61% of firms now embed regulatory change within a year, up from 26% in 2025, yet confidence in compliance outcomes has fallen from 59% to 45%
LONDON, Nov. 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Firms are embedding regulatory change faster than a year ago, but fewer believe their processes are delivering results, according to CUBE’s Cost of Compliance Report 2026, From adoption to assurance: the cost of compliance in an AI-enabled world.
Now in its sixteenth year, the report draws on a survey of more than 2,000 senior practitioners across 11 countries, revealing a growing gap between the pace of compliance activity and firms' ability to demonstrate its effectiveness.
Key findings:
- Regulatory change is being embedded faster: 61% of firms now embed regulatory change within a year, up from 26% in 2025.
- Impact assessments accelerating: 46% complete an initial assessment within two weeks, compared with 20% last year.
- Confidence falling: 45% rate their approach as generally or highly effective, down from 59%.
- AI adoption outpacing assurance: 59% say AI is embedded or advanced in their core processes, but only 34% are confident they could demonstrate their AI governance to a regulator today.
- Costs rising: 64% report higher costs over the past year, driven mainly by technology investment and AI governance.
The scale of the challenge is also increasing. 17% of firms now track more than 100 regulatory developments a month, compared with just 2% in 2025. Yet faster processing has not translated into greater confidence that regulatory obligations are being effectively implemented.
AI is adding another layer of complexity for compliance and risk teams. Implementing AI is now the challenge most frequently cited by respondents, replacing data governance, AI and automation, and ESG, which topped the list in 2025.
While 59% say AI is embedded or advanced in their core processes and 10% let it act autonomously in compliance and risk workflows, 57% do not yet trust AI outputs for critical decisions. 58% expect regulatory scrutiny of their AI use to rise over the next year, but only 34% are confident they could demonstrate AI governance to a regulator today. A further 57% expect AI to add to their governance and oversight burden.
With regulators in the US, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the UK taking different approaches, demonstrating robust AI governance is becoming increasingly complex.
Ben Richmond, Founder and CEO of CUBE, said: “I read these findings closely every year, and this year what stands out to me is the gap between what firms have deployed at pace with AI and what they can subsequently evidence. The foundations are still being built: just 40% rate their data governance as completely effective, and data quality is the most-cited barrier to scaling AI.”
“Speed appears to be outpacing assurance: firms are deploying AI faster than they can govern it, and processing regulatory change faster than they can embed it with confidence,” he added.
The growing demands on compliance and risk teams are also driving up costs and sharpening questions of senior accountability.
Almost two-thirds (64%) of respondents report higher costs over the past year, against the 60% who anticipated an increase when surveyed in 2025, driven mainly by technology investment and AI governance.
The impact is also being felt by individuals: 35% say senior leaders are declining or leaving roles with direct compliance accountability, rising to 47% in India. Meanwhile, 45% report growing demand from senior managers for real-time data.
CUBE’s RegInsight content and Enforcement AI Agent recorded 96 enforcement actions against individuals in the first nine months of 2026, across regulators including the SEC, FCA, CFTC, SFC and ASIC, with combined financial penalties of approximately $59 million.
Despite these pressures, expectations for AI remain positive. 75% of respondents expect AI to free their teams for higher-value work, and 73% expect it to improve effectiveness.
Richmond concludes: “Firms that close the distance between what they have deployed and what they can evidence will get the most from AI over the next 12 months.”
The report sets out priorities for the next six to 24 months, alongside board-level metrics for quarterly review, helping compliance and risk teams benchmark progress against peers and demonstrate the effectiveness of their work.
The Cost of Compliance Report 2026 is available now at: https://www.cube.global/company/resource-hub/the-cost-of-compliance-report-2026.
CUBE will explore the report’s findings in a webinar, The Evidence Gap: What the Cost of Compliance 2026 Reveals About AI Governance. Register here.
About the Cost of Compliance Report
Now in its sixteenth year, the Cost of Compliance Report examines how compliance and risk professionals are responding to regulatory change, technology and cost pressures. The 2026 edition draws on a third-party survey, conducted in June and July 2026, among more than 2,000 manager-level and above professionals with responsibility for, or influence over, compliance and risk decisions across finance and banking, insurance and professional services. Respondents were based in the United States, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, India, Japan, China and Australia.
About CUBE
CUBE is an AI-native regulatory intelligence company helping compliance and risk teams track, interpret and act on regulatory change. Built on 15 years of regulatory expertise and more than ten million datapoints processed annually, CUBE combines AI-native technology, global regulatory data and proprietary network data to enable customers to gather deep intelligence and automate compliance and risk processes.
CUBE delivers regulatory intelligence through four products: RegPlatform™, an enterprise compliance and risk platform enabled by agentic AI and peer-validated network intelligence; Oden, expert-curated regulatory intelligence and automated notice generation for U.S. state-by-state insurance compliance; Intel, combining AI and expert insight for regulated industries; and PoweredBy, which embeds CUBE’s proprietary regulatory content, data and technology into partner platforms.
With operations across Europe, the United States, Canada, Asia and Australia, CUBE serves a global customer base, including many of the world’s largest financial institutions, supported by 250 regulatory and legal experts. Find out more at cube.global.
Media contact: Rosie Guest, [email protected]
