Global Relay Industry Insights: Compliant Communications 2025

As data comprehensiveness becomes mission critical, the intersection between recordkeeping and surveillance is more important than ever.

Connectors Report

28 May 2025 4 mins read

By Jay Hampshire

For the third year running, our Industry Insights: Compliant Communications report has compiled insights from across the industry to understand the biggest challenges and latest trends across recordkeeping, surveillance, and communications compliance. From the continued rise of AI to the risks of social media and whether firms have answered the “WhatsApp question,” our report gives a valuable snapshot of how the industry is tackling fast-evolving risks.

Here’s a preview of our findings:

Over 40% of respondents still ban channels like WhatsApp and WeChat

50.6% of North American respondents think channel bans are effective compared to just 31.7% of those in EMEA

39% of firms now enable and monitor all comms channels – compared to just 10.3% in 2023

33% of respondents are already using AI in compliance workflows

Only 29.5% of respondents said getting employees to stick to compliance policies is their biggest challenge – a drop from 65.2% in 2024

52.4% view social media channels as a communications compliance risk

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Download the report for more insight into topics including:

Whether enabling and monitoring channels has become a preferred compliance solution over channel bans
How quickly AI is being embraced in the compliance space, and what it’s being used for
Why firms view social media channels as a communications compliance risk – and what they’re doing about it
Why EMEA firms are more “AI-positive” than their North American counterparts
How the biggest trends in communications compliance have shifted over the last three years

And access insights from compliance and surveillance experts

Alex Viall, Chief Strategy Officer – Global Relay

On channel bans …

“I am shocked that 40.4% of respondents continue to simply ban some of the most widely used communications channels despite the wide availability of compliant capture solutions.

In reality, many employees within these firms may not be complying with these bans, placing them at high risk of an off-channel communications enforcement action.

Those that are complying are probably doing less business than their peers as they cannot use the preferred methods of communications that their clients – and the market – demand.”

Emma Parry, Senior Advisor, Culture, Conduct, and Risk – NovaFin Consulting Ltd.

Employee buy-in on compliance policies …

“The tsunami of recordkeeping enforcement actions (notoriously referred to as the ‘WhatsApp fines’) have clearly made an impact.”

“Employees have undoubtedly been read the riot act and told that there is zero tolerance for non-compliance.”

Don McElligott, Vice President, Compliance Supervision – Global Relay

The AI adoption curve …

“Recent technological advances in AI are moving the needle quickly when it comes to adoption, although AI technologies are still generally perceived as difficult, expensive, and only marginally effective for risk detection use cases.”

“Compliance teams are crying out for a tool that “just works” without hours of training, tuning, and refinement. Many current AI solution providers are only supporting established risk detection technologies, weeding out some noise and adding a little value as a chat bot.”

Rob Mason, Director, Regulatory Intelligence – Global Relay

Social media risk …

“Social media continues to be a significant concern, so it’s no surprise that over half of respondents see it as presenting a communications compliance risk.”

“Given the nature of social media channels blurring the lines of personal and professional communications, and its potential to sit outside of compliance and surveillance efforts as it is not a ‘traditional’ channels for business comms, it’s difficult to see how teams monitoring for market abuse can justify ignoring this risk area.”

Ryan Sheridan, Senior Manager, Regulatory Intelligence – Global Relay

And the challenges of channel capture.

“Disparate data sources and bifurcation of compliance and technology resources, as well as jumbles of third-party partners and legacy architectures, can make it challenging for firms to access a single source of truth. Knocking down siloes within organizations can help improve the situation, but the drive to do this needs to come from the top of the house.”

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Published 28 May 2025

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Jay Hampshire Senior Content Writer

Global Relay Industry Insights: Compliant Communications 2025