PUBLIC STUDY B2B Europe 2026
The State of Compliance in European Enterprises
Compliance leaders, boards and regulators keep asking the same questions. Can compliance teams keep up as obligations grow? Is AI actually taking work off their plate? And can anyone trust what it produces?
AI is in production. Trust is not.
For its first State of Compliance study, Bayshore asked 85 compliance leaders at large European enterprises directly. The findings show a function that is already stretched, adopting AI faster than it trusts it, and committing budget before that gap is closed.
Philipp Wiegand
Founder & CEO, Bayshore AI
Steven Scott
Managing Director at Potloc
Survey details.
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85
compliance, legal and risk professionals surveyed
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10
European countries
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6
industries
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12
days of fieldwork
The Potloc advantage.
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Senior specialists, reached by phone.
Compliance leaders at large enterprises rarely answer online panels. Potloc interviewed all 85 by telephone, typically for 20–27 minutes each. Every respondent had 5+ years of compliance experience and a say in compliance tool decisions, and the sample includes CCOs and general counsel.
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Independent, blind fieldwork.
Respondents did not know who commissioned the study. Potloc recruited and screened respondents, collected the answers and delivered the data, so the findings hold up as independent research.
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Pan-European coverage, fast.
Fieldwork covered 10 countries and six industries in 12 days, with 14 data quality checks applied throughout.
Key trends.
The job is getting more complex.
40% of compliance departments say headcount has fallen behind their workload, and only 1% say it has grown faster. Two thirds (67%) have already put AI into production to take some of that pressure off.
Limited trust is holding back AI’s value.
61% of respondents are unsure about, or actively distrust, AI output when it informs a compliance decision. Teams that don’t trust a tool keep re-checking its work, so the time it was meant to save never shows up.
The momentum is real.
Our team.
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