RegTech is the management of regulatory processes within the financial industry through technology. The main functions of RegTech include regulatory monitoring, reporting, and compliance. Europe is home to about 140 regtech startups- 30% of those startups specialize in compliance management, 27% focus on know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) automation, and 26% leverage technology and data to provide risk management tools, according to a data provided by XAnge, a Franco-German venture capital firm. London headquartered ComplyAdvantage is a RegTech company that leverages uses AI and ML to help firms manage compliance obligations. The company provides data intelligence to help firms understand the risk of who they're doing business with, while automating compliance and risk processes.

Regtech startups are saving firms billions in regulatory fines and displacing manual risk and compliance with cutting-edge technology. Over 143 million Americans will be at risk of financial fraud for years following the Equifax cybersecurity breach, while an estimated 3 million Wells Fargo customers unknowingly had their digital identity stolen to open fraudulent trading accounts. It's been nearly a decade since the financial crisis exposed how a weak risk management framework and lack of governance can almost permanently debilitate even one of the strongest capital markets. Yet despite a massive regulatory overhaul following the crisis, recent incidents show just how vulnerable the industry still is when it comes to hackers, fraud, and mismanagement. Looking at the top breaches since the financial crisis highlights some of the impacts that major gaps in regulation have on consumers.