Fintech and Financial Services
You’re offering a financial service in the United Kingdom. The licence question comes before the product roadmap, not after it.
Information, not advice
This page is information, not legal advice about your matter. A retainer begins only when a lawyer confirms it.
Start here
Find out whether you need your own licence
Full FCA authorisation gives you control and takes months. Becoming an appointed representative is faster and gives some of that control away. Your launch date usually decides.
What to work through, in order
The licence question
Whether you need FCA authorisation, can operate as an appointed representative, or fall within an exclusion. The appointed representative route has come under closer FCA scrutiny.
Client money and safeguarding
Safeguarding obligations for payment and e-money firms require segregation and reconciliation, and the FCA has consulted on strengthening them further following firm failures.
Conduct, complaints and vulnerable customers
The Consumer Duty requires firms to deliver good outcomes rather than merely disclose, with Financial Ombudsman Service jurisdiction over eligible complaints.
Next steps
What happens if you go ahead
Scoping call
Written scope and fixed-fee quote
Engagement, once a lawyer confirms
Who would handle it
Offices
London
25 Southampton Buildings, London WC2A 1AL