What Is RegTech?
The field that automates regulatory compliance with software: what it covers, what it does not, and which obligations it maps to in Türkiye.
RegTech (regulatory technology) is the name for the field that uses software to automate, accelerate and make provable the work of regulatory compliance. The term spread after the 2008 financial crisis, as regulatory volume and the cost of complying with it rose together.
At the centre of the definition is a single idea: compliance does not scale when it is left to human attention. As the number of rules grows, the answer is to automate the process rather than to grow the team.
What RegTech covers
| Area | What it does |
|---|---|
| Regulatory tracking and change management | Detects a new rule, assesses its impact, connects it to an action |
| Customer due diligence and anti-money-laundering | Identity verification, transaction monitoring, suspicious activity detection |
| Regulatory reporting | Assembling and validating reports that go to an authority |
| Risk and control management | Control library, assessment, evidence collection |
| Data protection compliance | Processing inventory and obligation tracking for personal data |
No single tool covers all of these. The first question to ask a vendor is which of them it actually works on: a tool that tracks regulation does not monitor transactions, and a tool that monitors transactions does not track regulation. An offer that promises all four is usually shallow in three.
Which obligations it maps to in Türkiye
RegTech is not an abstract category; it corresponds to concrete expectations from concrete supervisors. In Türkiye that means BDDK in banking, SPK and KAP in capital markets, MASAK for anti-money-laundering, TCMB for monetary policy and payments, KVKK for personal data and GİB for tax. Each is a separate source with its own publication rhythm, and an organisation is usually subject to several at once.
For organisations operating internationally the picture widens: FCA and PRA in the United Kingdom, OCC, SEC and FINRA in the United States, EIOPA and GDPR in Europe all become sources that have to be watched in parallel.
What non-compliance costs
These penalties look unrelated, but they grow by one shared mechanism: at the start of each calendar year they are raised by the revaluation rate published under repeated Article 298 of the Tax Procedure Law. For 2026 that rate is 49%.
| Source | Penalty |
|---|---|
| KVKK, Art. 18 | Failure to meet the duty to inform: TRY 85,437 – 1,709,200 in 2026 |
| MASAK, Law 5549 Art. 13 | TRY 30,000 for each single breach of customer due diligence and continuous reporting duties (2026). The yearly total is capped at TRY 4 million, or TRY 40 million for parties fined at the doubled rate. For banks, insurers, payment institutions and other financial institutions the fine is applied at twice the rate and not below 5% of the transaction amount. |
| BDDK, Law 5411 Art. 146 | The Board may raise the amount up to twofold where the breach was committed more than once before the sanction decision, or where the same breach recurs within two years of a penalty being applied. |
Two details in that table turn regulatory tracking from a tidiness problem into a cost problem. The MASAK fine is charged per breach: a process that has not noticed a rule change does not make one mistake, it repeats the same mistake on every customer. And under the Banking Law a repeat within two years can double the amount — "we have been through this once already" is not mitigation, it is aggravation.
RegTech and FinTech
FinTech rebuilds the financial service itself: payments, credit, investment. RegTech builds the work of showing that the service is run according to the rules. The two are often confused because they operate in the same sector, but their users differ: FinTech serves the end customer, RegTech serves compliance, legal, internal control and risk teams.
What not to expect
RegTech does not give legal advice. Whether a rule binds you, how it should be read and which exemption applies are legal judgements; software prepares that decision, it does not replace it. Nor is compliance responsibility transferable: automation gathers the evidence, the responsibility stays with the organisation.
The realistic expectation is this: detection, filtering, prioritisation and follow-up become automatic; interpretation and judgement stay human. The platform overview walks through that division step by step.