Regulatory Applications

Navigating your compliance journey to regulatory authorisation and registration.

Delivering efficient and predictable outcomes from regulatory applications

Firms and individuals must be authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to carry out regulated financial services activities. Doing so without proper authorisation is a criminal offence.

The type of application depends on the firm’s business model. The permissions to be sought are determined by the firm’s intended activities and there is an almost unlimited number of combinations. Other regulators may also be involved during the regulatory application process.

There are many lengthy application forms to complete and supporting documents to be provided. The specialist language used on these can be confusing as it is specific to regulatory compliance, and requires in-depth knowledge of the regulator’s relevant handbooks. Once the regulator has received a firm’s application, its case officer still needs to be convinced through an iterative process that the authorisation should proceed.

Without the relevant experience or professional advice, obtaining regulatory approval from regulators can be a highly time-consuming and complex process.

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Expert support on Regulatory Applications

Regulatory Applications

Helping firms obtain regulatory approval involves successfully navigating the regulatory authorisation or registration process with UK and overseas regulators. Our approach to regulatory consulting is flexible, and we can either fully project manage the process for clients, or focus on providing specific inputs and documents, based on their precise requirements.

Our assistance with obtaining regulatory approval typically covers some or all of the following:

Working with you to achieve key milestones and timelines
Technical input and advice on all aspects of the FCA authorisation requirements relevant to your operations and business activities
Assistance with drafting your Regulatory Business Plan
Working with you on preparing supporting documentation and policies
Approved Persons support and guidance in relation to SM&CR requirements
Submitting and tracking the application
Helping candidates prepare for regulator interviews or challenge sessions
Assistance with variations of permission
Support with change in control applications
Support in responding to regulator queries and requests.

Effective and predictable outcomes with Regulatory Applications

Our experienced regulatory consulting team works seamlessly with firms’ internal teams to achieve and deliver the following:

Helping asset managers, banks, payment firms and fintech firms become authorised or support a variation of permissions, allowing them to bring new services to the market
Helping cryptoasset firms achieve registration in the UK and/or authorisation in another jurisdiction
Taking the burden off clients with our fully project managed service, allowing them to allocate internal resources more efficiently
Improved regulatory application process efficiency and effectiveness, reducing uncertainty, the number of iterations required with, and pushback from, the regulator
Preparation of your application pack including relevant forms and supporting documentation
Sharing of knowledge including a handover meeting upon authorisation, providing practical advice on how to operate as a regulated firm
Preparing the firm’s compliance manual, supporting policies and compliance monitoring plan to support its compliance activities post authorisation.

Pragmatic and experienced regulatory consulting specialists

Regulatory Applications

We focus on building a long-term partnership with clients and supporting them throughout their compliance journey, starting with the application process. We take the time to get to know their business, team, structure and plans, and remain available throughout the application process as well as post authorisation.

Clients benefit in their regulatory application from our extensive subject matter expertise as well as knowledge gained from assisting many organisations in their sector. They are assigned a dedicated single point of contact at Xcina.

Our regulatory compliance consultants have many years’ practical experience across a range of firm types. Our team includes former Senior Managers, Heads of Compliance and Regulators.

We share with clients all deliverables and transfer knowledge so that their teams are equipped to use and maintain their compliance framework independently post authorisation.

Our pricing is competitive, transparent and modular, giving flexible access to subject matter expertise and advice.

What our clients say

The work we undertook with Xcina around IT controls, setting policies and standards was a big piece of work that involved people within Perenna and people in Xcina. The outcome there has put us in a really strong place. Xcina supported us on a very significant piece of work for our banking application – the IT Controls Form. This is where we really achieved a big deliverable in a very efficient manner and very short space of time. The collaboration between both sides got us to a good place, and we submitted all these documents to the regulators to plan.

Colin Bell, COO & Co-Founder at Perenna

Discover how we have supported organisations like yours >>

Case Studies

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If you’d like to know more about any of our services or have a question, then please let us know.

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Financial services regulatory updates.

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