FASTER, MORE ACCURATE FINANCIAL REGULATION: HOW CAN 2026 UNLOCK REGULATION THAT SUPPORTS A FUTURE-READY ECONOMY

Author: Alan Blanchard, Business Development Director for TSO, has been responsible for digital transformation both as a regulator and consultant. In his current role he helps organisations to publish regulations more effectively.

In a rapidly evolving global  regulatory and innovation environment, the resilience and growth of economies depends on their ability to adapt and innovate. The United Arab Emirates is widely recognised for its forward-thinking regulatory authorities, which consistently encourage the adoption of new technologies and work collaboratively with industry leaders to build new regulatory rails for exponential technologies that have yet to embed into the traditional business systems. As a future-ready financial hub, investment in digitisation of rules can help harness innovation and create growth.

Transparency: the cornerstone of market confidence

In the financial sector, regulation and financial frameworks serve as the backbone of market integrity and investor confidence, but the challenge today is sheer scale. Firms must keep pace with a near constant stream of rule changes across major jurisdictions, and the cost of financial crime compliance alone is about 206 billion dollars a year globally. Transparency and clear communication of these rules inspire confidence in markets. When regulatory expectations are accessible and consistently applied, market participants can plan, invest, and innovate with certainty. This confidence is essential not only for established institutions but also for new entrants, because when compliance becomes too complex and slow, entry drops sharply, as seen in the US where regulators approved only about five new bank charters per year on average from 2010 to 2023.

The policy and supervisory role of financial regulators has become increasingly complex. Rapid technological advancements, fintech companies, cryptocurrencies and globalisation mean that regulators need to continually adapt to protect consumers and the integrity of financial systems. The landscape demands agility and collaboration to effectively manage challenges. A significant barrier to transparency and innovation in regulation is the persistence of legacy formats such as PDF rulebooks and siloed regulatory handbooks. These formats can be difficult to search, interpret, and apply, particularly for new market entrants or technology-driven firms.

Modernising regulatory frameworks involves more than simply updating existing rules; it requires a fundamental rethinking of how regulations are designed, communicated, and implemented.

Unlocking regulation and moving to rules as code

Unlocking regulation means transforming legacy documents into machine-readable formats that make regulation easier to find, use, and understand. This shift not only lowers the barriers for new players but also supports RegTech solutions; technologies designed to streamline compliance, automate reporting, and provide real-time regulatory insights.

Machine readable rules and rules as code can deliver improved interoperability between firms and regulators, simplify change management, and remove barriers to entry for market participants. The first step is to convert legacy unstructured documents, such as PDFs, into more useful and manageable machine-readable formats such as XML, identifying headings, parts, sections and numbering and adding structure to the content. This structured content makes it possible to present the rules in different ways to meet the needs of regulated organisations, for example contextualising rules with a timeline of changes on a website, or publishing via an API to enable organisations to consume the rules as data.

As well as making rules easier to understand, structured data enables faster and more accurate editing workflows. Content can be managed at paragraph level, enabling relationships to be made and references to be added. Editors can self-serve using a Content Management System to edit content at a paragraph level and view the revised content immediately for proofing.

What this means for the future

Digitising and structuring regulatory information creates several tangible benefits. Firms can quickly and accurately understand their compliance responsibilities through improved search and better presentation of the rules that apply to them. Enhanced interoperability enables data sharing across different systems and institutions without manual reformatting. Machine-readable rules and rules as code create the possibility of automated compliance checks, better integration with RegTech solutions, and even the ability to simulate the impact of regulatory changes before implementation. An additional benefit of structured data is that it makes it easier for AI to use accurately, enabling large amounts of information to be summarised, connected and queried using day to day language.

The transition to digital, machine-readable regulations not only enhances transparency and efficiency but also fosters an environment conducive to innovation and growth. By leveraging structured content, regulation as code, and collaborative policymaking, regulators can create more agile, responsive, and user-friendly frameworks that better reflect the realities of financial markets today and in the future.