How AI-Powered Horizon Scans Slash the Time You Spend Keeping up with Regulatory Changes

Introducing our Author

Shwetha Shantharam, AVP and Product Head at 4CRisk.ai, has more than 20 years’ experience in software,  specializing in AI-powered products for regulatory, compliance and risk teams. She joins us in this blog to introduce us to Horizon Scanning, explaining why leveraging AI to perform Horizon scanning of upcoming changes to regulations is the smart way to do this work 20, 30 or 40 times faster than the way your teams may be doing it now.  

What is a Horizon Scan and How are Scans Performed Manually?

Horizon scanning is a structured way of looking ahead to anticipate what might be coming over the horizon – in this case, to monitor upcoming changes to regulations, rules, laws and standards, across all relevant sites and sources, applicable to a particular organization. This helps organizations anticipate and prepare for upcoming shifts in the regulatory landscape, allowing various compliance, legal, security and regulatory affairs teams to adjust their policies, procedures, controls and operations to mitigate risks, and stay compliant.

The Horizon scan process is an essential first step in Regulatory Change Management before assessing the potential impact a change may have on business operations, compliance obligations, and risk exposure.

Many organizations monitor upcoming changes by performing regular scans manually.  They must be sure to cover all relevant sites and sources for regulations, rules, laws and standards applicable to their organizations to determine upcoming changes. This is a burden when performed manually and, additionally, is subject to errors and stale information.  Compliance teams are highly focused in order to not miss an upcoming change or obligation.

What is the Horizon Scan Process for Regulatory and Compliance teams?

Horizon scans can be a significant burden when performed manually and, additionally, is subject to errors and stale information.  The process teams follow include:  

Step 1: Proactively and continuously track potential regulatory changes, including new laws, regulations, standards and policy initiatives, including guidance and fines. This involves setting a schedule and being proactive in order to ensure every change is captured and correctly assessed.  

Step 2: Research and correlate changes to laws, regulations, rules and standards applicable to your organization by reviewing alerts and notifications from agencies and regulatory sources. The scope involves changes to laws, regulations, rules and standards applicable to their organization.

• Government websites and publications that provide information on proposed legislation, new regulations, and policy changes
• Regulatory news outlets that specialize in regulatory news and provide updates on changes in specific industries 
• Industry associations and professional organizations that provide information and analysis on regulatory developments. 

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Step 3: Gather and curate regulatory intelligence from feeds, emails and your subscriptions including context and applicability (guidance and examinations), organize changes by topics, and understand which alerts are actually in scope for different groups within your organization. This involves organizing changes by topics, to understand which details are actually in scope for their organization and what artifacts -policies, procedures, controls and training materials need to be updated.

Why are Regulatory Horizon Scans important

• Horizon scans enable organizations to be more proactive and less reactive in their approach to regulatory changes. 
• Scans help organizations meet and maintain compliance with current and future regulatory requirements and standards.
• By anticipating potential changes, businesses can proactively address and mitigate associated risks.
• Horizon scans can also identify opportunities for innovation and growth that arise from changes in the regulatory environment.
• Organizations that effectively implement horizon scans are better positioned to adapt to change, avoid risks and fines other organizations have endured, and gain a competitive edge. 

Why Leverage AI to proactively perform Horizon Scans?

As you can see by reviewing the horizon scan process above -  it’s A LOT of work to conduct scans manually.   However, comprehensive scans are required for organizations to build a more resilient and adaptable business that is better equipped to navigate the ever-changing regulatory landscape. 

AI-powered Horizon Scans are a game-changer for regulatory, risk and compliance program automation. For example, 4CRisk’s Horizon Scan Pro scans 20 to 30 X faster by automatically scanning the regulatory horizon in minutes, to determine upcoming changes, new guidances and other useful information.

Here’s some specific reasons why your team may want to leverage AI-Powered Horizon Scans.

AI scans are a secure and comprehensive method to research changes across multiple authoritative sources and time zones

4CRisk’s HorizonScan captures changes to laws, regulations, rules and standards relevant to your organization, automatically, across 50+ document types such as bills, proposals, final and interim rules, through streams of alerts and notifications from agencies and authoritative sources. Your team can:

• Subscribe to changes by regulators, parts or topics with daily or weekly summaries and alerts
• Automatically track changes across 2500+ authoritative sources and 50+ document types, including bills, proposals, final rules, and guidance.
• Search final rules and future effective dates.  
• Monitor regulatory shifts by regulator, topic, or rule part — with custom alerts and summaries delivered daily or weekly.
• Drill down to source documents with a single click and translate international regulatory text instantly to remove language barriers.
• Drill down to the authority source and documents publishing the change.  

AI can parse and analyze unstructured information in minutes

4CRisk’s HorizonScan can extract and parse large and complex unstructured and structured data (including PDFs) to identify and summarize changes to regulatory requirements and identify obligations. Your team can:  

• Receive curated, in-scope alerts tailored to your organization’s regulatory profile.
• Cut through the noise with AI-driven summaries, an AI-curated synopsis impact analysis, and automated obligation extraction.
• Understand the "what" and "why" behind a change with Ask ARIA Co-Pilot, our AI assistant that highlights and color-codes relevant regulatory sections.
• Easily identify specific changes from current to proposed.

AI generate filters, alerts and topics to makes your job easier

4CRisk’s HorizonScan can generate Topics and Tags to facilitate filtering, store alerts in an archive or work on them immediately with colleagues. This can help your teams:

• Collaborate with colleagues to plan and time changes to policies, procedures and controls.
• Align policy updates, internal communications, and training with effective dates of changes. Assign and track regulatory alerts as actionable tasks across teams from a centralized dashboard.
• Tag, filter, archive, or collaborate in real-time to keep your regulatory response coordinated and timely.
• Uncover changes before they become obligations.
• Perform side-by-side comparisons between proposed and existing rules.
• Leverage AI to generate topics, tags, and scope for streamlined workflows.

Summary Insights

AI tools give compliance teams an advantage in defining and aligning their organization's compliance posture. They enable teams to connect information, draw conclusions, and take confident action while addressing uncertainty. By leveraging the power of AI in compliance and risk, organizations can streamline their compliance and risk management efforts, ensuring a more secure and stable future.  

4CRisk's comprehensive approach to horizon scanning addresses long-standing concerns around efficiency, completeness and ease of use, while leveraging award-winning AI technology to make your Regulatory, Risk, and Compliance programs more effective, efficient and agile.  

4CRIsk’s HorizonScan Pro provides significant advancements that transform how Regulatory, Risk, and Compliance professionals manage their work.  

Stay Ahead of Regulatory Change with 4CRisk's HorizonScan.

Regulatory change doesn’t wait. Neither should you.

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Check out these related blogs and resources  

• https://www.4crisk.ai/post/compliance-three-key-actions-to-leveraging-ai-successfully-in-2025  ‍
• https://www.4crisk.ai/post/regulatory-intelligence-how-the-regtech-sector-is-being-transformed-by-ai-in-regulatory-risk-and-compliance-programs
• ‍https://www.4crisk.ai/whitepapers/revolutionizing-regulatory-change-management-the-power-of-ai