EXAMS is, statistically, a principles-based regime. Rules-based guidance for advisors is naturally an occupational hazard for any regulatory body. Considering the risk of loopholes, regulatory lags, unintended consequences, and tick-the-box-style sunk costs all but assures an aversion to a rules-based approach. However, this simultaneously creates an industry starving for collaborative compliance applicable to their business. They want a partner to clearly articulate the concept of "What is my firm's regulatory risk, and is there a way to mitigate it?"
There's a utopia of the future where regulatory bodies like the SEC could access this type of functionality, but that has no feasibility today. On that note, as regulators catch up to this capacity, today the answer is: 26%. At least 26% of firms are in this cohort, as of this publication in mid-May 2026 (no pun intended). For 'the 26%,' these firms are objectively in a higher tier of regulatory risk that can be reduced without much need to revamp the business in any material way.
A paradigm shift in which regulators can candidly discuss a firm and proactively provide targeted procedural advice may not be in the cards today. That pipe dream is no longer necessary. street brings all the regulatory knowledge directly to firms wrapped in a proactive pipeline. For example, showing whether your firm is part of our 26%. But more substantively, showing whether there's an opportunity outside your current business that other industry professionals are capitalizing on.
There have been numbers thrown out like 128K, as the number of various financial restrictions from financial regulatory bodies across the globe. All of which require compliance, and most of which are not in the realm of proactivity we are discussing here. More importantly, for your firm the number is not that high, at least not the policies causing firms' regulatory headaches. The figure to home in on is around 1K materially different foreign regulatory bodies to deal with, coupled with the swath of federal, state, and SRO institutions. But in this case do the numbers really matter? The real issue is not the regulator or the regulation — it's the headlines, the penalties, the bleed of other regulators circling around the same activity. The issue is the days spent in triage, and the nights wasted worrying about the prognosis.
This is our segue to the ~1K metric: US-domiciled firms with third parties advertising financial products in Thailand without proper registration aren't exposed to the same regulatory risk that treating all 128K scenarios uniformly would imply. And until the enforcement calculus materially changes, we most likely aren't going to spend time discussing your third parties' capabilities in the Thai market. Nor is a factor like this included in the 26% metric we've advertised above. But for the same scenario in Ontario, that's a more immediate and intentional discussion. And, to circle back, that 128K figure referenced above is a mere footnote from a report on manufacturing regulations at George Mason University in 2017.
Why showcase in this matter-of-fact manner? Well, partially, that's street, and a morsel of what 'intersect the semantics' truly means. But more importantly, our numbers aren't recycled third-party figures. If we publish a metric, we mean it — or the industry has. Either way, the numbers are verifiable. Zero fluff.
All of that brings us back to where we started: EXAMS. street was built for this moment, to showcase the regulatory landscape and how it's changing for this industry. If you're wondering whether street will disclose our EXAMS-specific suite — a subset of the ~1K advertised — of course, we will, under an engagement. Contact us. We offer proactive monitoring on retainer. Go expand your business, go pursue your future, go anywhere except back to a life without street's proactive lens.
As of mid-May 2026, at least 26% of active registrants are unnecessarily placing themselves in an elevated risk category in regulators' eyes.