AI Turns Small Business Compliance From Cost Center to Strategic Advantage

The goal of innovation is to help businesses better tackle challenges that can feel daunting due to limited resources.

And with the news Monday (Nov. 11) that identity and compliance platform Palm has introduced an artificial intelligence (AI) filing tool, dubbed the Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) Filing Assistant, to help speed the compliance process for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), using digital innovation to manage compliance is top of mind for Main Street.

After all, companies’ use of AI is one of the things that Nicole Argentieri, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), said in September that prosecutors will look at when assessing their compliance programs during investigations.

Compliance programs that adhere to the DOJ’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (ECCP) guidelines are eligible for more lenient treatment when a compliance breakdown occurs.

For small businesses, AI transforms compliance from a burdensome requirement into a more manageable, strategic advantage, empowering them to meet regulatory standards without compromising on efficiency or cost in other areas.

Read more: Big Tech’s AI Tools Are Helping Democratize Growth for Small Businesses

Staying Current in a Fast-Changing Regulatory Landscape

One of the more daunting aspects of compliance is the dynamic nature of regulatory requirements. From data privacy rules like GDPR and CCPA to industry-specific regulations, the burden of keeping up can feel insurmountable for a small business owner.

Discussing banking-specific compliance,  Sovos General Counsel Freda Pepper told PYMNTS that “the challenge is understanding and keeping up with the state requirements. It’s like a moving ball because the states are constantly changing their laws.”

While AI cannot eliminate all compliance challenges, it is leveling the playing field, providing small businesses with tools once reserved for larger corporations and enabling them to compete on new terms in a complex regulatory world.

By reducing costs associated with manual processing, error correction and external audits, AI-driven compliance systems allow smaller enterprises to maintain high standards without overspending. Freed from repetitive tasks, employees can focus on higher-value work, such as strengthening customer relationships or identifying new growth opportunities.

PYMNTS Intelligence’s recently-released “New Report: SMBs Race to Critical Mass on AI Usage found that 61% of SMBs surveyed report using AI to automate daily tasks.

“While we like to refer to AI as more evolutionary than revolutionary in the world of tax and compliance, there is no denying its impact and importance … using predictive analytics to anticipate changes has become an essential part of our business,” Sovos President of Revenue Alice Katwan writes in a new PYMNTS eBook, “Beyond the Horizon: How to Identify Unexpected Threats That Could Impact Your Business.”

Automating the Basics, Elevating the Game

At its core, artificial intelligence is helping small businesses by automating the heavy lifting of compliance — tasks that previously required intensive human resources or were outsourced at great expense.

Where a small business might otherwise rely on manual record-keeping or sporadic audits, AI-powered solutions provide a continuous layer of oversight. These tools analyze large datasets, spotting patterns that may indicate risks or breaches, flagging them automatically before they escalate.

AI systems can assess the risks associated with various business activities — such as client interactions, financial transactions and even vendor relationships. These assessments go beyond traditional checklists by evaluating contextual factors and historical data, helping businesses identify the areas of highest risk and respond accordingly.

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that companies relying on legacy and manual verification solutions lose above-average shares of annual sales to fraud, at 4.5%. However, firms using proactive and automated solutions, such as those powered by AI and machine learning, typically reduce their share of lost sales to 2.3%.

Compliance requirements often entail handling substantial documentation — think know your customer (KYC) and AML anti-money laundering (AML) protocols, which require sifting through client records, identification documents, and transaction histories. Here, AI’s natural language processing (NLP) capabilities come into play, allowing systems to quickly extract, classify and analyze data from mountains of documents. This process not only eliminates tedious manual work but also reduces errors and ensures information accuracy.

While compliance has long been seen as a necessary cost, AI is enabling small businesses to turn it into a strategic asset. Increasingly, in today’s shifting regulatory ecosystem, AI does the legwork, allowing companies to focus on adapting to changes, not just discovering them.