The Pressure Points: Legal, Compliance, Risk and Data in Financial Services
Week 1: From Regulation to Execution
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing a regular view on what is actually happening across legal, compliance, risk and data in financial services.
Each week will be split into two parts; a short market view, followed by a deeper dive into the themes coming through from firms, regulators and advisory work.
The aim is simple: to keep it useful, commercially relevant, and focused on what looks real.
Market View: The Pressure Is Building
Over the last few weeks I’ve spent a fair bit of time going through research from law firms, advisory firms and regulators on what is actually happening across financial services. A few things keep coming up.
Regulation is still heavy. AI is moving from innovation topic to governance issue. And a lot of the pressure now sits in the overlap between legal, compliance, risk, data and execution. That has pretty big implications for hiring.
Regulatory change is no longer just about what is coming next. For a lot of firms, the harder question is whether they can actually deliver against what is already in front of them.
Deeper Dive: The Reality of Delivery
One of the more useful indicators of regulatory pressure in UK financial services is not a speech or a headline. It is the size of the pipeline.
The Regulatory Initiatives Grid reported 124 live initiatives in its December 2025 edition across the next 24 months.
That is a lot for firms to absorb, even with all the talk around simplification, competitiveness and reducing duplication. For me, that is the real point.
The challenge is no longer just spotting what is coming. It is sequencing delivery, allocating ownership, avoiding overlap, and making sure implementation actually holds together across legal, compliance, risk, technology and data.
That is where things seem to be getting harder. Not pure horizon scanning. Not just policy interpretation. Actual execution.
Can the business evidence outcomes? Can it show clear governance? Can it handle multiple overlapping change programmes without creating control gaps or exhausting its best people?
That has a direct impact on hiring too. A lot of the more interesting roles now seem to sit in the gap between functions. People who can turn regulatory complexity into something workable.
That is usually where the brief gets more nuanced than the job title. Feels like one of the clearest themes in the market right now.
This is part of The Pressure Points, a weekly series exploring what’s really happening across legal, compliance, risk and data in financial services.
If you’d like to follow the series and stay close to these market shifts, you can follow or connect with Jordan Forbes on LinkedIn.
