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As the regulatory landscape intensifies, 2025 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for General Counsels (GCs). According to a 2024 KPMG report, a wave of new regulations will drive compliance challenges, requiring robust change management strategies.
Below are the top compliance challenges GCs will face in 2025, along with solutions to navigate these complex developments effectively.
While KPMG analysts anticipate a slowdown in the pace of regulatory activity, the unparalleled pace of rulemaking in major jurisdictions over the last few years is expected to result in a heavier compliance burden and increased regulatory scrutiny in 2025.
In the context of corporate transparency, businesses registered in the US before 2024 are facing steep monetary and criminal penalties for failure to report their beneficial owners (BOI) by January 01, 2025. Meanwhile, companies registered in 2025 will face even stricter requirements to make their BOI disclosures to FinCEN within 30 calendar days after incorporation.
Similarly, regulators are pushing the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing agenda following the final rule by FinCEN on August 28, 2024, setting requirements for both registered and exempt reporting advisers.
That said, increased regulatory scrutiny across jurisdictions will be among the top compliance challenges for General Counsels in 2025, calling for greater strategic planning and additional resources.
General Counsels need to focus on legal compliance software that integrates regulatory updates, manages risk, and automates reporting to handle this increased scrutiny.
In 2023, violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) cost companies over €2 billion, and regulatory scrutiny in the cybersecurity and data privacy sectors is only set to increase in the coming years.
Since the GDPR’s implementation in 2018, which established a global benchmark for data privacy, major jurisdictions like China and Brazil have followed suit with their own stringent consumer privacy laws, each imposing severe penalties for non-compliance.
In the U.S., 20 states have enacted consumer privacy laws, with five set to take effect in January 2025. Regulators, including the SEC, are expected to heighten their oversight of data privacy as cybersecurity risks continue to grow.
For General Counsels, this underscores the need for a comprehensive framework that aligns with varying regulations across jurisdictions to ensure seamless compliance.
Legal teams should leverage compliance tools that monitor multi-jurisdictional data laws and automate privacy compliance across regions.
The evolving federal, state, and international regulations lead to continued regulatory divergence and growing jurisdictional uncertainty. These factors, combined with increased penalty burden and greater demand for transparency worldwide, bring multi-jurisdictional compliance among the top compliance challenges for General Counsels in 2025.
The legal teams can adapt to the increasing complexity of multi-jurisdictional compliance by employing technology that consolidates governance, risk and entity management.
By implementing legal compliance software like Athennian, GCs can automate filings, disclosures and reporting across jurisdictions, streamlining compliance efforts and mitigating the growing complexity of cross-border regulations.
The transition towards the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda for global businesses over the last few years presents an additional compliance burden for legal teams tasked with enterprise disclosures.
With rapidly evolving global sustainability regulations, corporate ESG responsibilities are moving from optional to mandatory, which necessitates establishing new processes and implementing best practices for the legal teams to ensure compliance.
While the metrics for ESG disclosures are continuously evolving, companies need to adopt a proactive approach, taking steps for ongoing improvement of their reporting. Invest in ESG compliance platforms that offer centralized data management and agile reporting capabilities to meet ongoing disclosure requirements.
As AI becomes a strategic priority for companies from all niches and industries, governments worldwide have initiated over 300 AI-related regulations, which are currently at different stages of development.
With the European Union pioneering AI Act, other jurisdictions evolve their own regulatory frameworks, necessitating businesses to implement AI risk governance and management practices whether they are engaged in AI development or deploying it for their operations.
With such regulatory diversity, global organizations operating across jurisdictions will have to manage potential divergence in AI laws, which can only increase over time. As a bare minimum, companies implementing AI within their operations need to appoint a responsible committee to respond to AI regulations and implement AI governance and risk management.
GCs must appoint AI governance committees and use compliance management systems that can adapt to different regulatory frameworks, minimizing risks and ensuring compliance.
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In 2025, General Counsels and legal teams will be confronted with increased scrutiny from regulators following the emergence of new legislation across all jurisdictions covering such strategic priorities as combating money laundering and terrorism, transparency, ESG and adoption of AI technology, among others.
These priorities will remain among the top compliance challenges for General Counsels in 2025, which require enhanced data governance, reporting and disclosures.
Legal teams tasked with implementing General Counsel risk management strategies will need the assistance of technology, such as ESG compliance solutions featuring a central platform for compliance tasks to collect, process and report an increased number of data points required by regulations.
If you are interested in more information about streamlining compliance processes, reducing risk and centralizing data with legal software that addresses the top compliance challenges for General Counsels in 2025, please don't hesitate to get in touch with the Athennian team to request a free demo,
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