The Strategic Decision in Regulatory Compliance: Buy vs. Build with Azimuth Validator

In today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape, banks and lenders are faced with a critical decision: build their own compliance testing platforms or invest in a proven solution like Azimuth Validator. This choice has far-reaching implications for operational efficiency and financial management. Opting for Azimuth Validator accelerates compliance capabilities, offers substantial cost savings, and reduces risk. 


Building an in-house solution demands a comprehensive, sustained commitment. The process includes designing and building the platform, encompassing everything from gathering functional requirements and planning design and architecture to procuring software and infrastructure. Legal analysis is a critical step, involving the identification and cataloging of relevant federal and state laws and translating these into actionable compliance requirements. Moreover, test design and development require writing precise test requirements, designing algorithms, and developing robust functional tests. Beyond the initial build phase, ongoing expenses include regulatory change management, platform maintenance, and continuous resource allocation for operations—estimated at $8 million annually. 


However, building an in-house system presents several challenges, including ensuring the availability and expertise of dedicated staff, the risk of technology failures, and potential budget overruns which often exceed initial estimates, requiring ongoing financial commitment. 


Conversely, choosing Azimuth Validator offers immediate and compelling advantages: 


  • Rapid Deployment: Validator is ready-to-use, significantly reducing the deployment time for compliance testing by up to 30 months. 
  • Cost Efficiency: It avoids the hefty $26 million cost of internal development, with a first-year operational expense of only $4.5 million. 
  • Reduced Execution Risk: Validator’s capabilities are continually refined by compliance experts, ensuring high reliability and accuracy. 
  • Focus on Core Business: It allows internal resources to focus on strategic business initiatives instead of managing compliance technology. 
  • Predictable Costs: Fixed subscription rates eliminate the need to scale resources for regulatory changes. 


Azimuth Validator provides immediate access to a comprehensive inventory of laws, requirements, and tests for swift implementation. It includes automated regulatory updates ensuring systems always align with the latest regulations, and it dramatically reduces both startup and annual operational costs compared to building an in-house system. 



For banks and lenders, investing in a ready-made solution like Azimuth Validator offers a strategic advantage. The need for full-population testing in regulatory compliance is increasingly critical as regulations become more stringent. Azimuth’s Validator offers an efficient, reliable, and cost-effective solution, making it an invaluable tool for any financial institution aiming to enhance its compliance operations and mitigate associated risks. 

GRC 1.0 Is Dead — And It’s Long Overdue

By Josh Irons • April 23, 2025
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 and Truist

Azimuth extends relationship with Truist to enhance its automation capabilities

November 12, 2024
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.