Kris Stewart, Wolters Kluwer’s Senior Director of Product Management and architect of Compliance Intelligence, brings almost 30 years of expertise in bridging regulatory complexity with emerging technologies. A legal professional turned compliance innovator, Stewart specializes in AI-powered solutions for American banking institutions. We explore her vision for the AI-powered banking compliance team of the future.
Q: Compliance teams face 30–50% productivity drains from manual processes. What core skills separate future-ready professionals?
Stewart: "Curiosity and adaptability are the new compliance superpowers. With AI handling transactional work like scraping 15,000+ annual regulatory updates, teams must pivot from data gatherers to strategic interpreters. Our research shows professionals who pair regulatory expertise with collaborative problem-solving reduce penalty risks significantly. Compliance Intelligence accelerates this shift – using AI to cluster legal requirements and generate obligations, freeing experts to focus on higher impact tasks like risk analysis."
Q: How do you balance generative AI’s potential with compliance’s need for accuracy?
Stewart: "Think of AI as a tireless compliance analyst, not a replacement for judgment. While Compliance Intelligence provides automated regulatory maintenance by analyzing the impact of regulatory changes and suggesting updates. It also streamlines the creation and operationalization of an inventory of applicable rules and regulations optimized for downstream mapping to risks and controls. Banking compliance teams can now focus on their nuanced interpretations where needed while streamlining compliance management throughout their organization.”
Q: Compliance leaders often talk about gaps in ‘operationalizing compliance.’ What does that look like in practice?
Stewart: A first principle in designing Compliance Intelligence was to provide maximum transparency, efficiency and traceability. Our goal is to automate so much of the creation and maintenance of their a bank’s regulatory obligations, so that they can focus on keeping the business operating in compliance.
Q: What’s your boldest prediction for 2026 compliance programs?
Stewart: "My bold prediction for 2026 is that AI will be help banks really reimagine compliance from the ground up, particularly from an operations perspective. Next year, more AI - likely more agentic AI - will complete more of the routine day-to-day information management, enabling more strategic focus on compliance risk management.
About Kris Stewart:
A product development, data science and compliance veteran, Stewart leads AI innovation at Wolters Kluwer, focusing on operationalizing regulatory intelligence across compliance workflows.
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