Jurisdictions and topics

Two dimensions drive every Regulatory Snapshot scan: jurisdictions (the where) and regulatory areas (the what). A third — the time horizon (the when) — frames how far ahead the analysis looks. This page explains what each one does, how they combine, and how to pick well for your role. If you have not yet run a scan, Your first scan is the practical walk-through; this page is the conceptual one.

Why this matters

A scan that’s well-scoped is a briefing you’ll read; a scan that’s poorly scoped is a briefing you’ll close. The three knobs here are the only place where you actively shape what the analysis returns — get them right and the dashboard largely takes care of itself. Get them wrong and even the best analytical pass downstream can’t rescue a remit that was too wide, too narrow, or pointed at the wrong things.

The mental model

Picture a three-dimensional box:

                     ┌────────────────────────┐
                     │  Time horizon          │
            (months) │  3  6  12  18  24  36  │
                     └────────────────────────┘
                            ▲
                            │
               Areas        │
   (Banking,  ──────────────────────────────►
    Capital
    Markets,                                    Jurisdictions
    AML/KYC,                                   (US, EU, UK, SG,
    Crypto,                                     HK, JP, AU, CH …)
    ESG, …)

Every regulatory item the analysis returns sits in exactly one cell of that box: a single jurisdiction, a single (primary) area, with an expected date inside your horizon. Widening any dimension makes the scan bigger, longer, and more expensive; narrowing makes it tighter and quicker. There is no single “right” setting — it depends on what you are trying to do.

Jurisdictions

A jurisdiction is a country, region, or supranational regulator-cluster. Regulatory Snapshot supports eleven jurisdictions out of the box and lets you add anything as a custom jurisdiction.

Built-in jurisdictions

The table below names the primary regulators we associate with each jurisdiction. This is illustrative — the underlying research will reach beyond these to whichever bodies are relevant for the topic at hand.

Picking a jurisdiction is a directive to the research — picking UK gets you coverage of FCA, PRA, BoE, HMT, PSR, and ICO output without you having to spell it out.

Region presets

If you want a multi-jurisdiction scan, use a region preset rather than ticking pills one by one:

• G7 — US, EU, UK, Canada, Japan.
• EMEA — EU, UK, Switzerland.
• APAC — Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, India.
• Americas — US, Canada, Brazil.
• EU+ — EU, UK, Switzerland (the common European-finance footprint).
• Global Major — US, EU, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia.

Click a preset once to add all its members; click again to clear them.

Custom jurisdictions

If you operate somewhere not in the default list — South Africa, UAE, Mexico, ASEAN, Cayman Islands, Luxembourg-only — type it into the Add custom field. Custom jurisdictions are visually distinguished so you can see at a glance which parts of your scan are off the beaten path.

[!NOTE] The more jurisdictions you tick, the more the research has to read. A typical scan over 3 jurisdictions takes around 90 seconds; over 10 jurisdictions, expect 3–5 minutes. The wizard’s summary rail shows a live cost estimate that scales with this.

Regulatory areas

An area is a broad policy domain — a category of regulation, not a specific rule. The ten defaults are:

• Banking / Prudential — capital, liquidity, stress testing, recovery and resolution.
• Capital Markets — securities, market structure, investment management, MiFID-style conduct.
• Digital Assets / Crypto — MiCA, stablecoins, custody, tokenisation, DeFi.
• AML / KYC — anti-money-laundering, beneficial ownership, sanctions screening.
• Payments — payment-services regimes, open banking, payment-system oversight.
• Data Privacy — GDPR and national equivalents, cross-border data transfers.
• Operational Resilience — third-party risk, ICT incidents, DORA, FFIEC.
• ESG / Sustainable Finance — disclosures (CSRD, SDR), taxonomy, climate stress testing.
• Sanctions — designated-persons regimes, secondary sanctions.
• Research Bundling / Unbundling — MiFID research-payment regimes and rebundling.

You pick whichever apply. For most users the right number is two to four — broad enough to catch the cross-cutting themes the Trends tab surfaces, narrow enough that the analysis can be specific.

Topics: when an “area” isn’t precise enough

A topic is more specific than an area. AML / KYC is an area; beneficial-ownership transparency for trusts is a topic. Digital Assets / Crypto is an area; MiCA Title III stablecoin reserve requirements is a topic.

To inject a topic into a scan, type it directly into the Custom area field in the areas step. Examples: Pay-to-Play, Capital Gains Tax, Retail Distribution, MiCA Title III, DORA Article 28, SDR Labelling. It joins your area list (visually distinguished) and the analyst treats it as a first-class category.

For most workflows, custom areas are enough. You can mix them freely with the built-in areas — for example, AML / KYC, ESG / Sustainable Finance, and a custom Beneficial-ownership transparency on the same scan.

Time horizon

The horizon is the forward-looking window the analysis scans. Six choices: 3, 6, 12, 18, 24, 36 months.

A wider horizon does not mean more noise — items still need expected dates inside the window — but it does mean the analysis has to surface more Proposed and Consultation-stage items, which by their nature are less certain.

Putting it together: practical guidance

The most-asked question is: how broad should I go? A simple decision rule by role:

[!WARNING] Avoid scans with everything ticked. A 13-jurisdiction × 10-area × 36-month scan is technically possible but will take a long time, cost more, and dilute the editorial quality of the briefing. The analysis is at its best when scope is curated.

Worked example

Suppose you are a compliance lead at a global hedge fund based in London, with prime-broker arrangements in New York and Hong Kong.

• Entity hint: Hedge Fund.
• Jurisdictions: UK, US, Hong Kong (three pills, individually selected — no preset matches exactly).
• Areas: Capital Markets, AML / KYC, Operational Resilience, ESG / Sustainable Finance.
• Custom area: Short-selling disclosure.
• Horizon: 12 months.

That gives the analysis a tight remit — three regulators, four broad areas, one custom thematic — and the resulting briefing will fit on a single board slide. If short-selling becomes a quieter topic next quarter, drop the custom area; if SEC enforcement priorities shift, add Enforcement & Examinations as another custom area. The wizard remembers your last configuration, so adjusting and rerunning is a 30-second job.

Beyond the basics

Once you have a configuration that works for you, two patterns become useful:

• Pin and re-run on a cadence. A scan you run weekly produces “what’s changed since last scan” overlays automatically — see What’s changed since last scan.
• Branch a config for one-off questions. From a successful scan, the Re-scan affordance pre-fills the wizard with the same configuration. Tweak one thing (add a jurisdiction, change a topic, push the horizon out) and you have a “what if?” answer in a few minutes.

Where to go next

• Your first scan — the wizard walk-through.
• Reading the dashboard — interpreting the heatmap, timeline, and trends once the scan is in.
• What’s changed since last scan — change tracking on recurring scans.
• Studio — exports.