Compliance leaders are being urged to treat 2027 budget planning as a chance to test whether their technology can keep pace with fast-changing markets, rather than simply renewing existing contracts.
Employees now have access to a widening range of asset classes and trading venues, from traditional securities to crypto and digital assets, tokenized real-world assets, and prediction markets.
This expansion is reshaping how material non-public information (MNPI) could be misused, since the risk does not diminish simply because someone acts on it through a newer or less conventional instrument. Shadow trading, where an employee trades in a related but different company, adds a further layer of complexity that firms must monitor.
StarCompliance argues that managing this risk requires more than tracking individual transactions or asset classes in isolation. The firm is promoting an approach it calls Compliance, Connected, which links employee activity, MNPI, market data, conflicts of interest and other risk signals to build a fuller picture of conduct.
According to the company, connecting this information across compliance functions helps teams spot relationships that would otherwise stay hidden and identify emerging risks sooner.
The company is encouraging compliance leaders to interrogate their current systems ahead of 2027 budgeting, asking whether platforms can monitor both traditional and emerging asset classes, connect MNPI to personal trading and conflicts, surface previously unseen risks, and adapt as regulation and markets shift.
It also raises the question of whether manual processes are absorbing resources that could otherwise go towards higher-value risk management.
StarCompliance’s 2026 Global Compliance Benchmark Study, which drew on responses from more than 300 compliance, risk and technology professionals, found that 76% of firms had increased compliance budgets and 67% were deploying or piloting AI. However, 40% identified digital assets and crypto as the area where they felt least prepared, suggesting a gap between investment intentions and actual readiness.
The report frames the case for upgrading compliance technology as being about more than adding new tools. It is positioned as an investment in visibility, connectivity and intelligence as markets grow more complex, spanning personal account dealing, digital asset monitoring, prediction markets, MNPI management, conflicts of interest and analytics.
The study also points to the hidden cost of standing still, noting that legacy systems and manual processes demand ongoing internal resources for maintenance and remediation, time that could otherwise go towards investigations and regulatory change management.
StarCompliance’s full post can be read here.
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
