About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Global RegTech Industry Tops $5bn, But More Collaboration is Needed

Subscribe to our newsletter

The global RegTech industry generated an estimated $5 billion in revenue last year, as regulatory changes and technological advancements drove a surge of new startups in the past five years – according to a new Global RegTech Industry Benchmarking Report released this week by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF).

Sponsored by EY Japan (with field research supported by the International RegTech Association and the Australia-based RegTech Association), the study found that as of 2018, RegTech firms employed an estimated 44,000 people globally, having raised about $9.7 billion in external funding to date. About 60% of all RegTech vendors in the CCAF research sample were founded between 2014 and 2018, while 82% had their first funding round during this period.

Unsurprisingly, the report found that the industry is already highly international, with fewer than one-third of RegTech vendors active in just one market and over a third present in five or more jurisdictions. Nearly two-thirds of vendors had a physical presence or significant market share in the UK, and nearly half have the same in the US.  There is also significant activity in Australia, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany and France.

At the core of the industry lie a few key technologies – including the cloud, natural language processing, machine learning, and big data analytics. Notably, the survey also found that data demands drive innovation – with RegTech solutions most strongly in demand from firms that have to report large volumes of data to standard formats for supervisory purposes, or those that face substantial fines or criminal sanctions as a result of non-compliance with specific regulations.

Profiling is the largest segment of the market by funds raised to date, followed by due diligence and dynamic compliance. The largest share of turnover was claimed by firms in the reporting and dashboards and risk analytics segment.

However, challenges still face the industry – including long sales cycles, complex IT planning within client institutions, difficulties in establishing trust, and high levels of competition – which have left some vendors struggling to gain traction.

A handful of larger vendors have so far dominated most funding and commercial activity; but half of those surveyed in the report had raised less than $1.6 million; while over a quarter had received no formal external funding. A solution to this could be a move towards partnerships, co-creation with clients and collaboration with other start-ups, suggested CCAF.

“The findings point to a rapidly growing and technology-enabled global industry serving an increasingly diversified customer base, yet still working to establish trust and credibility as it matures,” says Bryan Zhang, CCAF Executive Director.

“A variety of key players, including regulated companies, regulators, technology start-ups, and research institutions, can contribute to each other and mutually benefit, and further drive innovation in the entire society,” adds Keiko Ogawa, Partner and Regtech Leader at EY Japan.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Detecting and preventing market abuse

Market abuse – unlawful disclosure of inside information, insider trading, circular trading, “pump and dump” schemes, etc. – poses significant threats to the integrity of capital markets. In 2024, global trading house Trafigura agreed to pay a $55 million fine to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for trading with non-public information, manipulating a...

BLOG

Understanding Reticence for AI in Compliance: Interview with Strategic Risk Advisor, Jon Elvin

The Saifr sponsored whitepaper—From Caution to Action: How Advisory Firms are Integrating AI in Compliance—published in November, explored a number of key themes surrounding the adoption of generative AI (GenAI) enabled technologies for compliance by advisors and wealth management companies. We recently covered the theme of in-house versus vendor supplied solutions in an interview with...

EVENT

AI in Capital Markets Summit New York

The AI in Capital Markets Summit will explore current and emerging trends in AI, the potential of Generative AI and LLMs and how AI can be applied for efficiencies and business value across a number of use cases, in the front and back office of financial institutions. The agenda will explore the risks and challenges of adopting AI and the foundational technologies and data management capabilities that underpin successful deployment.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...