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ComplianceCatalyst

Strengthening programs. Influencing outcomes. Leading teams.

Sharper thinking on ethics, conflicts, and compliance strategy for financial-services leaders.

Briefs on the moments where rules meet judgment — written for the people accountable for getting it right.

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Technology

Budgeting for an Expanding Control Surface

Compliance budgets built around certainty can leave firms exposed when markets, products and employee behavior evolve faster than annual planning cycles. As digital assets, prediction markets, tokenized securities and AI expand the compliance control surface, firms need to invest in adaptable capabilities rather than repeatedly extending legacy systems to address each new risk. The strongest budgets focus on flexibility, data access, integration and clear ownership so compliance teams can respond quickly as new risks emerge.

Leadership

Prediction Markets: The Pack is Forming

As firms become FCMs, market makers, introducing brokers and distributors, they also create new MNPI vectors for employees to exploit. To address the rapidly expanding control surface, cooperation is needed. The commercial pack has formed. The compliance pack has not. Compliance leaders can wait for answers to harden around them. Or they can help shape it..

Regulatory

Cybersecurity Assumes Breach. Why Doesn’t Compliance?

Inside most organizations there are two systems operating at once: the documented one and the behavioral one. Cybersecurity learned to assume breach — why does compliance still assume alignment?

Technology

Why Are Large Institutions Still in the RegTech Business?

Large financial institutions can build almost any compliance technology they need. That does not mean they should. For years, internal development was the only credible option. Vendor platforms lacked the scale, resilience and sophistication required by complex global institutions. Banks built their own systems because the market could not meet their needs. That market has changed.

Leadership

Wrappers Change Access, Not Accountability

The biggest compliance risks are no longer stem from new products themselves, but from the familiar wrappers that make them easier to buy and distribute. If firms want controls that can keep pace with rapidly evolving markets, they should evaluate investments based on the risks and nonpublic information they expose employees to and not simply the product label.

Regulatory

When New Risks Don't Land the Same Way

In most compliance discussions, emerging risks are treated as if they arrive uniformly across the institution. They don’t — they arrive through people, and people respond differently.

Technology

The Hidden Cost of Frictionless Oversight

Compliance budgets and AI adoption are rising fast — yet the 2026 StarCompliance benchmark shows workloads barely falling. The reason may be that compliance is a judgment function, and some friction is what produces good decisions.

Leadership

The New MNPI Vectors

Prediction markets aren't the story. They're exposing a broader shift in how material non-public information can be monetized - and why compliance leaders need to rethink insider trading controls.

Regulatory

Where Risk Actually Surfaces

Most compliance frameworks assume controls catch issues first. In practice, risk surfaces when a person notices something doesn't add up — and what matters is whether escalation has somewhere reliable to go.

The mission

Compliance is too often treated as a brake. ComplianceCatalyst argues the opposite: done well, it is a source of conviction and speed — the discipline that lets financial-services firms move decisively without losing the trust they run on.

About Michael Ross

Michael Ross writes on ethics, conflicts of interest, and compliance strategy for financial-services leaders, drawing on years inside the function.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of any employer, client, or affiliated organization.

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