Get Compliance Covered Without The £150k Salary Line You Cannot Justify
The Compliance Cover Call is a free 30 minutes. I show you where your documented to evidenced gap is widest right now, which parts of your load you can legally hand off this month, and the hire versus fractional maths for a firm your size. You leave with all three whether or not we ever work together.
Backed by the Evidenced-Controls Standard: if your controls are not evidenced to a standard that would stand up to an FCA visit inside 90 days, I keep going at no extra cost until they are.
A few questions first, then the calendar. About 90 seconds.
9 minutes
- FCA-authorised investment firms only
- Under your own retained SMF, never instead of it
- Around thirty days' notice, and you keep the framework
- One senior operator, no pyramid of juniors
In their words
We've worked with consultants from a large consultancy who talk a good game but leave you with a PowerPoint and off-the-shelf policy templates. Asad identified the inherent gaps and fixed them. He built a framework that we can run.
Asad did an amazing work on our variation of permission application to become a Full-Scope UK AIFM.
You are not behind because you are not capable. You are behind because one set of hands was asked to do the work of three.
The 9pm Reality
You arrive to an inbox that already lost. Overnight the horizon-scanning feeds dropped another consultation and another themed letter you have to read, assess, and translate into does this hit us.
Before ten in the morning you are the whole early-warning system for the firm, the only person who will notice if a rule moved.
The RegData calendar is blinking. A return is due, there is no general provision for extensions, and a slip means an automatic fee and a supervisory flag.
The board pack is due in nine days. You have to be the three lines of defence, generate the MI, then stand up and credibly challenge your own board on your own numbers.
Underneath all of it sits the MLRO wall: the SARs to decide, the alerts to clear, the training deck you still have not built. You do perhaps a third of what the role actually needs, and it still never feels like enough.
Here is the part you say to no one. You have the policies. You are quietly terrified that if someone said show me it is working tomorrow, you could not pull the proof fast enough.
And your name is the one on the Register. Not the firm's. Yours. When you take a holiday, the function takes a holiday too.
A Few Months From Now
It is a Tuesday. A consultation lands in the feed and you read it once, because the reading and the first impact assessment are already handled before it reaches you.
The RegData return goes out on time. You did not stay late to file it. No automatic fee. No flag. No 11pm.
The board pack is ready two days early, so you spend those two days on the challenge and the judgement your board actually hired you for, instead of generating the MI yourself at the kitchen table.
Someone asks, in a dry run, show me the monitoring is working. You open the file. The trail is there, line by line. You do not reach for the binder and pray.
You book a fortnight off. You go, and the function does not go with you. You come back to a running machine, not a backlog that resents you.
And the name on the Register still reads yours, exactly as it should. You kept the role. You kept the judgement. You just stopped being alone with the weight of it.
You’re Thinking It. Let’s Answer It.
“I have paid five figures before for a piece of work, and I still ended up doing all of it myself.”
Because that was advice. This is delivery.
You did not buy a document last time. You bought a list of your own problems, professionally formatted, that you then had to action between everything else you already could not finish. A senior operator does the actual work here: the monitoring, the board-pack MI, the regulatory-change tracking, the MLRO casework, under your sign-off and your judgement. The test is simple. At the end of a review your desk is fuller. At the end of this your desk is lighter.
“My name is on the Register. You cannot outsource an SMF.”
You are right, and this is built so you never try to.
You keep the role, the judgement and the accountability exactly as the rules require. The support sits underneath you, not in place of you. The FCA says a few-hours-a-week named officer tends to fail approval, which is precisely why you stay the named officer and I carry the work below the line. That is not a loophole. It is the structurally correct way to resource a role the regulator calls more than full-time at a firm too small to fund it full-time.
“We are small. I am not sure we can justify spending anything on this at all.”
Then look at the number you are already spending.
A full-time head runs £145,000 to £175,000 in year one once you count salary, employer NI, pension and the recruiter, for a role you genuinely need about ten hours a week. A single skilled-person review costs more than a year of cover. You are not deciding whether to spend money. You are deciding which cheque you write.
“If it is a fractional person, am I not just buying another single point of failure?”
No, because the thing you keep is the opposite of one.
Right now the entire control function of the firm lives in one tired person's head, and that person is you. The build stage exists to get it out of there: one calendar, one control library, named owners, written escalation routes. If you ever step away from the support, you do not lose the system. You walk away owning it.
“I do not have time to onboard help. Bringing someone in will cost me more hours than it saves.”
The first job is to take work away, not add it.
