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When it comes to modernizing corporate compliance practices, there's plenty of wishful thinking and a dearth of real action, especially around regulatory technology tools, according to a new survey from Deloitte. 

Nearly half of more than 420 risk and compliance, internal audit, C-suite and board professionals who participated in an online survey from the accounting firm in June said they plan to update their compliance practices during the next year. More than 93 percent of the survey takers were based in the United States. 

Of those 48.3 percent of respondents, 15.8 percent planned to take a holistic approach by doing more with technology and predictive analytics while also tinkering with the way their companies operate. But for the other 32.5 percent, tech and analytics were left out of the equation.

Meanwhile, 51.8 percent said their compliance teams were not using analytics or regtech as part of their compliance efforts, a slight improvement from the 54.8 percent who were in that camp in last year's survey.

Rebecca Chasen, a risk and financial advisory partner with Deloitte in Boston, said the most disappointing part of the survey was the “lack of advancement” in the use of analytics and predictive technologies to help compliance functions look ahead. 

“The adoption is still in its infancy. People are just starting to really put their toes in the water here,” she added. “When you talk about the technologies, it's expensive, it's broad and then there's the nascency of some of the tools.”

And which specific regtech tools are companies using these days? The answer, Chasen said, is “it's all over the place.”  

“The tools you see are those that allow them to do robotic automation … taking compliance monitoring and taking tasks and automating those processes,” she said.

More than 27 percent of the respondents expected that their companies would invest more in compliance efforts over the next year, though more than 37 percent predicted that resource levels would remain the same.

For legal departments, Chasen said, “the biggest takeaway to me is that companies have an opportunity to start doing more with less and using the data they have in-house to be a little more predictive and start looking at the newer technology to see how it might be applicable to the legal department and compliance.” 

As for who is handling the brunt of compliance burdens, the survey said it's mostly falling to in-house lawyers and other “second lines” of defense, as opposed to the “first line”—the business side.

Twenty-six percent of respondents looked to the second line, compared with 24.9 percent who pointed to the first. More than 34 percent said both sides were equally responsible.

The tendency to look more toward legal departments and other second liners isn't necessarily a positive development.

“When you think about how this is relevant to in-house counsel … it's making sure that all the compliance decisions and compliance monitoring activity is not just sitting with that small group of a few,” Chasen said.

“What commonly happens is everyone says, 'Oh, legal has got this.' And sometimes legal doesn't have this,” she added.