2026 Global State of Capital Markets Compliance
From Confidence to Consistency
Compliance confidence is high across capital markets firms, but operational gaps remain. New global research from FIS® conducted by TechStudio™, an Energize Marketing® company, reveals how buy-side and sell-side firms are navigating rising regulatory complexity, financial crime risk, and modernization pressures while working to improve visibility, automation, and enterprise-wide compliance readiness.
As firms move toward outcomes-based compliance models, the findings reveal where confidence is strong, where fragmentation persists, and why visibility, integration, and workflow orchestration are becoming essential to future readiness.
Key Learnings:
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100% of firms report confidence in having an integrated view of compliance across functions, yet 79% still rely on manual processes or spreadsheets for portions of compliance activity.
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Improving regulatory visibility and audit readiness is the top compliance priority over the next 12–18 months
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Financial crime, including money laundering, fraud, and sanction evasion, is driving urgency and is the greatest enterprise risk challenge for nearly half of respondents.
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Firms are prioritizing modular, incremental compliance transformation through a staged approach that begins with visibility across fragmented systems and then progressively modernizes workflows, technology and controls over time
See how capital markets firms are managing compliance through continual evolution. Download the full report today.