined. He gave the example, in January 2025, of Hang Seng Bank being fined HK$66.4M as, “due to human oversight and lack of system interface… clients who were not characterized… as having Knowledge had purchased derivative funds”.
This lack of system interface – or fragmentation of processes – could have been avoided by simply connecting the different processes together, and avoiding the mis-selling and the fines, Thirer claims.
As for whether firms are seeing measurable ROI from RegTech upgrades, Thirer believes firms are seeing very measurable ROI from RegTech.
“For example, in a recent round of interviews we’ve conducted, we’ve had one firm achieve 96%(!) faster onboarding after adopting our full STP (Straight Through Processing) framework, another firm reducing its IT costs by over 30%, and another firm cutting down its case handling time by over 50%,” said Thirer.
He finished, “There are, of course, other benefits, which are harder to measure – for example, many clients stated our solution supports their global expansion and has immensely improved their customer experience. These ROIs may be more difficult to quantify, but they are very substantial.”
A strategic shift
RegTech is no longer being seen as a bolt-on innovation, but is instead seen as a strategic shift, according to RegTech firm b-next.
The firm said, “Legacy compliance systems, often rule-heavy and rigid, struggle to keep pace with today’s markets. By introducing explainable AI, machine learning, and predictive models, RegTech transforms static monitoring into dynamic, proactive surveillance. Instead of drowning teams in false positives, modern solutions help compliance officers focus on what truly matters: early detection of risk and operational efficiency.”
How are APIs and modular RegTech tools integrating with old infrastructure? For b-next, integration is no-longer a barrier.
The company remarked, “Our architecture at b-next is designed to be modular and API-first, allowing firms to keep what works in their legacy stack while seamlessly adding new intelligence layers. This reduces risk, accelerates deployment, and avoids the “rip and replace” trap. By plugging RegTech modules into existing infrastructures, firms can modernize incrementally while preparing for full digital compliance ecosystems.”
Meanwhile, the firm believes that cloud-native compliance brings flexibility that legacy systems are unable to offer.
“From b-next’s experience, deploying in the cloud reduces infrastructure costs, shortens implementation times, and scales effortlessly with business growth or regulatory changes. Firms gain not only cost efficiency but also the ability to respond to new compliance obligations with speed and agility. This is particularly critical in cross-market and cross-asset surveillance,” the business said.
Are companies seeing measurable ROI from RegTech upgrades, or just more complexity? Here, b-next claims that it sees clear, measurable ROI when RegTech is applied correctly.
The firm said, “With solutions like Comply AI, firms can reduce compliance workloads by up to 80% through alert severity ranking. This translates directly into resource savings, faster case handling, and improved regulatory confidence. Complexity only arises when firms add point solutions without a coherent strategy. At b-next, our approach is to deliver integrated RegTech that simplifies compliance operations instead of complicating them.”
Reshaped by RegTech
Sean Devine, account executive at ViClarity, claims that the company has seen first-hand how the compliance landscape is being reshaped by RegTech.
He stated, “For years, many firms have relied on legacy platforms and rigid systems that were designed for a different era. These tools often struggle under today’s regulatory expectations, which demand faster reporting, seamless oversight, and the ability to adapt to new rules almost overnight.”
For Devine, the first areas that are being re-engineered are usually the ones that are most painful – which he claims are regulatory reporting, policy management, monitoring workflows and audit trails.
“These functions have traditionally been manual, spreadsheet-heavy, and disconnected. By modernizing them with RegTech, firms can reduce errors, speed up reviews, and improve overall governance without having to overhaul every system at once,” he said.
According to Devine, one of the biggest enablers of this shift is integration, with modern RegTech solutions like ViClarity’s built to ‘plug-in’ rather than rip and place.
Devine added, “APIs and modular tools allow firms to connect new capabilities with old infrastructure, making it possible to modernize step by step rather than face a disruptive migration. The natural question is whether all this innovation is actually delivering ROI.
“From what we’re seeing, the answer is yes. Firms are reporting measurable returns in the form of reduced compliance costs, fewer fines, more efficient audits, and stronger risk oversight. That said, we also hear concerns about complexity when new systems are layered on top of old ones without a clear roadmap. “
For Devine, that’s why ViClarity’s approach emphasises simplicity, integration and usability, helping businesses realise the benefits of RegTech without adding more friction. “RegTech isn’t just upgrading compliance, it’s redefining how compliance teams work,” he finished.
Changing the game
In the view of Nickii Malia, KYC Portal head of sales and marketing, RegTech isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore – its completely changing the game for compliance teams by turning old, static systems into flexible, intelligence setups that keep pace with regulations.
She said, “The first things getting a serious makeover are usually the ones that cause the most headaches; slow, manual KYC/AML onboarding processes, outdated case management tools that can’t scale and scattered due diligence data that lives in too many places. That’s where delays, risks and frustrated teams really pile up.”
In the view of Malia, the beauty of API-driven, modular platforms like KYC Portal CLM is that they can slot right into the systems firms already have, so they don’t need a full rip-and-replace to see a big jump in efficiency and control.
Malia added, “You can start small, automate what makes the biggest impact and build out from there, all without disrupting your whole operation. Moving compliance into the cloud takes it even further: faster updates, no hardware headaches, instant scalability for global teams and the ability to respond to new regulations almost in real time. I’ve seen that while some firms worry about creating more moving parts, the ones leaning in strategically are cutting onboarding times, lowering operational costs and unlocking a level of transparency that just wasn’t possible before.”
“For me, the real ROI isn’t just in saving time and money, it’s in changing how compliance is seen internally and externally”, added Malia. Instead, she said that it transforms from being a box-ticking exercise or a bottleneck to becoming a driver of trust, speed and market differentiation.
“And in today’s regulatory climate, that’s not just an advantage… it’s a game-changer,” concluded Malia.
Keep up with all the latest RegTech news here
