Rewriting the FinServ Regulatory Exam Playbook: A Deep Dive

The 2025 FS-ISAC Americas Spring Summit is upon us, promising great conversations around the digital landscape in financial services. This year’s official theme centers on safeguarding trust, with trending topics ranging from operational resilience to global market uncertainty, AI implementation, and evolving cybersecurity challenges. 

Among these critical discussions, we turn our attention to a fundamental (and often overlooked) topic: regulatory exam management. Regulatory exam management has quietly become one of the greatest obstacles to innovation in banking and finance, with institutions caught in a perpetual cycle of manual compliance activities that drain resources, stifle creativity, and divert focus from customer-facing initiatives. 

What can be done? At this year’s FS-ISAC summit, we’re privileged to host an expert panel — featuring Josh Magri, Founder and CEO of the Cyber Risk Institute (CRI), and Anne Higgins, Global Head of Cyber Risk for BNY’s Information Security Division — that addresses this precise challenge. Today, we’ll explore the same topic in depth, looking at how to turn regulatory exam management from an innovation killer and into a strategic advantage for forward-thinking financial institutions. 

Out of Sync and Over Budget: The Regulatory Compliance Challenge

The gap between security, risk, and compliance continues to plague financial institutions. According to the industry-first State of Continuous Controls Monitoring Report, only 44% of CISOs describe their compliance and security programs as completely synchronized.  

And, while regulatory measures are absolutely essential for protecting our infrastructure, they’ve created a complex web of challenges around exam management. These challenges are multilayered and increasingly demanding: 

• Operational overhead has skyrocketed as banks are required to maintain extensive documentation, conduct regular assessments, and implement multiple control layers.
• Failed exams cascade into follow-up requests, Matters Requiring Attention (MRAs), Matters Requiring Immediate Attention (MRIAs), and heightened scrutiny, while inconsistent responses to regulatory bodies can trigger additional audits.
• Regulatory fragmentation forces institutions to integrate different — sometimes conflicting — requirements for different jurisdictions and frameworks. 
• Rapidly evolving requirements demand constant adaptation.
• Cyber threats grow more sophisticated daily. 

The result? Technology leaders in banking and finance face an impossible tradeoff between addressing these regulatory exam management issues and delivering innovation. They have an essential obligation to meet policy and compliance requirements, but they also need to remember that innovation isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s essential for survival in a rapidly evolving financial landscape. 

Upping Your GRC Game with Continuous Controls Monitoring

So, how can regulatory exam management — and, more broadly, GRC programs for financial institutions — be improved? Through Continuous Controls Monitoring (CCM) and compliance automation. 

CCM represents a fundamental shift in approach: moving from periodic, sample-based assessments to automated, real-time monitoring of controls. Continuous Controls Monitoring offers automated evidence collection, self-updating paperwork, enhanced visibility, and more efficient drafting of SSPs and control statements. 

At the core of CCM is comprehensive visibility across the control environment, the exam requirements, the organization’s security posture, and more. It allows for a far more proactive approach to compliance and risk, and it frees up teams to focus on strategic priorities like driving innovation. 

Of course, we know that transforming the culture and tools around regulatory exam management is easier said than done. Luckily, there are a few tried-and-tested approaches that can help financial institutions cut costs, slash manual processes, and future-proof their GRC processes. 

Strategic Alignment

Implementing CCM isn’t just about having the right policies and platforms in place; it’s about creating an organizational ecosystem where security, compliance, and business objectives are naturally aligned, and not competing priorities. 

This kind of thoughtful alignment requires purposeful bridge-building between security, risk, and compliance departments, as well as a rigorous, intentional standardization of processes. Having clear, repeatable processes isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about creating a common language for GRC that all stakeholders can understand and trust. 

Common Controls Framework

Another key element of a successful compliance automation program is implementing a common controls framework. This approach creates an efficient foundation for Continuous Controls Monitoring by: 

• Mapping controls once and applying them across multiple regulatory requirements 
• Creating a unified compliance language that works across disparate tools and departments 
• Eliminating redundant assessments through an “assess once, use many” approach

The Cyber Risk Institute (CRI) framework exemplifies this approach, particularly as part of its collaboration with RegScale’s CCM platform. The CRI Profile v2.0 — a cybersecurity framework developed by and for the financial sector based on globally recognized standards — helps improve efficiency and harmonization among different standards. 

Organizations implementing the RegScale-CRI solution have already seen dramatic improvements, including: 

• 60% reduction in audit prep time
• 80% improvement in documentation accuracy  
• 40% faster regulatory response times 
• 10x scalability that frees up teams to focus on strategic priorities 

The OSCAL Puzzle Piece

Lastly, you can accelerate your CCM transformation by embracing Compliance as Code methodologies, particularly through the NIST Open Security Controls Assessment Language (OSCAL).  

Similar to how Infrastructure as Code revolutionized data center management, Compliance as Code is transforming GRC. By implementing compliance requirements directly into the CI/CD pipeline, organizations can automate testing, streamline reporting, and adapt to regulatory changes with unprecedented speed. 

One of the best ways to do so is with OSCAL, a machine-readable format best known for its use in FedRAMP certification. Given its growing adoption, OSCAL represents the future of compliance across sectors, enabling dramatic improvements in efficiency and accuracy. 

As a founding member of the OSCAL Foundation (a groundbreaking NIST-led initiative that aims to standardize and streamline compliance requirements), RegScale has architected its CCM platform to provide full support for OSCAL catalogs, profiles, security plans, POAMS, and more. We’re also a part of CRI’s OSCAL working group to incorporate OSCAL into their Profile. 

We’re deeply invested in the future of Compliance as Code and OSCAL for their potential to simplify and accelerate compliance across the public and private sectors. 

The Investment Question: Is Your GRC Future-Proof? 

Of course, the real question isn’t whether your GRC is compliant today, or whether your regulatory exam management is efficient this year; it’s whether your programs are purpose-built to adapt and thrive in tomorrow’s cybersecurity landscape. 

Here are a few hallmarks of a robust, future-proof GRC program: 

• Automation as a force multiplier to slash control owner workload 
• AI-enabled analytics to transform raw data into actionable insights
• Proactive audit preparation rather than reactive scrambling 
• Consistent regulatory responses delivered with accuracy, speed, and confidence 
• Enhanced collaboration between risk, compliance, and business teams 
• Liberated tech leadership focused on customer-facing innovation 

The financial impact of future-proofing your GRC and regulatory exam management programs is substantial. Every dollar and hour saved on compliance becomes a resource redirected toward developing innovation and managing security and risk. 

It’s also a self-perpetuating cycle of success. The more we automate, the more consistent our processes become. The more consistent they are, the easier they are to repeat and scale. And as we scale, the better we can handle new regulatory requirements and business changes without having to completely reinvent our approach. 

To learn more about transforming your regulatory exam management practice, visit our resources on the RegScale-CRI collaboration and on financial services.