As financial services compliance trends evolve in 2026, firms are facing new pressure to move faster without adding risk. Drawing on insights from across Red Oak, you'll hear key trends from 2025 and learn why connected workflows, AI governance, and audit-ready supervision will define the year ahead.
The past year challenged financial services firms with a mix of contradictions: a lighter regulatory tone but unchanged rules, a surge in AI adoption but no regulatory governance, increasingly complex investment products alongside increasingly risk-sensitive investors, and advisors facing both rising expectations and rising content volume.
When reflecting on 2025 and looking ahead to 2026 with Red Oak’s thought leaders, one theme stood out: Firms need a faster, smarter, connected way to work across compliance, marketing, distribution, and supervision without adding risk.
We spoke with Chief Technology Officer Rick Grashel, Senior Vice President of Strategy, Mike Lubansky, Co-Founder and Compliance Advisor Cathy Vasilev and Chief Operating Officer Kirsten Newbold-Knipp to gather trends and predictions from a compliance perspective.
This year, compliance teams felt immense pressure to incorporate AI.
While some firms saw efficiency gains. Others struggled to convert AI’s promise into operational lift. But the biggest challenge was not adoption, it was oversight.
Grashel explained that AI was at the crux of 2025 trends. Firms were expected to embrace AI and incorporate it into content review processes. While this will undoubtably continue in 2026, he expects regulatory authorities to incorporate AI into their post-review as well, stating that “regulators and internal audit teams are poised to deploy AI to make an initial determination if a firm made a compliant decision.”
Lubansky echoed this concern, stating that in 2026, AI governance will move from “nice-to-have” to non-negotiable. AI governance may be challenging for firms and technology vendors if they have built AI into their processes for optimizing efficiency without putting in all the necessary guardrails around documentation, model oversight, retention, and explainability. This will matter just as much as efficiency gains.
Furthermore, 2026 will likely become a “put up or shut up” year for AI ROI. If executives don’t see bottom-line proof, some will double down while others will strategically pull back.
The firms that win will be the ones using AI from a compliance-first lens, ensuring it’s implemented responsibly, defensibly, and with audit-ready precision.
Regulation in 2025 carried an unusual duality. On one hand, the early Trump administration signaled a desire for fewer regulations and lighter enforcement, a message that, if taken at face value, suggested a more forgiving compliance environment. But as Vasilev noted, “while the pendulum swings with each administration, none of the existing regulations disappear. Firms still face the same obligations around documentation, books and records, cybersecurity, and marketing and distribution oversight.”
Meanwhile, FINRA’s communications in 2025 felt more laissez-faire, a shift that stood out to long-time industry observers. This lack of guidance left some compliance teams wondering how to incorporate AI, and what enforcement might look like. Risk starts to emerge when firms misinterpret the tone and act as if the rules have softened.
Newbold-Knipp reiterated Vasilev’s stance on regulatory expectation regardless of shifting political priorities. She said, "SEC enforcement may have slowed in 2025, but it’s retrospective in nature. Decisions firms make today will be examined two or three years from now.” Seasoned firms should be prepared, knowing that the tide can turn quickly. In a year where expectations evolve faster than formal regulation, the safest strategy is tight, connected processes with auditability built in.
The group warned that the first major AI-related fine will set off an industry-wide shockwave. Firms furthest along in early adoption who also have weak governance frameworks will bear the highest risk. It's likely that the penalty will drive new regulations and a shift in regulatory posture.
Looking ahead, Red Oak leaders expect more turbulence in 2026:
As marketing expectations evolve, financial firms need tools that make it easier for advisors to deliver timely, relevant, and personalized content to their clients. Red Oak’s Distribution & Engagement solution, 4U, connects seamlessly with financial firms’ compliance systems to deliver pre-approved content directly into advisors’ workflows. From content creation to delivery and analysis, every step is auditable, automated, and compliant.
We spoke with Chief Distribution Evangelist Anita Heisl and Chief Operating Officer Kirsten Newbold-Knipp to explore trends from a content distribution and advisor engagement perspective.
Complexity in portfolio construction is rising, and firms are emphasizing unified oversight, sleeve-level management, and tax-aware implementation.
Heisl revisited and analyzed 2025 content within Red Oak’s compliant content distribution product, 4U. She identified trending topics and search terms among advisors, offering a glimpse into the questions, conversations, and concerns advisors were hearing from investors throughout the year. Heisl reported that the topic “direct indexing” saw a staggering +3,221% surge in engagement on Red Oak’s 4U platform, showing that investors don’t just want to understand direct indexing, they want to understand how it fits into their overall tax planning. This surge reflects a fundamental shift in investor priorities toward after-tax returns, personalization, and control. Direct indexing is moving from a premium offering to a mainstream expectation as more content, aimed at a broader set of investors, is being added to the platform.
