While that increase in regulation has been most obvious on the financial services sector, the trend towards more active regulatory enforcement has also been highlighted in areas such as data protection and competition.
In 2021, Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence recorded 64,152 regulatory alerts across 190 countries, with 67,125 recorded in 2020. By comparison, the average number of alerts in the previous decade was just 33,954 per annum. “The aim of regulators has been to get fines up to the level where they are a real deterrent. Regulators like the FCA or SEC do not want fines to be seen as an acceptable cost of doing business.”