Regulatory change management has always been part of the job. But for many teams today, it’s become impossible to keep up.
In a joint Resolver and Compliance Week survey, 32% of compliance leaders named it as their top challenge. It’s tough to get updates mapped across tools, teams, and control frameworks before the next wave hits. Especially without regulatory change management software to structure and route those updates. Teams try to buy breathing room, but even early warnings can disappear when regulators accelerate timelines.
When that happens, things slip. People work from outdated rules. Reviews stall. A policy changes in one department but doesn’t get picked up by another. The result? Missed updates. Conflicting controls. Audit flags.
In 2023, financial institutions paid $6.7 billion in regulatory fines. Many of those came down to small compliance gaps that quietly grew until the damage was done. It’s not about awareness — and it’s not from lack of effort. Most teams are already stretched. But email threads and spreadsheets can’t keep pace with weekly regulation changes.
The real fatigue sets in not from the volume of updates, but from the inability to absorb and act on them.
Why compliance teams struggle with regulatory change management
One audit delay can trigger months of review. Survey respondents estimated that over 40% of their time goes toward rechecking documentation. AML requirements. Data privacy laws. ESG disclosures. Financial reporting rules. Updates rarely follow a predictable schedule.
Notice periods can swing from a year or more for sweeping reforms to just weeks for a minor reporting tweak, leaving mid-sized banks guessing how much prep time they really have. During that window, compliance leads cram in regulator briefings and internal workshops while everyday tasks keep stacking up.
Where the pressure hits teams hardest:
- 86% of financial institutions say anti-money laundering (AML) is their top compliance challenge
- 75% are prioritizing changes tied to global and regional data privacy laws
- 42% are actively tracking financial reporting frameworks and fraud regulations
Each of those needs different owners, approvals, and controls. That creates a compliance process in constant motion — with little alignment between departments.
Technology gaps make it harder. Legacy tools or generic workflow systems often route every update through the same channel, with no context or filtering. Teams waste hours reviewing low-risk changes just to find what matters.
Over time, it all feels like noise. No prioritization. No scoring. No way to tell signal from clutter — like treating a labeling tweak the same as a reporting threshold change. Focus fades. Teams burn out. Key updates slip through the cracks. And when one group updates their framework but others don’t, controls drift. Documents fall out of sync, audits get messy — and that’s just the start. These inconsistencies ripple across vendor reviews, risk assessments, and board reporting.
Meanwhile, expectations keep growing. Compliance isn’t just a control function anymore. It’s expected to support business planning, advise other departments, and help teams avoid regulatory friction. But it’s hard to take on more when you’re still chasing last quarter’s updates.
What compliance fatigue looks like
A requirement gets flagged late. A control goes undocumented. Reporting takes longer because documentation is inconsistent. That’s how teams fall behind. Not from one decision, but from a backlog that builds quietly until it’s too much to manage.
You’ll see it in a few places:
- Missed regulatory updates
- Incomplete or delayed compliance evaluations
- People spending hours on reporting instead of compliance risks evaluations
Many compliance teams I’ve spoken with say they spend over 40% of their time preparing for audits. That’s time spent hunting for evidence that should already live in a centralized compliance system, accessible across teams. Instead of improving, compliance programs stall and teams are left trying to hold ground.
As pressure builds, priorities shift. Teams get pulled into reactive work: explaining findings, rebuilding timelines, retracing decisions. Even when they know what needs to happen, they’re left trying to catch up.
That accumulated fatigue is what pulls your programs further off course.
The process gap behind compliance overwhelm
The challenge isn’t intent, it’s structure. Most compliance teams aren’t short on effort. What’s missing is regulatory change management software to provide consistency across departments and timelines.
Or a pause button.
Updates arrive without warning, from dozens of jurisdictions, and rarely in one place. Without a shared process, each team creates its own. That leads to duplicate reviews, inconsistent ownership, and missed handoffs.
Take a new liquidity rule with a nine-month notice period: every policy, control, and owner must be identified, updated, and tested before the effective date — yet a single delay or late amendment can reset the clock overnight.
Instead of reacting to every update in isolation, leading teams build frameworks that give them visibility and flexibility. Across surveyed teams, three consistent patterns stand out.
These teams prioritize:
- Early tracking using regulatory change management software that groups updates by region or topic
- Quick impact checks to see who needs to act and what’s affected
- Compliance timelines that align with business planning — not afterwards
These teams aren’t bracing for the next fire drill. Their systems surface what matters, flag conflicts early, and give leadership a clearer view of change. But that takes more than determination. It takes a repeatable process — one that turns updates, reviews, and handoffs into something shared.
All it takes is one missed policy update for a program to fall out of sync. One team makes a change, another misses it, and controls overlap or conflict. By the time it’s caught, audit preparation is already underway. When the issue surfaces — during an audit, a certification review, or in front of the board — it’s often too late to fix quickly.
How regulatory change management software ends compliance fatigue
Compliance teams are falling behind because the volume of regulatory change outpaces their current systems. Spreadsheets, email threads, and siloed reviews can’t keep up. Not when updates hit weekly and affect controls across multiple teams.
Resolver gives compliance teams a structured way to manage change — across departments, jurisdictions, and frameworks. It replaces manual tracking with shared workflows that show what changed, who needs to act, and where everything stands.
Here’s how it works:
- Timely updates: Regulatory updates are tracked in one place and each change is easily identifiable. When a rule shifts, the right people are notified and can link the change directly to policies, controls, or obligations
- Customized workflows: Updates don’t live in inboxes. Workflows make it easy for business users to review changes, add context, and stay involved. Resolver’s no-code platform allows us to quickly and effectively make changes based on each process.
- Legislation summarization: AI-driven requirement summarization helps business users by breaking down complex regulatory language into simple, digestible summaries. Resolver also identifies regulatory requirements and suggests AI-generated controls to help teams stay compliant with evolving regulations.
- Audit-ready tools: Every change is logged with supporting context. You can see who reviewed it, when it was approved, and what was modified — making audit preparation faster and reporting more reliable.
Resolver replaces disconnected processes with one reliable system. Customers report up to a 75% improvement in compliance testing efficiency. Auditors know where to look. Risk managers stay current. Control owners don’t waste time digging for details. When change tracking is consistent and visible, compliance becomes proactive — focused on what’s ahead, not what’s already behind. The result is a program that stays steady even when the rulebook keeps shifting.
Ready to stay ahead of change instead of reacting to it? Take a no-commitment guided tour to see how Resolver helps compliance teams manage change with clarity and control.
About the author: Kristina Demollari is an experienced Product Manager, having worked for Brookfield Assets, EY and other renowned global organizations. She is now bringing her first-hand expertise to Resolver’s platform, greatly impacting and improving our solution.
