What’s changed since last scan

A regulatory landscape isn’t a one-off photograph — it moves. Rules are proposed, consultations close, deadlines shift, enforcement actions emerge. Most users of Regulatory Snapshot end up running the same configuration on a cadence (weekly, fortnightly, monthly) precisely so they can see what’s moved without rereading the whole picture every time.

This page covers how Snapshot tracks changes between scans, what you’ll see when you re-run a configuration, and how to use the changes view alongside the heatmap and briefing.

Why this matters

Reading a fresh briefing every week from scratch is exhausting. The whole point of horizon scanning is to catch the delta — the new consultation that just opened, the rule that just moved to “Effective”, the enforcement action that just landed. The “What’s changed” view is the answer to “what do I need to know about this week that I didn’t know last week?”

The mental model

Each scan is a self-contained snapshot of the regulatory picture at the moment it ran. When you re-run a configuration, Snapshot compares the new snapshot to the most recent comparable one and labels each item:

• New — items in today’s scan that weren’t in the last comparable scan.
• Updated — items present in both scans, but where something material changed (status moved from Proposed to Final, expected date shifted, impact rating moved, summary content changed substantively).
• Unchanged — items present in both scans with no material change.
• Backfill — items in today’s scan that should have been in the last scan but were missed. These get a “missed last time” affordance rather than appearing as truly new.
• Removed — items that were in the last scan but aren’t in today’s. Often because they’re now out of horizon, withdrawn, or superseded.

The comparison only happens when there is a comparable previous scan — one with the same configuration (same jurisdictions, areas, horizon) recent enough to be meaningful. New users running their first scan won’t see a changes view; come back after your second scan with the same configuration.

Where it shows up

On the Overview tab

If a comparable previous scan exists, the Overview tab gets two extra affordances:

1. Change markers on heatmap cells. A green dot in the corner of a cell signals new items in that cell. An amber triangle signals updated items. A red triangle signals items removed since the last scan. Hover any marker for a count.
2. A “What’s Changed panel” below the heatmap grid. This is the headline view of changes: scan-wide counts (X new · Y updated · Z removed), the most material changes called out, and a short narrative summary of “what moved this week”.

On detail panel item cards

Items in the detail panel that were new or updated since the last scan carry a small chip indicating their change status. Clicking a “Updated” chip shows you which fields changed (status, date, impact, summary).

A worked example

You’re a UK-focused compliance lead. You set up a recurring weekly scan covering UK + EU on AML / KYC, Operational Resilience, and Data Privacy at a 12-month horizon. After three weeks of running it:

• Week 1. First scan. No changes view (nothing to compare against). You read the full briefing.
• Week 2. Re-run the same config. The changes panel shows 4 new · 6 updated · 1 removed. The new items include an FCA consultation that opened on Tuesday and an ECB speech you’d missed. The “removed” item is a PRA consultation that closed and aged out of the 12-month forward window. You read only the new + updated; total time investment, maybe ten minutes.
• Week 3. Re-run again. 1 new · 3 updated · 0 removed. The new item is the FCA’s response to the consultation from week 2 — now moved to “Final Rule” and rated High impact. You forward it to the AML team lead immediately and close the dashboard. Five minutes.

That is the recurring-scan loop at its best: most of the work is in week one; week two onwards is delta-only.

How to set up a recurring scan

Two paths:

1. Manual re-run. Open My Snapshots, find your last scan with the configuration you want, click the Re-scan affordance. The wizard pre-fills with the same configuration. Hit run.
2. Scheduled scans. The Scheduled Scans tab lets you configure a recurring run — pick a configuration, pick a cadence (weekly, fortnightly, monthly), and Snapshot will run it automatically. See Settings for details.

Both produce the same change-tracking output. The difference is whether you press a button or the schedule does.

What counts as “the same configuration”

For change tracking to work, today’s scan and the previous scan need to share enough configuration to be comparable. Specifically:

• Same set of jurisdictions.
• Same set of regulatory areas (including custom areas).
• Same time horizon.

If you change any of these — add a jurisdiction, swap one custom area for another, push the horizon from 12 to 18 months — Snapshot still compares to the most recent scan, but adds a “Configuration changed” banner to the changes panel warning you the comparison is approximate rather than like-for-like.

[!NOTE] Small configuration tweaks are still useful. If you add one custom area to a weekly scan, the changes view is still mostly meaningful — just don’t read it as a strict delta. The banner tells you to take the counts with a pinch of salt.

What a good cadence looks like

[!WARNING] A cadence shorter than a week can produce noisy change views — regulators don’t move that fast and you’ll see paraphrase-level updates dominate. Weekly is the sweet spot for most users.

Reading the changes panel

The “What’s Changed” panel surfaces three things:

1. Scan-wide counts. 4 new · 6 updated · 1 removed. Click any of them to filter the items list to just that category.
2. Material changes highlighted. Snapshot picks the changes most worth knowing about — status moves from Proposed to Final, new High-impact items, items that just slipped inside the next 30 days — and surfaces them at the top of the panel.
3. A short narrative summary. A few sentences synthesising what moved this week. Useful for forwarding to colleagues who don’t open the dashboard themselves.

A common pitfall

[!WARNING] Don’t read paraphrase-level “Updated” labels as substantive change. Snapshot’s research is run fresh each time, which means the analysis may rephrase a summary slightly even when nothing has materially moved. Click into an “Updated” item to see which fields actually changed — if it’s only the summary wording and the status, date, and impact are identical, treat it as effectively unchanged.

Beyond the basics

• Backfill items. Occasionally Snapshot will surface an item with a “missed last time” affordance — a real item that should have been in last week’s scan but wasn’t picked up by the research. This is rare but useful: it’s the system catching its own gaps.
• Pair the changes panel with the timeline. Click into the “What’s new” filter, then jump to Timeline. You’ll see only the new items on the calendar, which is the quickest way to spot whether anything new is hitting in the next 30 days.

For developers

The same comparison surface is available via the API at GET /v1/snapshots/{id}/drift. Developers integrating with the API will see this as the drift field on snapshot resources — same concept as the dashboard’s “changes” view, kept under that name for backwards-compatibility on the API. See Changes between scans for the full conceptual mapping.

Where to go next

• Reading the dashboard — the views your changes overlay onto.
• Settings — set up a scheduled scan.
• Jurisdictions and topics — picking a configuration worth re-running.
• FAQ — common questions.