Reflections on the ICA FinCrime & Banking Forum 2026

I recently spent two days at the ICA FinCrime & Banking Forum in London, and came away with more to think about than I expected.

The Forum is built around the room rather than the stage. It runs under the Chatham House Rule, so people speak candidly, and it showed. Across presentations, fireside chats and workshops, I met compliance and financial crime leaders from banks, asset managers, brokers, payments firms and tech businesses. Some of the best conversations happened between sessions.

Rather than recap every session, I want to share the themes that kept coming up, and the one question nobody could stop asking.

Five themes that shaped the conversation

Protectionism. Tariffs, trade barriers and sanctions regimes are multiplying, and they rarely line up across borders. For compliance teams, that means more rules to track, more conflicts to resolve, and more judgement calls that no policy manual can settle.

Resilience. Operational resilience is no longer a project with an end date. Firms must show they can withstand disruption, whether from a cyber attack, a failed supplier or a geopolitical shock. Compliance is increasingly part of proving it.

Reshoring. Functions moved offshore over the last two decades are being brought closer to home. Regulators want clear oversight, and firms want the people who own key risks within reach. That changes where compliance work sits, and who does it.

AI. No surprise here, but the tone has shifted from whether to use it to how to govern it. AI is changing screening, monitoring and investigations, and compliance officers are being asked both to use it and to police it.

State intervention in finance. Governments are taking a more active hand in financial services, from sanctions to economic security. The line between regulatory compliance and national policy is getting thinner.

The compliance officer of 2030

One question came up in almost every session: what will the compliance officer of 2030 look like? The answer, more often than not, was simple. Very different.

Put the five themes together and it's easy to see why. The role is being pulled in several directions at once: more geopolitical, more technical, more operational and closer to the business. Knowing the rulebook still matters, but it's no longer enough on its own.

That has real implications for hiring as profiles firms ask for today may not be the ones they need in four years' time. I'll explore this in more depth in a follow-up article soon.

Let's keep the conversation going

Thank you to the ICA for hosting, and to everyone who shared their views so openly. If you're thinking about how your compliance function needs to change, or where your own career could be by 2030, I'd be glad to talk.

Ian Morrison is Practice Lead for Compliance, Governance and Financial Crime Prevention at Meraki Talent, with more than 20 years of international executive search experience. Contact Ian at ian.morrison@merakitalent.com or 020 4572 9345, or connect with him on LinkedIn.