Hi, and welcome, uh, to RegTech Insight Awards. It's my great pleasure to welcome, Erin Preston, chief compliance Officer at Wedbush Advisors, to offer our congratulations on, winning 18 Groups RegTech Insight Awards USA for RegTech Industry Professional of the Year. So, Erin, what does this award mean to you? Thank you. I'm, I'm honored to be receiving the Editors' Recognition Award for US' RegTech Industry Professional of the Year. This means a great deal to me, because it reflects the progress we've made as compliance professionals and as risk professionals and at Wedbush in advancing compliance and regulatory technology. It's incredibly rewarding to be acknowledged by RegTech Insight Awards and their advisory board as a rising star. Being recognized for leadership in financial crime prevention and surveillance reinforces the importance of the work that we're doing at Wedbush and as an industry in protecting our clients and our counterparties. And it reflects not only my individual contributions and efforts, but the collective commitment of our team at Wedbush in advancing compliance and regulatory technology. And it validates the importance of innovation in compliance, ensuring that our firm can meet regulatory obligations efficiently while safeguarding our clients. Fantastic. So, could you tell us a little bit about your award-winning work? Sure. So, um, I'm flattered that the advisory board feels that it's award-winning work, but I'm confident that it's work that's gonna prove collaborative, useful, and beneficial to the firm and to our clients. Over the past year, my focus has been on collaborating with our global head of compliance. He's really been instrumental in pushing forward with the use of technology-driven solutions. We're also partnering with our business partners to strengthen our supervisory defenses and integrating those same technology-driven solutions into our compliance framework. Some of the items that we've introduced are leveraging AI within our e-com surveillance platforms, leveraging technology tools to transform our KYC and onboarding process, as well as automating our risk assessments across our compliance platform. What this means is that, by being able to automate our risk assessments, we can drive that into our use of predictive analytics around employee culture and behavior. In other words, who are those folks that we need to be more closely monitoring? And how can we set them up to be compliant within our compliance framework? These initiatives are what empower our compliance professionals to tackle the truly complex items and free up their time to work with our business in further developing the business, identifying real and perceived risk, and mitigating that risk. Okay. Well, that's some, some really interesting stuff there. So, how do you see your role in reg tech evolving over the coming year? Sure. So, I think we're at a really pivotal moment. We've been hearing a lot of buzz around AI, and certainly there's concern about AI replacing roles within the compliance and risk landscape. However, I think there's still the opportunity here for all of us to level up our skillset and move beyond automation towards predictive analytics and AI-driven compliance. And I see my role as continuing to bridge the gap between the regulatory requirements and technological, technology innovation, while coaching the next generation of compliance professionals. With increasing regulatory complexity and the rise of AI-driven compliance tools, our focus will be on scalability, data governance, and proactive risk management. And reg tech will move beyond, as I've said, just the automation of tasks and responsibilities, to predictive analytics. And that's gonna enable firms to anticipate compliance challenges before they arise. Part of my goal is to ensure that Wedbush remains at the forefront of this transformation, and that we're fostering a culture of compliance that's both agile and resilient. Wonderful. Well, once again, Erin, many congratulations and all the best for the coming year. Thanks so much, Adrian.
