For years, compliance monitoring has worked the same way. A list of words and phrases is loaded into a system, and any message that matches gets flagged for review.

That approach has served firms well, but it has limits. Today, MessageWatcher is introducing AI Policy Builder, a library of ready-made AI Policies that are more precise, stay current, and remain fully under your control.

Why We Built AI Policies

We heard the same three frustrations from customers again and again.

Keyword lists flag too much. A single word like “angry” gets flagged whether it’s a client complaint or a comment about traffic. Every one of those flags has to be cleared by a person, and when the volume outpaces the team, review breaks down. In September 2025, FINRA fined Velocity Clearing $1 million, finding among other things that the firm lacked the staffing to reasonably investigate its surveillance alerts and closed more than 147,000 of them without any investigation. That case involved trade surveillance, but the lesson carries over to communications monitoring: a system that produces more flags than a team can reasonably review isn’t doing its job.

Policies go stale and new risks appear, but a keyword list written years ago keeps looking for the same things. Regulators have taken notice. Among the effective practices in its 2026 Annual Regulatory Oversight Report, FINRA points to firms that frequently revise the keywords they use to surveil for off-channel communications and tailor those searches to their business models.

Keeping policies current takes time teams don’t have. Our template policies were a starting point, but once a customer received them, maintaining them was up to the customer. Most compliance teams are already stretched. In the 2026 Investment Management Compliance Testing Survey from the Investment Adviser Association, ACA Group, and Yuter Compliance Consulting, 45% of firms reported compliance departments of just two to five people, and 60% of chief compliance officers held at least one other role.

AI Policies are our answer to all three.

What’s New

More precise rules. AI Policies go beyond single words to phrases with context. Instead of flagging every message that contains “complaint,” a policy can look for language like “my complaints remain unanswered” or “my attorney will contact you.” More precise rules catch real issues and flag fewer harmless messages.

A growing catalog. AI Policies are published to your compliance portal, organized by requirement (SEC, FINRA, and state) and by risk level (critical, high, and moderate). Choose the ones that fit your firm’s own compliance policies. New policies appear as they become available.

Policies that stay current. The MessageWatcher team updates policies as risks change. You choose how often updates sync (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or only when you sync manually), and built-in safeguards can require an administrator’s approval before an update is applied.

Your firm still owns its supervisory program, so plan to review the policies you’ve assigned as part of your regular testing.

A preview before you commit. Before you turn a policy on, Search Analysis shows you what it would have flagged in your recent messages. You can remove any rule that would create too much noise.

Currently available at no additional charge. AI Policies are currently included in MessageWatcher accounts at no extra cost.

How AI Fits In

The MessageWatcher team uses AI as a research assistant. AI suggests phrases and rules based on general industry knowledge. A person on our team reviews every suggestion, and only the ones we accept become part of a policy.

Your communications are never part of that process. “Compliance teams kept telling us the same thing: they were spending a big part of every day clearing messages that were never a problem, and their word lists were always out of date,” said Craig Dinan, CEO of MessageWatcher. “We built AI Policy Builder so that upkeep is our job, not theirs. We were just as deliberate about how we used AI. It never sees a customer’s messages, so firms get the benefit without having to wonder where their data is going.”

We’ll cover security and oversight in more detail in the next article. (link to next article)

Get Started

AI Policies are available now in your compliance portal under Policies. Our short tutorial video walks through adding your first policy in a few minutes.

Existing customers: Watch the tutorial video to add your first AI Policy. New to MessageWatcher? Schedule a demo.