Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Regulatory Compliance Specialist

🎯 Role Definition

The Regulatory Compliance Specialist is an experienced compliance professional who develops, maintains, and enforces policies and controls to ensure the organization complies with local, national, and international laws and regulations. This role conducts regulatory monitoring and risk assessments, supports audits and examinations, prepares regulatory filings and reports, delivers training, and acts as a primary liaison with regulators and internal stakeholders to remediate findings and close control gaps. The Specialist balances legal/regulatory knowledge with practical business partnering to enable compliant growth.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Compliance Analyst or Compliance Coordinator with 1–3 years of experience
Regulatory Affairs Coordinator or Legal Assistant with exposure to regulatory processes
Internal Audit Associate or Risk Analyst transitioning into compliance

Advancement To:

Senior Regulatory Compliance Specialist
Compliance Manager or Regulatory Affairs Manager
Head of Compliance / Director of Regulatory Affairs
Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) / VP of Compliance

Lateral Moves:

Risk Management Analyst or Risk Manager
Internal Auditor / Audit Manager
Legal Counsel specializing in regulatory or corporate compliance
Privacy Officer or Data Protection Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Develop, maintain, and enhance enterprise-wide compliance policies, procedures, and control frameworks to ensure alignment with applicable laws and regulatory guidance (including AML, KYC, GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, FCPA).
Conduct ongoing regulatory monitoring to identify new and changing laws, rulemakings, and enforcement trends; translate regulatory change into actionable requirements and update controls and policies accordingly.
Lead periodic and ad-hoc compliance risk assessments across business lines and products, quantify regulatory risk, and recommend mitigation plans to senior management.
Manage and execute regulatory filings, licensing submissions, and mandatory reports to regulators and supervisory bodies, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and audit readiness.
Design, implement, and test internal controls to ensure effective mitigation of regulatory and operational risk; document control activities and remediation plans.
Coordinate and support external regulatory examinations and inspections, prepare response packages, and drive remediation of examination findings in partnership with business owners.
Investigate potential compliance breaches, escalations, and incidents — perform root-cause analysis, recommend corrective actions, and track issue resolution to closure.
Build, deliver, and maintain role-specific compliance training programs and awareness campaigns for employees, contractors, and third parties to promote a strong compliance culture.
Perform transaction monitoring reviews and investigations for AML/KYC programs; escalate suspicious activity and support filing of SARs or other regulatory notifications where required.
Maintain and update regulatory registers, compliance calendars, and documentation repositories to ensure centralized, searchable, and auditable records.
Support policy interpretation and provide timely, pragmatic compliance advice to product, operations, sales, and technology teams during product design, launches, and change control.
Develop metrics, dashboards, and KPIs to measure program effectiveness and report compliance posture and trends to senior leadership, audit committees, or boards.
Lead third-party and vendor compliance due diligence, onboarding reviews, and ongoing monitoring to ensure outsourcing arrangements meet regulatory expectations and contractual controls.
Coordinate remediation projects, including project management of corrective action plans, stakeholder communication, milestone tracking, and validation testing after fixes are implemented.
Collaborate with legal, privacy, IT security, finance, and business unit stakeholders to integrate regulatory requirements into contractual templates, system requirements, and business processes.
Review marketing, communications, and product disclosures for regulatory accuracy and potential consumer protection issues; advise on corrective communications where necessary.
Support internal and external audits by providing evidence, control narratives, test results, and status updates; implement auditor-recommended improvements.
Maintain subject matter expertise on industry-specific regulations and regulator expectations; serve as internal point-of-contact during regulatory consultations and industry working groups.
Prepare executive briefings, compliance reports, and board-level materials summarizing regulatory risk, incident status, remediation progress, and emerging issues.
Conduct proactive gap analyses and compliance health checks across new business initiatives, partnerships, and geographic expansions; recommend mitigations before launch.
Ensure data governance and recordkeeping practices meet regulatory retention and privacy requirements, working with data owners to map data flows and remediate gaps.
Support licensing and registration processes for regulated activities, including document collection, process mapping, and communication with licensing authorities.

