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2025 Nasdaq Global Compliance Survey: Greatest Challenges and Compliance’s Seat at the Table

Key Takeaways

Despite growing investment in AI and surveillance tools, 34% of compliance professionals say their greatest challenge is understanding and implementing technology—highlighting a gap between innovation and execution.
The survey shows a significant shift in reporting lines, with 33% of compliance professionals now reporting to the Chief Risk Officer, up from 18% in 2024—signaling deeper integration with enterprise risk management.
Nearly one fifth (19%) of respondents cite new regulations as their top challenge, and 18% point to financial crime mitigation, underscoring the need for adaptable, data-driven compliance strategies to protect market integrity.

Historically viewed as a back-office function, compliance was once focused primarily on record keeping and regulatory reporting, operating behind the scenes with limited influence on strategic, enterprise-level decision-making. Today, compliance is no longer just a back-office function.

Conducted between May and July 2025, Nasdaq’s 10th annual Global Compliance Survey revealed that compliance teams are now central to enterprise decision-making, but face significant operational hurdles. Key findings revealed how compliance professionals viewed their function’s influence on the organization, as well as their three most-cited challenges, which suggest a sector that desires innovation but is mired in meeting regulatory requirements.

The Top Challenge: Understanding and Implementing Technology

Despite the growing investment in artificial intelligence, surveillance technology and data quality improvement—revealed in the survey—there remains a rift between the availability of new technology and the operationalizing of it. The top challenge for compliance professionals—cited by more than one third of respondents (34%) as their greatest difficulty—is making new technology work in practice, suggesting that while investment in advanced technology expects to grow, the execution in leveraging these new investments for innovation trails.

The top compliance challenge (34%) cited was understanding technology capabilities and implementing them at their firm.

Keeping up with upcoming regulatory reporting and administrative expectations remains a major concern for compliance professionals, with nearly one fifth (19%) of respondents citing new regulations as their top challenge. Only 19% feel their organization is fully prepared for regulatory change, highlighting the need for enhanced adaptability.

Financial crime remains a persistent threat, with nearly another fifth (18%) of respondents citing mitigating fraud and anti-money laundering as their greatest challenge, reflecting the ongoing pressure to protect market integrity amid increasingly sophisticated threats.

Organizational Shifts and Realities: From Operations to Risk Management and a Seat at the Table

Compliance is increasingly being integrated with risk management. The survey revealed a sharp decrease in compliance professionals reporting into Operations—with a corresponding increase (from 18% in 2024 to 33% in 2025) in those reporting into Risk, signaling that the role of the compliance function is becoming more integrated with risk management frameworks, and less with operational alignment.

Compliance professionals reporting to the Chief Risk Officer increased from 18% (2024) to 33% (2025).

While more than half of respondents (51%) “strongly agreed” that compliance has a seat at the table, the confidence in their influence on enterprise decision-making has wavered in the past decade (38% strongly agreed in 2017; 59% in 2020; 45% in 2024). But while sharply down from its peak five years ago, the rebound from last year confirms that compliance still has a seat at the table, maintaining its strategic influence.

The findings also suggest that, with 37% of respondents at the VP or Director level, 25% are Executive Directors or Managing Directors and C-suite participation rebounding to 16%, compliance is now firmly entrenched as a board-level concern. The respondents in the 2025 survey are highly experienced, with nearly three quarters (72%) having more than 10 years of experience in compliance roles.

What Matters Now

The 2025 Nasdaq Global Compliance Survey reveals a pivotal shift: compliance is no longer confined to operational oversight—it has steadily become a strategic partner in enterprise decision-making, tightly integrated with risk management frameworks, reflecting a recognition of its value.

Moving forward, as firms grapple with evolving regulatory demands and increasingly sophisticated financial crime threats, the greatest opportunity for compliance leaders lies in bridging the gap between technological investment and operational execution.