For over two decades, organizations have relied on a Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) model that is fundamentally broken. GRC 1.0 — along with its more recent rebrand as Integrated Risk Management (IRM) — promised operational alignment, proactive compliance, and streamlined oversight. In practice, however, it delivered little more than fragmented systems, spreadsheet sprawl, and manual processes masked by marketing jargon. The traditional approach centers on mapping controls to regulatory requirements. On paper, this seems rational. In reality, it means that companies are asked to translate legal frameworks into internal checklists, build and maintain custom workflows, and rely on periodic sampling — all while assuming that sampled controls reflect systemic compliance. They don’t. The traditional model leaves organizations exposed in ways that are hard to justify today. It fails to identify areas where controls are missing altogether, allows existing controls to shift without notice, and gives leaders the illusion that everything is under control when it isn’t. Instead of offering clarity, compliance turns into an exercise in educated guessing. Companies are left to manage the heavy lifting — building systems, interpreting regulations, and enforcing policies — all while struggling to see whether their efforts are actually working or paying off.

Azimuth, a pioneer in compliance automation, announced today that it is growing its strategic partnership with Truist Financial Corp (NYSE: TFC). With this multi-year expansion of their current partnership, Truist will implement Azimuth’s VALIDATOR software, enabling the bank to deploy automated, full-population compliance monitoring across multiple consumer businesses.