As organisations look ahead to 2026, risk, compliance and assurance functions are being reshaped by rapid advances in AI, growing regulatory scrutiny and rising expectations around delivering good customer outcomes. What were once discrete activities, such as compliance and customer experience, are converging into a single, end-to-end activity.
Boards and regulators are no longer interested in retrospective assurance; they expect scalable, technology-enabled insight that demonstrates effective governance, identifies harm early and drives meaningful improvement across all customer journeys. The coming year will be defined not by how much data firms hold, but by how well they connect technology, assurance and human judgment to evidence good outcomes for customers in practice.
AI Moves from Innovation to Expectation
Over the next year, we expect that AI will shift decisively from experimentation to expectation. Boards and regulators will assume that organisations are using technology to enhance insight, efficiency and control, especially in areas such as risk identification, outcomes testing and data reporting.
However, this comes with new challenges. AI introduces its own risks: model bias, data quality issues, explainability concerns and a continued need for ‘human in the loop’ solutions to check outputs. The FCA is already asking firms to demonstrate not only how AI is used, but how it is governed, assured and aligned to risk appetite, and this scrutiny can only be expected to increase.
This will require closer integration between technology teams, risk functions and assurance activities, breaking down silos that many organisations still struggle with today.
Assurance Becomes Scalable and Continuous
Traditional assurance models are increasingly misaligned with modern risk. Thematic reviews, static control testing and small sample sizes are no longer seen as being sufficient to mitigate the risk of harm.
We are already seeing leading firms shift towards continuous assurance, using real-time data and scalable testing to understand risk as it evolves and mitigate harm. This is particularly critical where risks overlap, such as sales, servicing, complaints and collections risks, which can all present themselves within an interconnected end-to-end customer journey.
The challenge will not be a lack of data, but the ability to aggregate, interpret and act on it consistently across the business.
Boards and Regulators Demand Actionable Root Cause Analysis
As the data and insight gathered by firms increase, firms will be presented with a huge amount of root cause data. In order to ensure issues are rectified and corrected, undertaking rectification work to the firm’s policies, processes, and controls will be key, alongside tailored training interventions, to ensure the feedback loop is closed.
Risk and assurance functions that cannot provide concise, evidence-based insight and drive actionable change will fall behind. We are already seeing some of our clients redeploy resources from assurance activity to root case and rectification activity, driving further value and improvements across the customer journey.
Compliance and Customer Experience become ‘joined at the hip’
Over the coming year, compliance and customer experience will be increasingly joined at the hip, as detailed assessments of end-to-end customer journeys become ubiquitous and firms gain valuable insight into not just compliance, but also customer experience pain points.
We have already seen the commercial benefits of adopting AI within customer journey assessments. Whether it’s the manual effort saved on reviewing reams of customer interactions, the identification of customer friction points, poor colleague interactions or simply a lack of customer understanding, the traditional delineation between customer experience and compliance no longer exists.
The two functions are now more closely unified than ever, with both areas aiming to deliver good customer outcomes. This is ably assisted by the identification of issues at scale and across all customer touchpoints, underpinned by technology and comes with the added benefit of driving improved commercial and customer experience outcomes.
How Assure 4 Supports Readiness for 2026
These trends point to a common requirement: a more connected, intelligent and scalable approach to customer assurance and outcomes testing.
Assure 4 is designed to help organisations meet the demands of 2026 by bringing outcomes testing under the auspices of a single, integrated, award-winning framework and approach. Our solution is underpinned by AI and uses a human in the loop approach to enable organisations to move beyond manual customer outcomes testing assessments and towards continuous, outcome-focused assurance.
Assure 4 is designed to be more efficient, more effective and significantly more scalable than traditional outcomes testing, all while reducing cost and increasing the ability for firms to undertake meaningful root cause analysis activity.
As expectations rise, organisations that invest now in robust assurance capability will not only meet regulatory demands but also gain a strategic advantage.
More broadly, operating across all regulated sectors, Square 4 can support your first, second or third-line teams, enabling you to combine your in-house knowledge with the breadth of experience and expertise from our specialist team of consultants. Our goal is to work closely with you to help you identify and manage risk whilst also supporting with implementing solutions that support your business goals.
Contact us today to find out more about how we can support and set you up for success in 2026 – click here.
