To stay ahead of increasing legal and compliance requirements, the private funds industry has been turning to regulatory technology (RegTech) to aid in quickly and efficiently performing functions to meet those obligations. This first article in a two-part series outlines the evolution of RegTech in the private funds industry, the current and future scope of its adoption, and ways the SEC is using RegTech, as discussed during an ACA Compliance Group program. The second article will describe how fund managers can use RegTech for their compliance efforts, as well as emerging technology in this area. See our two-part series on FINRA’s RegTech conference: “Digital Identification, Suspicious Activity Reporting and Machine Learning” (May 29, 2019); and “AI, RegTech Adoption and Compliance Challenges” (Jun. 5, 2019).