Innovation has concluded a review of highly regulated document production and content management processes to better understand the challenges in Asia. 

Document production across regulated industries is governed by stringent compliance requirements, especially in financial services. Across much of Asia these processes remain largely manual, non-scalable and time-consuming.

This initial review, which engaged 15 stakeholders from global banks, regional insurers, global asset managers, consulting companies and document management specialists, has yielded findings that are relevant to any regulated entity.

The review findings and issues faced were consistent in all the entities, and across the region.

The issues were:

Fragmented collaboration                      

• Only two of the respondents used a dedicated collaboration platform.
• In one case the use of the collaboration platform resulted in overwriting, version confusion, and costly rework.

Manual content management                

• Dominant tools: Word, Excel, Outlook and handwritten notes.
• Content managers often had to interpret marginalia or conflicting revisions, which increased error risk.

Excessive iteration timeframes              

• One firm reported over 1,000 document version iterations for a single report.
• Average report production time spanned several months; three respondents cited twelve-month timelines.

Verification gaps                       

• Supporting documentation was manually collated and stored separately.
• No direct traceability existed between assertions and evidence, in multiple cases.
• One institution relied solely on verbal affirmation for compliance signoff, leaving no audit trail.

Data volatility during drafting                 

• Final datasets were often unavailable at time of drafting, triggering cascading edits and delays.

Conclusions

• Document management processes are predominantly manual in the region.
• The processes are highly people-dependent, error-prone, and characterised by rework.
• Verification is mostly manual and recorded in a separate process.

Resistance to change versus proven automation.

While all respondents acknowledged operational inefficiencies, a common refrain was: “The process is functional; no immediate fix required.”

This sharply contrasts with developments in mature markets―such as Australia and New Zealand, where automated content creation, version control, and verification workflows are already industry standard.

Proven benefits include:

• 40–60% reduction in production time for annual reports
• Improved regulatory auditability and traceability
• Reallocation of personnel from manual oversight to higher-value tasks
• Reduction in compliance breaches due to content errors.

It was also noted that many of the respondent organisations are facing financial headwinds and are seeking to improve efficiency so that resources can be relocated or released.

The review highlights a regional dependence on outdated, manual document workflows that pose increasing compliance and operational risks.

Modernisation and automation is not merely a cost-reduction lever; it is a strategic enabler for regulatory compliance, risk mitigation, operational resilience and efficiency gains.

We welcome dialogue with stakeholders committed to raising standards in document governance. If your organisation is experiencing similar challenges or if you’d like to benchmark your current disclosure practices, please reach out to objective@innovation.is

We are happy to share anonymised data from the review and offer insights into how comparable institutions in the region are moving toward automated regulated content production systems.

Release Ends …….