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2025 Nasdaq Global Compliance Survey: Data Quality and Surveillance Effectiveness are the Top Priorities

Key Takeaways

With 72% of compliance leaders ranking data quality as their top monitoring priority, the survey highlights a clear industry-wide shift toward improving data integrity, completeness and auditability to support effective surveillance and regulatory reporting.
While 70% of firms plan to invest in artificial intelligence for compliance in the next 12 months, the biggest challenge remains implementation. Compliance teams must bridge the gap between technological potential and operational outcomes to realize the full value of AI.
As market abuse tactics grow more sophisticated, 34% of respondents have already integrated cross-product monitoring into their surveillance systems, with another 35% planning to invest in it—signaling a new era of unified, multi-asset surveillance strategies.

Amid a trading environment shaped by market volatility and rapidly evolving regulations, the need for financial institutions to have accurate and comprehensive data becomes critical to monitoring markets.

Nasdaq’s 10^th annual Global Compliance Survey, conducted between May and July 2025, offers a clear snapshot of where surveillance and compliance teams stand and where they’re headed. Key findings revealed the data-centric challenges and investment priorities for compliance leaders in 2025. Here’s what mattered most for professionals at banks, brokers, exchanges and regulators.

The Top Priorities: Data Quality and Surveillance Effectiveness

Data quality and surveillance effectiveness have emerged as the defining priorities for compliance teams in 2025. According to the survey, 72% of compliance leaders now rank data quality as their highest monitoring priority over the next 12 months, while surveillance effectiveness (62%) and data completeness (61%) are the next leading concerns.

The findings reflect a sector-wide recognition that robust, unified and accurate data is the foundation for effective surveillance and market integrity. Without it, compliance programs struggle to keep pace with the growing complexity of both regulatory requirements and market activity.

A Developing Challenge: Increased Data Volumes

Compared to a year ago, among the survey’s listed challenges in surveillance monitoring, handing increased data volumes saw the largest spike in respondents (17.3% in 2024 to 24.5% in 2025) rating it as “extremely challenging.”

24.5% rated handling increased data volumes as “extremely challenging.”

The explosion of communications, trades and behavioral data across multiple venues and jurisdictions is stretching analytics and infrastructure to their limits. While false positives remain a well-known issue, only 37% of respondents now rate reducing them as a high priority, suggesting that, for many firms, the focus has shifted to more foundational problems such as data quality and surveillance coverage.

Where the Money Is Going: Artificial Intelligence and Data Quality

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in the compliance function is transforming how financial institutions can assess impact and adapt to evolving regulations—but its effectiveness hinges on data quality.

Investment in technology, particularly artificial intelligence, is accelerating. With 70% of firms planning to invest in AI for compliance in the next 12 months—nearly double the current adoption rate—as well as 62% intending to invest in AI into their overall surveillance technology over the next 12–24 months, it’s clear AI is a high priority.

70% plan to invest in artificial intelligence in their compliance function over the next 12 months, while 36% have already done so in the last 12 months

Recent and planned investments in data quality for compliance suggest that firms are increasingly focused on improving data integrity and auditability. The survey revealed that 37% have invested in data quality improvement for surveillance in the past 12–24 months and 36% plan to in the next 12–24 months, reinforcing that strong surveillance relies on high-quality, unified data.

While surveillance and monitoring remain the most mature use cases for AI, there is also growing interest in leveraging these technologies for onboarding, document summarization and employee training.

A Growing Focus: Cross-Product Monitoring

The effectiveness of detecting cross-product market abuse—a sophisticated, growing threat that involves trading in one financial instrument to influence the price or behavior of a related instrument—requires unified surveillance data.

34% have already incorporated cross-product monitoring into active surveillance systems, while another 32% have included it in their risk assessments.

This has become another growing area of focus for compliance leaders. More than a third (34%) of respondents have already incorporated cross-product monitoring into their surveillance systems, and nearly another third (32%) have included it in their risk assessments. Only 6.4% say it’s not a concern.

The survey also revealed that 35% of respondents plan to invest in cross-product monitoring in the next 12–24 months, pointing to a new reality: market abuse detection is no longer a single-asset or single-channel challenge. Surveillance teams must contend with increasingly sophisticated behaviors that span asset classes and communication types.

What’s Next for Compliance Leaders

The effectiveness of compliance programs depends on strong data integrity—not merely making data available, but investing in its quality, accuracy and comprehensiveness. Findings from Nasdaq’s 10th annual Global Compliance Survey reinforced this perspective, revealing that, as financial institutions face increasingly complex markets and regulatory landscapes, compliance functions are leading with a data-first strategy.

34% say that understanding and implementing technology is their greatest challenge.

Looking ahead, the biggest challenge for compliance leaders is not a lack of tools, but the ability to turn investment into operational outcomes. More than one third (34%) of respondents say that understanding and implementing technology is their greatest challenge. With data quality and surveillance coverage as universal priorities, relevant to firms of all sizes and levels of maturity, building a data-driven, tech-enabled compliance program becomes critical to turning investment into action.