You certainly remember the Great Recession, which impacted financial markets in the U.S. and across the globe from December 2007 through June 2009. The most significant U.S. economic downturn since the Great Depression, it was a result of the bursting housing bubble, which in turn had a significant impact on the high-risk mortgage-backed securities and derivative products that were heavily marketed at the time. Shortly after the global economy began to recover, the U.S. and other countries across the world knew they needed to act to prevent history from repeating itself. To curtail high-risk behavior and restore consumer confidence in the markets they began to implement stringent regulations across the financial services industry and committed the necessary resources to enforce them.

While the success of these regulations is debatable, we can agree that they dramatically increased the compliance burden on banks and other financial institutions. With regulators having the authority to issue harsh penalties for violations, efforts to ensure full compliance were necessary for regulated entities to remain competitive. Complying with the new regulations was easier said than done though, and these institutions quickly realized that full compliance came with a high cost.