Only 9.6% of firms allocate more than 10% of their annual budget to GRC and 41.8% of respondents don't know what proportion their firm allocates at all.
Despite ongoing cost pressure, GRC budgets are not being cut: 40.6% of firms saw a slight budget increase over the last three years and a further 27.9% saw a significant increase, while just 8.8% expect resourcing cuts in 2025.
Key Statistics
- Only 9.6% of firms allocate more than 10% of their annual budget to GRC.
- 41.8% of respondents don't know what proportion of budget their firm allocates to GRC.
- 68.6% of firms saw GRC investment increase (slightly or significantly) over the past three years, against just 8.4% reporting any decrease.
- 27.6% say they have sufficient budget to meet expected 2025 challenges; only 8.8% expect resourcing cuts.
- ‘Keeping up with new regulations’ is the top-ranked cost challenge, cited by 38.7% as their number one issue (score 4.40).
- 54.8% are reprioritising compliance strategy to manage rising GRC costs, versus 16.5% removing roles.
Source: ICA Global GRC Survey 2025. Survey of 383 practitioners across 87 countries and 30+ sectors.
Share of annual budget allocated to GRC
GRC spend is a meaningful share of overall budget at many firms, but a large minority of practitioners simply don't have visibility into the figure.
Only 9.6% of firms allocate more than 10% of annual budget to GRC, while 41.8% said they don't know their firm's allocation — itself a useful data point about how GRC costs are tracked and reported internally.
| Budget allocated to GRC | % of respondents |
|---|---|
| Less than 2% | 20.69% |
| 2–5% | 17.62% |
| 5–10% | 10.34% |
| More than 10% | 9.58% |
| Don't know | 41.76% |
Change in GRC investment over the past three years
Despite pressure to control costs, GRC investment has been rising rather than shrinking.
A combined 68.6% of firms reported some increase in GRC investment over the last three years — 40.6% slight, 28.0% significant — against just 8.4% reporting any decrease. This is the clearest evidence in the survey that cost pressure and budget cuts are two different things.
| Change | % of respondents |
|---|---|
| Decreased significantly | 4.21% |
| Decreased slightly | 4.21% |
| Stayed the same | 22.99% |
| Increased slightly | 40.61% |
| Increased significantly | 27.97% |
Does the 2025 budget reflect the regulatory challenges firms face?
Just over half of respondents (50.96%, combining the two most positive responses) said their 2025 budget either fully covers expected challenges or covers planned activity with some reserve for the unexpected.
Only 8.8% expect resourcing cuts — a smaller share than those who said they simply don't know how the budget maps to regulatory challenge (23.4%).
| Response | % of respondents |
|---|---|
| Sufficient budget to meet expected challenges | 27.59% |
| Some budget in reserve for unanticipated events | 23.37% |
| Budget covers planned activity, no allowance for extra challenges | 20.69% |
| Risk-based decisions needed to cut planned activity/resource | 19.54% |
| Resourcing cuts will have to be / have already been made | 8.81% |
| Don't know | 23.37% |
Most challenging aspects of managing GRC costs (ranked, weighted score)
'Keeping up with new regulations' is, by a wide margin, the single biggest cost challenge GRC practitioners report — 38.7% ranked it their number one issue, more than double the next-highest response, and it carries the highest weighted score (4.40) of any factor tested.
'Managing fines or penalties' was ranked lowest overall (score 2.31), suggesting cost pressure is driven far more by the pace of regulatory change than by enforcement risk.
| Challenge | Rank 1 | Rank 2 | Rank 3 | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keeping up with new regulations | 38.70% | 18.01% | 14.18% | 4.40 |
| Investing in technology | 10.73% | 14.18% | 18.77% | 3.81 |
| Managing regulatory requests | 8.81% | 23.75% | 19.16% | 3.75 |
| Hiring/training specialised staff | 12.64% | 20.69% | 27.20% | 3.61 |
| Supporting business expansion | 8.43% | 17.24% | 16.09% | 3.11 |
| Managing fines or penalties | 24.52% | 18.39% | 13.03% | 2.31 |
Planned changes to address rising GRC costs (multi-select)
Firms are responding to cost pressure by changing how compliance works, not primarily by cutting people.
54.8% are reprioritising compliance strategy and 47.1% are investing further in automation, compared with 16.5% removing roles through redundancy or redeployment and just 7.3% cutting staff training.
| Planned change | % selecting |
|---|---|
| Adapting compliance focus / reprioritising strategies | 54.79% |
| Increased investment in automation | 47.13% |
| Increased automation adoption with no additional investment | 27.20% |
| Removal of roles (redundancy/redeployment) | 16.48% |
| No changes | 14.18% |
| Reduction/removal of salary increases or bonuses | 10.73% |
| Replacement of senior staff with more junior roles | 9.20% |
| Reduction in staff training | 7.28% |
Summary
Taken together, these five findings tell a consistent story: GRC budgets are rising, not being cut, and the resulting pressure is being absorbed through strategic reprioritisation and automation investment rather than through job losses.
The challenge firms are managing is less 'how much do we spend' and more 'how do we keep pace with regulatory change without growing headcount indefinitely'.