Governance, risk and compliance

SmartSuite for the Regulatory Change Manager

The Regulatory Change Manager monitors new and amended laws, regulations and standards, assesses their impact on the organization's obligations, policies and controls, and drives the changes through to implementation. They keep the obligations library current as the regulatory landscape moves.

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Reports to:

Compliance Director

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What you own

Monitor regulatory sources for new and amended requirements
Assess the applicability and impact of each change on obligations, policies and controls
Route changes to owners for implementation and track completion
Update the obligations register and framework mappings
Maintain horizon-scanning reports for leadership
Evidence the organization's response to each regulatory change

At a glance

The GRC processes this role owns, touches and depends on.

Owns

accountable for the process

compliance

Touches

contributes or approves

policy, issues-actions, reporting

Depends on

consumes its output

risk

How the GRC processes connect

Three lines of defense set the frame; the chain shows where each process hands off to the next. Colors follow the role: navy is owned, blue is touched, gray is depended on.

Reporting lines

Who this role reports to, who reports to them, and the peers they work with most.

Reports to

Compliance Director

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Direct reports

Works closely with

How SmartSuite supports this role

Lead

Compliance management. Logs each regulatory change, assesses applicability and impact, and links it to the obligations, policies and controls it affects.

Policy management. Triggers policy reviews when a change requires an update and tracks the revision to approval.

Issues and actions. Routes implementation tasks to owners with due dates and evidence requirements.

Reporting. Produces horizon-scanning and implementation-status reports for compliance leadership.

{"lead":"The Regulatory Change Manager keeps the obligations library current as laws move, answering to the Compliance Director for every change being assessed, routed and implemented with evidence. SmartSuite gives each change one record linked to the obligations, policies and controls it touches, so impact is traced rather than guessed.","groups":[{"title":"Keep the obligations library current as rules change","cards":[{"title":"Each change logged against the controls it hits","body":"A new or amended rule is logged once and linked to the obligations, policies and controls it affects through the Control Framework & Regulatory Libraries. Applicability and impact are recorded on the record, not in a memo that lives in someone's drafts.","suite":"compliance-management"},{"title":"Controls mapped once, reused across frameworks","body":"Because controls are mapped once and reused across ISO, SOC 2, SOX, GDPR and HIPAA, a change to one requirement shows every framework and control it reaches. You update the mapping in one place and the library stays coherent.","suite":"compliance-management"},{"title":"Horizon scanning with a status, not a spreadsheet","body":"Changes you are monitoring, assessing and implementing sit on one dashboard with overdue items and upcoming effective dates, so the horizon-scanning view and the implementation view are the same list at different stages.","suite":"compliance-management"}]},{"title":"Drive implementation through policy, control and risk owners","cards":[{"title":"Control Owners chased by the workflow, not by you","body":"Each change generates tasks to the Control Owner or business owner with due dates, escalation and the evidence they must attach, routed by automation. You see completion by owner rather than asking each one how it is going.","suite":"compliance-management"},{"title":"The Policy and Governance Manager working from your record","body":"When a change needs a policy update, the review is triggered from the change itself, tracked to approval and followed by the attestation cycle the Policy and Governance Manager runs. The revision and the rule that caused it stay linked.","suite":"compliance-management"},{"title":"Impact on risk visible to the Compliance Manager","body":"Controls link to the risks and obligations they treat, so a changed requirement shows where residual risk moves, and the Compliance Manager's testing schedule picks up the controls that now need re-testing. The General Counsel's view of applicability is on the same record.","suite":"compliance-management"}]},{"title":"Evidence the response to every change for leadership","cards":[{"title":"Implementation status by rule, owner and date","body":"Dashboards show each change by stage, owner and effective date, with overdue tasks flagged, so the report to the Compliance Director is read from the system. The AI Assistant in a SmartDoc field drafts the narrative when a written summary is needed.","suite":"compliance-management"},{"title":"A documented change process regulators expect","body":"Every assessment, routing decision, approval and completed task is kept with its evidence, which is the documented change process the CFPB, FFIEC and OCC describe and the organization's evidence of its response under ISO 37301.","suite":"compliance-management"},{"title":"Scales from one regime to the whole map","body":"Start with the rules one business unit tracks and extend to prudential, privacy, NIS2 or DORA changes across regions and divisions without rebuilding the library. The same change record and workflow serve every regime.","suite":"compliance-management"}]}]}

Products this role uses most

Regulatory Change Management

Track and implement regulatory changes with impact assessments, obligation owners, implementation workflows, and visibility into compliance readiness.