In 2025, engagement with UMA content increased by 608% and SMA content increased by 224% in the platform, with advisors consuming foundational educational content. Regulatory expectations around suitability, documentation, and model oversight, including the implications of Reg BI, are also pushing firms to adopt account structures that provide stronger central supervision and consistency, which UMAs can help with.
Newbold-Knipp notes that product innovation grew in complexity too. Firms increasingly introduced hybrid investment products, such as alternative strategies wrapped in mutual fund or ETF structures, or insurance products with tax-advantaged components. These offerings often span multiple regulatory regimes, requiring heightened coordination between marketing, distribution, and compliance.
This growing product complexity, which is expected to continue and gain momentum in 2026, amplifies the need for connected workflows that ensure consistency across departments and faster turnaround times for advisor-facing materials.
In December 2025, data in Red Oak’s 4U platform showed a surge in advisor searches for "2026" and "2026 Outlook" content in the platform. When looking at content from our investment company partners, these five themes surfaced and will shape the investment landscape in 2026: From the content we've seen from our investment company partners, we're expecting these five themes to be a focus for advisors in 2026:
In today’s digital-first landscape, supervision is critical. In collaboration with our partners at MirrorWeb, Red Oak’s Supervision & Monitoring solutions help compliance teams oversee all digital interactions, from websites and social media to text messages and collaboration tools, with powerful automation and trusted archiving.
We discussed trends in the supervision space with Chief Supervision Evangelist James Cella, Chief Operating Officer Kirsten Newbold-Knipp and Chief Distribution Evangelist Anita Heisl.
Cella warned that content volumes will only increase in 2026, driven by both market volatility and the shift toward digital communication. People are “talking less and typing more,” and each piece of digital content becomes part of the compliance workload, requiring diligent supervision.
Compliance teams must oversee more content from more channels with the same or fewer resources. In addition to increased content volume, each vendor requires initial and ongoing due diligence, making more robust RegTech solutions appealing.
Newbold-Knipp anticipates that firms will feel pressure to use AI in smart, and sometimes risky, ways as consumers expect fast, seamless and personalized financial advice.
2025 revealed a shift in how advisors source information and support their clients during volatile periods.
On Red Oak's 4U platform, Heisl shared that the term most-searched by advisors during the year was “tariffs,” followed closely by queries related to the “Big Beautiful Bill” and the government shutdown, an indication that advisors turn to compliant educational content to help their clients navigate times of uncertainty.
AI-related searches climbed 60%, making it clear that advisors and investors are not just curious about artificial intelligence; they expect their wealth platforms to help them navigate it.
Social Security, Medicare, retirement planning, estate planning, and long-term care continue to be priorities for advisors each year, sitting at the intersection of financial security, policy complexity, and deeply personal client decision-making. The sustained volume of searches indicates that advisors are looking for clear, compliant explanations they can share with clients who are navigating some of the most consequential financial decisions in their lives.
Financial organizations must provide timely, relevant, and compliant educational materials to help advisors support investors, when and where investors want to consume that content. And it’s imperative that communications are closely supervised to remain compliant.
Because of the increasing complexity across channels and departments, firms are prioritizing integrated ecosystems rather than siloed solutions. They not only want systems that connect; they need visibility, scalability, and risk controls that span teams and workflows.
Disjointed technology has become one of the industry’s most significant bottlenecks, especially when it comes to driving further efficiencies and automation. Software alone isn't the problem, it's the gaps between software solutions. Too many platforms and too many handoffs between departments, firms, and vendors create too many places where risk can creep in unnoticed.
Throughout 2025, Red Oak doubled down on innovation, investing in its compliance, distribution and supervision product families to help firms address industry challenges
Looking ahead to 2026, Red Oak leaders pointed out the emerging importance of semantic layers and shared industry ontology, the connective intelligence that enables platforms to understand each other, but more importantly understand context across companies, roles and users. As AI's role in FinTech, and particularly RegTech, continues to grow, establishing unambiguous shared language will be essential.
In 2026, Red Oak is poised to stay ahead of what’s next with its Compliance Connectivity Platform. The unified ecosystem features compliance-grade AI, streamlined workflows that accelerate productivity without adding risk, and a connected distribution experience that delivers approved content to advisors exactly when they need it, all backed by the books-and-records controls firms rely on to collaborate confidently.
Red Oak’s Compliance Connectivity Platform is designed to eliminate friction across teams, proactively reduce risk at every stage, and empower firms to operate with confidence in an increasingly unpredictable environment.
This blog post draws on insights from across Red Oak, including contributions from Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Rick Grashel (LinkedIn); Senior Vice President of Strategy Mike Lubansky (LinkedIn); Co-Founder and Compliance Advisor Cathy Vasilev (LinkedIn); Chief Operating Officer Kirsten Newbold-Knipp (LinkedIn); Chief Supervision Evangelist James Cella (LinkedIn); and Chief Distribution Evangelist Anita Heisl (LinkedIn).