John M. Schobel and the art of getting things approved

A degree in art history is an unexpected opening credential for a career in compliance software. John M. Schobel’s professional life began around New York’s art institutions, before a turn through law school and a long stretch building RegEd. Eventually, his work would concern the permissions, reviews and records that let financial businesses carry on with their day. It is a considerable distance from an art academy to an advertising approval queue. His résumé covers both.

There is a temptation to make this sound inevitable, to suggest that studying composition somehow prepares a person to design a compliance platform. Schobel’s actual route is interesting enough without that flourish. He changed professions, helped expand a business and, after handing over its chief executive role, took another operating job. In September 2026, MyComplianceOffice appointed him president. The new chapter arrived with another founder, Brian Fahey, already in the chief executive’s chair.

Before the software, the art schools

Schobel studied the history of art at New York University. His early professional history includes external affairs at the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, followed by an assistant directorship at the New York Academy of Art from 1993 to 1996. He also pursued graduate coursework at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. These were working years in cultural institutions, rather than a decorative interest added to an executive biography.

Law school followed. His public professional profile lists Washington University in St. Louis School of Law from 1996 to 1999. By the end of that period, the career was changing direction. His RegEd history records a presidency beginning in 1999 and a move to the CEO title in 2007. Much later, a SILASpeaks podcast devoted an episode to precisely this journey from the art world into insurance and securities. It was an unusual enough route to warrant a conversation of its own.

RegEd’s early business centered on continuing education. Agents and advisers needed to complete training, and the company supplied it. Under Schobel, that relationship widened into software for managing compliance work itself. A course could help someone understand an obligation; an enterprise application could organize the recurring business of meeting it. The expansion brought workflows, automation and reporting into the same commercial story as education.

The arts remained part of his public life. In May 2017, Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon elected him to its board of trustees. The announcement also identified his work on Hudson’s Historic Preservation Commission. Alongside his software career, he had taken on responsibilities concerned with cultural collections and the built environment.

There is a pleasingly unexpected entry in the museum’s 2020 virtual benefit program: Schobel introducing The Magnetic Fields performing “Come, Life, Shaker Life!” The evening also included appearances by Alan Cumming and Lacey Schwartz Delgado. The former arts administrator was still on the program, even as his professional title placed him firmly in financial services technology.

Twenty people with a problem

One revealing episode involves 20 broker-dealer chief compliance officers. RegEd brought them into a think tank initiative, and their discussions helped generate the thinking behind its Score for Compliance platform. By the time Schobel and colleague Blane Warrene were discussing the product publicly in 2013, the group’s work had also helped lead RegEd toward an acquisition: Arkovi, Warrene’s social media archiving company.

The setting is worth pausing over. A compliance officer must understand what a firm’s people are doing, including how they communicate. As advisers used social media, those communications needed to fit into the firm’s oversight. RegEd’s existing customers were asking for a connected solution. Arkovi had already developed a product for archiving and surveillance in that environment. The combination offered a way to bring that capability into a wider collection of compliance applications.

RegEd announced its agreement to acquire Arkovi in September 2012. Warrene described the fit in terms of industry knowledge and company culture, while Schobel emphasized demand from clients. Their explanation had a welcome specificity. Social media was creating work that customers needed help completing. Buying an existing product could address that work and connect it with tools those customers already used.

The archived conversation now has the additional charm of belonging to the Google+ era. Platforms acquire their own period costumes surprisingly quickly. The underlying business question has aged more slowly: when customers need an additional capability, how should it join the system they already have? The interview preserves Schobel and Warrene explaining their proposed answer while the transaction was still news.

Capital for the next chapter

RegEd’s development also ran through changes in ownership. Falfurrias Capital Partners acquired the company in July 2015. During that partnership, the investor added a chief financial officer and chief technology officer in its first year of ownership, and backed investment in technology personnel and platform improvements. Its account of the period describes work on performance, reliability and scalability, alongside product releases.

Those details supply some useful texture to the familiar phrase “growing a software company.” More products and more customers bring demands on the organization behind the screen. Finance, technical leadership and the dependable running of existing applications become part of the work. An approval system that customers depend on has to keep functioning while the company adds capabilities around it.

In December 2018, Gryphon Investors acquired RegEd. Schobel, other members of management and Falfurrias retained equity. At the time, the transaction announcement described more than 25 software modules and more than 200 enterprise customers. The business had become a collection of related applications serving organizations with a broad range of compliance responsibilities. The deal placed that company under new majority ownership while keeping its founder financially involved.

The work behind the approval

Schobel’s public speaking engagements give a more practical picture of the problems that occupied him. At the 2018 FSI Forum in Salt Lake City, he was scheduled to discuss innovation and automation in a session about service levels and profit margins. The topic connected technology decisions with the economics of running financial services businesses. Faster processes matter to the people paying for the software as well as the people using it.

At FSI OneVoice in January 2020, his subject was branch examinations and field audits. The session agenda asked how those reviews could become more useful to both firms and registered representatives. It included the subjects an examination should cover and how to create an open dialogue around compliance issues. That is a rather more human problem than a dashboard alone can solve.

His description of product development in a 2021 interview put listening to customers at the beginning of the process. In that account, the company’s work extended from onboarding to advertising review and insurance producer management. The common concern was the effort required to get an ordinary business action completed with the necessary checks around it.

“We start by listening to their challenges.”

John M. Schobel · 2021

There is little romance in waiting for a marketing item to clear review or an agent’s credentials to be processed. There is, however, a person doing the waiting. Software in this category earns its place in those moments. Schobel’s conference subjects and product comments repeatedly return to the connection between the required control and the work someone is trying to finish.

A different chair at the same table

In March 2023, Schobel handed the CEO position to Frank Brienzi and moved into a RegEd board role, with a focus on strategic priorities and acquisitions. Brienzi had spent the previous three years as executive chairman, working with Schobel and the leadership team. The incoming chief executive already knew the organization. “I’m thrilled to pass the torch to Frank,” Schobel said.

The following month’s client conference agenda placed them on the same session, alongside product and technology executives, to discuss RegEd’s future. The arrangement made the shift of responsibilities visible: Brienzi as CEO, Schobel as founder and board member. The Insured Retirement Institute’s 2024 annual report also listed Schobel among its board directors, identifying him by his RegEd founder and board role.

A more personal glimpse appears in Schobel’s public tribute to colleague Debra Freitag. He recalled their first meeting in a New York City conference room in 2005 and thanked her for their long collaboration. His appreciation included her willingness to consider unusual solutions and the things she had taught him. It is a small but telling counterweight to a career otherwise recorded through product announcements and transactions: he remembered the first meeting, and gave a colleague credit for what followed.

Another founder, a wider map

On September 29, 2026, MCO announced Schobel’s appointment as president. The company reported more than 1,500 client firms across more than 125 countries and had recently secured over $100 million in strategic growth financing from Accel-KKR Credit Partners. These were the circumstances of his arrival. His stated assignment was to work with founder and CEO Brian Fahey on continued investment and growth.

MCO’s own development had involved connecting employee, transaction and third-party compliance within a shared platform. That makes Schobel’s experience with related applications and enterprise customers relevant to the job. His appointment statement expressed enthusiasm for the company’s product plans, automation and international reach. After years helping develop RegEd’s offering, he was joining another organization with an established platform and customers of its own.

The arts administrator, law graduate, product builder and former chief executive now had a new title. The thread across his software career is easier to see than any grand theory about his early training: spend time with the people doing difficult compliance work, then build an organization capable of serving them. In his next chapter, the practical test will again happen in those customers’ working days.