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Control Framework & Regulatory Libraries

Keep controls in one library and map them across frameworks to reduce duplication and enable a test-once, comply-many approach.

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Policy Management

Centralize creation, approval, and publication of policies with full lifecycle tracking and attestations, ensuring they remain current, accessible, and auditable.

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Issues Management

Track and remediate issues across audits, risk, and compliance with structured workflows, clear ownership, and real-time visibility into resolution status.

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Industry reference

ISO 37301:2021 requires an organization to identify its compliance obligations and keep them current as laws change, which is the manager's core duty. Regulators expect a documented change process: the CFPB and FFIEC describe it as part of a compliance management system, and the OCC's heightened standards expect it for large banks.

The change volume varies by sector. Financial firms track prudential, conduct and sanctions rules across jurisdictions; healthcare organizations track CMS payment rules and HIPAA updates; public bodies track statutes and OMB circulars; technology companies track privacy laws, the EU AI Act, NIS2 and DORA.

Related roles

Compliance Director

See the role

DEEPEN YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Explore Further

Guides and definitions from the GRC Knowledge Center and the What-is glossary, chosen for this role.

All articles

What's new

What Is Regulatory Change Management?

What Is Regulatory Compliance Management?

Regulatory Inquiry Readiness

Regulatory Change Impact Assessments

How to Map NIST, ISO, SOC 2, SOX, CRI, and Internal Policies Without Creating Control Chaos

DORA and Connected GRC

Frequently asked questions

What is a Regulatory Change Manager accountable for?

The Regulatory Change Manager is accountable for the organization's response to regulatory change: monitoring sources for new and amended requirements, assessing the applicability and impact of each change on obligations, policies and controls, routing the changes to owners and tracking them to completion, and updating the obligations register and framework mappings so the library stays current. They maintain horizon-scanning reports for leadership and evidence the response to each change, which is the documented process ISO 37301 and the CFPB and FFIEC expect.

How does SmartSuite help a Regulatory Change Manager assess a new rule's impact?

Regulatory Change Management logs each regulatory change, assesses applicability and impact, and links it to the obligations, policies and controls it affects, so the assessment is done against the organization's own library rather than in a memo. Control Framework & Regulatory Libraries holds that library, which means a change to a rule shows the obligations mapped to it and the controls behind them. The Regulatory Change Manager records the decision, applicable or not, with reasoning, and the trail is there when an examiner asks.

How are policy reviews triggered when a regulation changes?

Policy Management triggers policy reviews when a change requires an update and tracks the revision to approval, so a change assessed as affecting a policy opens a review for that policy's owner rather than relying on someone remembering at the next annual cycle. The Policy and Governance Manager sees the review in the policy workflow, and the Regulatory Change Manager sees whether the revision has been approved. The change is not closed until the policy that implements it is.

How does this role drive implementation through to evidence?

Issues Management routes implementation tasks to owners with due dates and evidence requirements, so each change becomes a set of tasks for the Control Owners and Compliance Managers who have to act, each with a date and a statement of what evidence closes it. The Regulatory Change Manager tracks completion across all open changes and chases the overdue ones from one list. When the task closes, the evidence attached is the organization's proof that it responded.

How does a Regulatory Change Manager report to the Compliance Director?

SmartSuite produces horizon-scanning and implementation-status reports for compliance leadership, so the Regulatory Change Manager's report to the Compliance Director shows what is coming, what has been assessed, what is being implemented and what is overdue, read from the change records. The Regulatory Affairs Manager contributes the regulator's own signals to the same horizon, and the General Counsel can see the legal position recorded on each change. Leadership gets one view of the regulatory pipeline.

What does the organization need in place before loading regulatory changes?

An obligations register and a control library to link changes to, because the assessment is only as good as the map it lands on; Control Framework & Regulatory Libraries holds both. Teams without a formal register usually start by loading the obligations for their primary regulators, then log changes against them as they arrive. The sources monitored stay the organization's own choice; what SmartSuite adds is the record of each change, its assessment and its implementation, which can be running within weeks.

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