Which legacy compliance systems are being replaced or reengineered first?

What we’re seeing is that any systems which provide little to no automation are at the biggest risk - there are quite a few legacy compliance platforms that only provide templates, housing or formatting  - but the heavy lifting is still being done by compliance officers. Now, especially AI native solutions like us at Cardamon, you have platforms that help automate extremely manual and repetitive workflows end-to-end, freeing compliance officers to focus on higher-value strategic tasks and difficult edge cases. 

How are APIs and modular RegTech tools integrating with old infrastructure?

There is still quite a lot of basic infrastructure missing from compliance workflows running on older systems - this may mean that data is still being shared by emails, stored on local devices or best case in a shared drive. The first step is to put the infrastructure in place to be able to support any integration efforts via APIs. Interestingly we’re seeing use cases for RegTechs to work together to create these integration opportunities. For example, a GRC provider may work with a different Horizon Scanning provider to connect via APIs and create better customer outcomes. Often the biggest issues we hear from clients is a patchwork of RegTech point solutions that don’t speak to each other. There is a real opportunity to improve this - in a way, much like how you have Open Banking you could have Open Compliance where providers are more open to work with each and connect APIs. In reality there are some sensitivities regarding competition and owning the customer - but more integration in general will equal better customer outcomes.

What’s the impact of cloud-native compliance on cost, speed, and scalability?

Cloud-native compliance fundamentally changes the economics and performance of compliance functions:

• Cost

  • Legacy compliance often scales headcount and infrastructure linearly with business growth.

  • Cloud-native compliance leverages automation, API-driven integrations, and elastic cloud infrastructure to reduce fixed costs and avoid duplicative work.

  • Firms typically see material reductions in compliance overhead - shifting spend from manual effort to scalable systems.
    
    

• Speed

  • Compliance processes become real-time rather than retrospective.
    New regulations, jurisdictions, or product launches can be absorbed much faster, since controls are embedded as “compliance-as-code” instead of manual retrofits.

  • This directly shortens time-to-market for new offerings while reducing regulatory lag.
    
    

• Scalability
  
  

  • Traditional compliance models break down as data volumes, regulatory obligations, and geographies increase.

  • A cloud-native model scales elastically with transaction volumes and regulatory complexity.

  • Adding new modules (e.g., AML, sanctions, MiFID reporting) or onboarding new jurisdictions is configuration-driven rather than rebuild-driven.