What the Senior Managers Regime Means When Recruiting at Board Level
Board appointments at FCA-regulated firms happen inside a regulatory framework that changes the shape of the search. The Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) is not a compliance overlay applied to a candidate’s CV once the board has chosen. It changes who can hold the …
Permanent, Interim or Fractional: Which Compliance Hire Does Your Firm Actually Need?
One of the most consequential decisions in a compliance search happens before the search itself starts: deciding whether the firm needs a permanent compliance hire, an interim appointment, or a fractional engagement. Most firms make this decision quickly, often by default, and then find six …
How to Choose a Compliance Recruitment Agency That Understands the FCA
Choosing a Compliance Recruitment Agency That Understands the FCA Hiring a senior compliance professional into an FCA-regulated firm is a meaningfully different exercise from hiring most other senior roles. The candidate’s competence will be directly assessed by the regulator. The role almost always sits inside …
The Compliance Recruitment Agency Checklist: What Regulated Firms Should Be Asking
The Compliance Recruitment Agency Checklist: What Regulated Firms Should Be Asking Choosing the right compliance recruitment agency is one of those decisions that looks straightforward until it goes wrong. By the time a search has produced three rounds of unsuitable candidates, burned through ten weeks …
Why Your Compliance Hire Keeps Falling Through (And What to Do About It)
If you have been trying to fill a compliance role for longer than you expected — and the search keeps stalling, candidates keep withdrawing, or offers keep getting turned down — you are not experiencing bad luck. You are experiencing a pattern. And patterns have …
How long does FCA SMF approval actually take? A realistic timeline for regulated firm boards
How long does FCA approval for a Senior Manager Function actually take? The legal answer is three months from the date the regulator receives a properly completed application. The practical answer is that the FCA now decides most senior manager applications well inside that limit …
How the FCA Form A approval process works: a practical guide for regulated firm boards
Short answer FCA Form A is the application a regulated firm submits through the FCA’s Connect system to have an individual approved for a Senior Management Function (SMF). The firm, not the candidate, applies. A long Form A is needed if the candidate has never …
When does a firm need a CFO? When does a firm need a Finance Director?
Should the firm be hiring a CFO or a Finance Director? It is one of the most common questions in senior finance hiring conversations, and it is rarely as simple as it looks. The two titles are sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes with quite different …
What’s the realistic timeline for a senior executive search?
By Adrian Lawrence FCA, Founder, Exec Capital A practical question that comes up early in most senior search conversations: how long does the search actually take from start to finish? The honest answer is that a substantive senior search runs 12-18 weeks from formal mandate …
The fractional-versus-permanent decision is harder than it looks
UK senior hiring decisions increasingly start with a question firms didn’t routinely ask five years ago: should this be a fractional appointment, an interim, or a permanent hire? The fractional senior hiring market has matured substantially in the UK over the past decade — particularly …
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