The Regulatory Compliance Market

Financial institutions are struggling to comply with the growing number of rules, regulations, and standards and are investing tremendous resources in the way of money, time, and people toward attaining compliance. The enormity of these investments has provided ample opportunity for new entrants into the regulatory compliance consulting market. Once the traditional stronghold of public accounting firms, the service provider market for regulatory compliance consulting has expanded over the past decade.

Public accounting firms continue to be well-positioned in this market due to the depth and breadth of their regulatory subject matter expertise obtained through compliance assurance for large and complex organizations doing business across multiple geographic jurisdictions. Building on this strength, the Big Four firms, in particular, go beyond just providing technical expertise, by combining comprehensive risk, tax, and consulting services to help clients design and implement appropriate operating models and management systems that shape the compliance organization.

Stricter regulatory enforcement and the resulting wave of high-profile enforcement actions against large financial institutions are providing an entry point for more traditional management consulting firms. Several of the big strategy houses, in particular, offer robust crisis resolution and program management capabilities but also lend clients their brand recognition and credibility in appeasing regulators that their remediation efforts are serious. Remediation projects additionally position these firms well for follow-on operations excellence and transformation projects that utilize their traditional strengths in strategy, organizational design, operations excellence and customer experience.