Secondary Functions

Support continuous improvement initiatives by identifying automation opportunities in monitoring, reporting, and onboarding workflows to reduce manual controls and increase scalability.
Assist in cross-functional projects to translate regulatory requirements into system requirements and user stories for engineering and product teams.
Maintain collaborative relationships with regulators, industry associations, and external counsel to clarify guidance and coordinate responses to regulatory inquiries.
Provide subject-matter support for mergers, acquisitions, and vendor integrations to assess regulatory impacts and ensure compliance continuity.
Participate in enterprise crisis response and business continuity planning from a compliance and regulatory notification standpoint.
Mentor and train junior compliance staff, providing review and quality assurance for their investigative work and control testing.
Support ad-hoc reporting requests from senior leadership, audit teams, and regulators with accurate and timely data and narratives.
Help maintain a centralized knowledge base of regulatory guidance, precedent decisions, and internal interpretations to accelerate decision-making.
Contribute to internal working groups focused on product governance, code of conduct updates, and anti-bribery/ethical sourcing initiatives.
Audit and validate vendor attestations, SOC reports, and compliance certifications as part of vendor risk oversight.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Regulatory program management: ability to build, operate, and mature compliance programs end-to-end (policy, controls, monitoring, remediation).
Regulatory interpretation: skill in reading statutes, rules, guidance, and enforcement actions and converting them into business requirements.
AML/KYC program design and transaction monitoring experience, including suspicious activity investigations and SAR/STR filing processes.
Privacy and data protection knowledge (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA) including data mapping, DPIAs, and privacy notices.
Internal control frameworks and audit testing (SOX, COSO) experience for designing and testing control effectiveness.
Risk assessment and risk quantification methodologies, including control gap analysis and remediation planning.
Regulatory reporting and filings: preparing regulatory returns, licensing submissions, and timely responses to supervisory requests.
Policy and procedure writing with version control and subject-specific standard operating procedures (SOPs).
Vendor due diligence and third-party risk management, including contract review and ongoing monitoring frameworks.
Experience with compliance tooling and automation: case management systems, transaction monitoring systems, GRC platforms, and basic SQL or Excel data analysis.
Investigation and case management skills: evidence collection, interview techniques, case documentation, and escalation management.
Familiarity with anti-bribery/anti-corruption regulations (FCPA, UK Bribery Act) and sanctions screening programs.
Financial products and services regulatory knowledge (if applicable): banking, payments, securities, or insurance regulatory frameworks.
Project management: ability to coordinate cross-functional remediation projects and meet regulatory deadlines.

Soft Skills

Strong written and verbal communication skills for clear guidance to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
High attention to detail and meticulous documentation habits to create audit-ready work products.
Analytical thinking and problem-solving aptitude to break down complex regulatory issues into actionable tasks.
Business partnering and stakeholder management: persuasive, pragmatic, and customer-focused while protecting regulatory requirements.
Ethical judgment, integrity, and ability to handle confidential information with discretion.
Adaptability and resilience in a fast-changing regulatory environment with competing priorities.
Time management and organizational skills to manage multiple ongoing reviews, filings, and projects.
Critical thinking and sound decision-making under pressure during regulatory engagements or incident responses.
Coaching and mentoring capability to develop junior compliance team members.
Collaborative mindset and ability to work effectively in cross-functional, matrixed organizations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Law, Finance, Business Administration, Accounting, Economics, Risk Management, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree (LLM, MBA, MPA) or Juris Doctor (JD) for roles with significant regulatory interpretation responsibility.
Professional certifications such as CAMS (Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist), CRCM (Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager), CCEP (Certified Compliance & Ethics Professional), CRMA, or CIS.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Law
Finance or Accounting
Business Administration
Risk Management
Information Security / Privacy

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

3–7 years of progressive compliance, regulatory affairs, risk, or audit experience for a mid-level Regulatory Compliance Specialist role.

Preferred:

5+ years of experience in a regulated industry (banking, fintech, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, or securities) with demonstrable experience managing or executing regulatory programs, investigations, and remediation projects.
Proven track record interacting with regulators, preparing regulatory filings, and responding to examinations or enforcement actions.
Experience using compliance tooling (GRC platforms, transaction monitoring systems) and performing data-driven reviews using Excel, SQL, or analytics tools is highly desirable.