Policy Management and RegTech: Orchestrating Governance in an Age of Regulatory Uncertainty
The week began with two very different conversations that echoed the same theme. One was with a major U.S. healthcare organization grappling with how to stay ahead of regulatory change. The other was with a European financial services firm confronting the tsunami of new regulations washing over their business. Both organizations wanted to understand how regulatory change management integrates with policy management and the broader GRC architecture.
Those discussions flowed directly into my Policy Management by Design Workshop in New York City yesterday (hosted by COMPLY), where 42 participants from financial services joined me for a half-day of interactive discussion. The workshop confirmed what those initial calls signaled: policies are the nervous system of governance, risk management, and compliance, but too often they are fragmented, outdated, and ill-equipped to keep up with regulatory and business change.
What Keeps Risk and Compliance Leaders Awake at Night
Financial services attendees were candid about the challenges they face in policy governance amid regulatory volatility. Among the most pressing concerns raised:
- Mapping policies directly to regulations and keeping them synchronized.
- Sheer volume and velocity of regulatory change.
- Ensuring stakeholders and employees actually see and understand policies.
- Conflicting or duplicative policies across different regions and business units.
- The frequency of updates required to keep policies relevant.
- Documentation that satisfies both board oversight and regulatory examiners.
- Multinational conflicts in language, jurisdiction, and enforcement.
- Enforcement across the extended enterprise — including third parties.
- Horizon scanning to anticipate change and prepare policies in advance.
- Policy fatigue, apathy, and the danger of checkbox attestations.
- Inconsistent governance and scattered ownership across silos.
- Quality control, clarity, and conciseness in policy drafting.
- Training, awareness, and testing of policy effectiveness.
- The operational implications and implementation of policies — moving from words on paper to behaviors in practice.
- Version control, access management, and audit trails to demonstrate accountability.
- The looming question of how AI will reshape policy management itself — from drafting to monitoring compliance.
These are not isolated pain points; they are systemic fractures that demand a federated, structured, and technology-enabled approach.
The Blueprint for Policy Management by Design
At the workshop, I shared my Blueprint for an Effective, Efficient, and Agile Policy Management Program. The premise is simple but urgent: policy mismanagement is no longer a back-office nuisance — it is a GRC failure waiting to happen.
The blueprint calls for a structured, strategic, and scalable approach to policy governance:
- Define a complete lifecycle for policy creation, approval, communication, training, monitoring, and retirement.
- Establish governance, ownership, and accountability for policies, supported by a Policy Committee and a “meta-policy” (the policy on policies).
- Standardize policy format, language, and metadata to eliminate confusion and inconsistency.
- Communicate and embed policies across business units and third parties, supported by targeted training and attestations.
- Link policies to objectives, risks, controls, obligations, and incidents within the broader GRC information architecture.
- Measure effectiveness and compliance with clear KPIs/KRIs and test policies in practice.
- Leverage technology for automation, distribution, and traceability, including integration with regulatory change management and horizon scanning tools.
The objective is not more policies. It is better policies: concise, relevant, realistic, and enforceable. Policies should guide decisions, reduce liability, and build trust — not gather dust on a shelf or clutter intranet pages.
RegTech: The Engine of Policy Agility
This is where RegTech enters the stage. Organizations cannot manually keep pace with the scale and speed of today’s regulatory change. Automated regulatory change management and horizon scanning feed into structured policy management so that:
- New regulations are quickly mapped to affected policies.
- Impact analyses identify gaps and conflicts.
- Updates and attestations are triggered across the enterprise.
- Boards and regulators see a clear, defensible audit trail.
- Multinational organizations can harmonize global frameworks while respecting local nuances.
The convergence of RegTech with policy management is not optional. It is the only way organizations can remain agile in the face of regulatory velocity, while embedding integrity into their culture and operations.
From New York Workshops to the Global RegTech Summit
This week’s conversations and workshop set the stage for my role today at the Global RegTech Summit USA 2025 in New York, where I am moderating two panels.
- In Stream B, we will explore RegTech and the Regulators: Striking the Balance Between Innovation and Risk, featuring voices from compliance leadership, investment management, and technology providers.
- In Stream A, I’ll moderate Reg Change in the Financial Sector: Navigating the Evolving Regulatory Landscape, where we will dive into shifting compliance strategies, risk management frameworks, and how RegTech and AI are shaping the future.
The message I will carry into both discussions is the same: policy management is where regulatory change becomes real. Without effective policies — clear, current, and enforced — all the investment in regulatory intelligence and RegTech falls short.
Closing Reflections
Policy management is at the crossroads of governance and RegTech. It is where regulatory complexity meets organizational behavior. The organizations that succeed will be those that design policy governance as a strategic capability: federated across silos, automated with technology, and aligned to values and objectives.
In this era of constant change, policies are no longer static documents. They are living instruments of governance. And when managed by design, they empower organizations to achieve objectives, navigate uncertainty, and act with integrity.