Over the past two decades, compliance has undergone a dramatic transformation. Once a low-priority function focused on basic legal checks and annual training, it has become a critical component of business strategy. Today, it sits at the intersection of regulation, ethics, technology, and public trust.
Between 2010 and 2025, we saw the rise of modern data protection laws, sweeping anti-bribery enforcement, unprecedented AML fines, and a growing global focus on supply chain transparency. But these changes weren’t just legislative, they were also cultural. Regulators became more aggressive, the public less forgiving, and businesses found themselves having to explain not only what they did, but how they did it, and why.
Now, as we look to the next five years, compliance risk is entering a new phase. One defined by complexity, speed, and global volatility.
Looking ahead: What will shape compliance risk from 2025–2030?
The next era of compliance will not be defined by a single piece of legislation or one enforcement body. Instead, it will be shaped by overlapping pressures — legal, political, technological, and cultural — converging across industries and jurisdictions.
Data Protection: The AI privacy frontier
New laws like the UK’s Data (Use and Access) Act and proposed updates to ePrivacy and global data transfer rules will require organisations to think differently about data governance. But it’s not just regulation driving risk — it’s AI.
AI-powered tools are changing how data is collected, processed, and exploited. With that comes unprecedented risk around consent, bias, surveillance, and automated decision-making. Data protection is no longer about having a policy, it’s about understanding how your algorithms operate.
AML: From risk-based to real-time
Anti-money laundering is shifting toward live monitoring. The creation of the EU AML Authority (AMLA), combined with increased expectations from UK and US regulators, signals that risk-based approaches will soon be supplemented, if not replaced, by real-time scrutiny.
Cryptocurrency, virtual assets, and shell company networks remain key focus areas. But so too are the professionals enabling them: lawyers, accountants, estate agents who may find themselves increasingly exposed.
Anti-bribery: Culture under scrutiny
With the UK’s Failure to Prevent Fraud offence coming into force and the EU advancing new anti-corruption frameworks, enforcement is entering a new phase. The focus is moving beyond policies and into corporate culture. Investigators want to know not just whether controls exist, but whether they work, and whether people trust them.
Whistleblowing protections, internal reporting, and visible top-level commitment will become non-negotiable. A paper policy won’t protect you from a culture that tolerates misconduct.
Supply chain: From transparency to accountability
What began with voluntary disclosures under the UK Modern Slavery Act is now evolving into legal accountability. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), and the UK’s potential counterpart, will require firms to map, monitor, and remediate harms in their supply chains.
The risk isn’t just reputational anymore. Firms will be legally required to prevent and correct environmental damage, labour violations, and human rights abuses, and to show the evidence.
Beyond the rulebook: The rise of unforeseen and systemic risks
Not all compliance risks arrive neatly through legislation. Some emerge from far more volatile sources: geopolitics, technological disruption, and shifting cultural expectations. We have seen how Covid-19 upended our ways of working, exposing both our reliance on technology as well as our ability to adapt. What will be the next pandemic-level event to reshape our world?
Geopolitical instability
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tensions in the South China Sea, and unrest in the Middle East and Africa have made political risk a compliance issue. Sanctions can now materialise overnight. Supply chains can be rerouted in days. Jurisdictional fragmentation, where UK, EU, US, and UN rules conflict, creates legal minefields for global firms.
Key risk: Unexpected sanctions, contradictory rules, and the need for hour-by-hour due diligence.
What to do: Create an emergency compliance playbook. Ensure your business can freeze transactions, assess jurisdictional exposure, and escalate internally.
Technology and the compliance gap
AI is not just transforming how businesses operate, it’s also exposing compliance blind spots. From generative AI used without oversight to synthetic identity fraud and discriminatory algorithms, the risks are real and immediate.
Key risk: Compliance teams may lack the technical expertise to govern these tools or even know they’re being used.
What to do: Get compliance in the room early. Partner with IT and procurement. Build guardrails before tech goes live, not after.
Culture, reputation, and public perception
It’s increasingly common for companies to find themselves in crisis despite being technically compliant. The gap between legal risk and reputational risk has never been wider, and the cost of ignoring that gap can be catastrophic.
Key risk: Employee activism, investor backlash, and social media-driven scandals.
What to do: Align compliance with HR, PR, and investor relations. Focus not just on laws, but on values. Don’t assume being legally correct will save you from public scrutiny.
The compliance playbook for 2025–2030
To thrive in the next era, compliance teams need to evolve from reactive enforcers to proactive risk partners. Here’s how:
1. Map your risks across functions
Risks don’t live in silos. A bribery exposure in procurement could link to AML failures in finance and data leaks in IT. Create shared registers and cross-functional oversight to spot the gaps.
2. Engage the board
Use regulatory trends, rising fines, new offences, international shifts, to make compliance a strategic conversation. Protecting brand, trust, and market access starts in the boardroom.
3. Prioritise whistleblowing and internal reporting
Internal reporting systems must be visible, safe, and fast. Every report should be triaged and tracked. Regulators now expect self-reporting, and they reward it.
4. Invest in real-time compliance technology
Move beyond static spreadsheets. Adopt tools that monitor sanctions, supply chains, training completion, and transaction anomalies in real time. Compliance must be evidence-based and defensible.
5. Rethink training
The annual course isn’t enough. Shift to microlearning, role-specific modules, and just-in-time resources. Make training flexible, engaging, and relevant to risk.