The Map runs against what you already have, not against a questionnaire you have to fill in for me. I have sat in your chair for most of two decades, so you are not explaining the job to me from first principles. The heaviest recurring work starts moving off your desk in the first stage, not the fourth.
“I would rather wait until we are bigger and do this properly.”
The calendar does not care how big you are.
RegData returns fall due on the same dates for a £60m firm and a £6bn one. So do the consultations, the themed letters and the SARs. The regulator sizes its expectations to your risk and complexity, not to your headcount, and it has never once accepted we were busy as an answer. Waiting does not reduce the work. It only lengthens the period you carry it alone.
“Nobody has asked us to show anything yet. Why now?”
That is the only window in which this is cheap.
An evidence trail cannot be built backwards. Once the request lands, everything you produce is a reconstruction, and a reconstruction reads exactly like what it is. The firms that answer show me it is working in an afternoon are the ones that closed the gap months before anyone asked. Doing nothing has a price, and you are already paying it in the hours you will not get back.
A few questions first, then the calendar. About 90 seconds.
A Different Shape Entirely
What you’ve tried
What this is
What you’ve tried
The full-time hire. A six-figure salary line, a recruiter cheque and a three to six month vacancy gap, for a role you genuinely need about ten hours a week.
What this is
Full-time-grade coverage for a fraction, live in days, with no recruiter, no on-costs and no vacancy gap.
What you’ve tried
The expensive piece of advice. You pay, you receive findings and recommendations, then you action every line of it yourself between everything else.
What this is
A senior operator does the work and stays through it. You are left with a running framework, not a to-do list with your name on it.
What you’ve tried
The policy tool or template pack. More policies on paper, which answers do you have it, not the question the regulator actually asks.
What this is
An evidence trail that answers show me it is working, because that is the only question that gets you fined for the wrong answer.
What you’ve tried
Carrying it alone, the way you do now. Documented but not evidenced, the function stops when you stop, and the proof is always one quiet fear behind.
What this is
Hours lifted off your desk, a function that runs when you are away, and controls evidenced before anyone asks to see them.
- A senior operator, not a pyramid. The person who scopes your work is the person who does it and signs it off. The person you see on the first call is the one carrying the load on the hundredth day.
- Under your SMF, not instead of it. You keep the role, the judgement and the accountability, exactly as the rules require.
- You keep the machine. The map, the calendar, the control library and the evidence trail are yours, whether or not the support continues.
The regulator stopped asking do you have the policy. It now asks show me it is working. Closing that one gap is the entire job.
What Happens After You Say Yes
1
The Map
We walk every key control and the full RegData calendar against the standard the FCA actually applies, effective and proportionate to your size and risk. We mark the precise places where you have the policy but could not show the control running. You keep a clear picture of exactly where you are documented but cannot yet evidence, written down and yours.
2
The Build
We build the single compliance calendar and the control library, with clear owners, evidence requirements and escalation routes. It is designed so the function no longer lives entirely in one head. You keep an operable control framework: one calendar, one control library, board-ready MI, ownership and escalation written down.
3
The Carry
A named senior operator takes the heaviest recurring work under your sign-off: monitoring, board-pack MI, regulatory-change tracking and the MLRO casework wall. You stay the senior head. You keep around ten hours a week of grind lifted off your desk, and a function that keeps running when you are away.
4
The Proof
From here the trail builds itself into your week. Every control that runs leaves evidence behind it. You keep a live, auditable evidence trail, so the day someone asks you to show it working, you open a file instead of reaching for a binder.
Judge Me On The Work
The story behind the numbers
I am not going to put a unicorn in front of you. No screenshot of a number that cannot be checked, no testimonial I wrote myself. The person who builds your framework is the person who stood up MiFID II across a $700bn manager, and who has put more than $850bn of client assets under frameworks he built. And here is the mechanism, which you can judge on its face. A scaling bank with every policy in place, board-approved, on paper, was fined £21.1m because its controls were not evidenced as working in practice. FCA fines in 2025 hit a record of more than £124m, mostly for that kind of failure. The whole offer is built to close that one gap, the gap that gets firms fined.
Your Questions, Answered Straight
What actually happens on the Compliance Cover Call?
Thirty minutes, and we do real work on it. I show you where your documented to evidenced gap is widest right now, which is the exact thing a regulator would pull first. I show you which parts of your load you can legally hand off this month and which you must keep on your own name. And I give you the hire versus fractional maths for a firm your size in actual numbers. If you are not a fit I will tell you straight, and I will still point you at the one thing to fix.
Is this a pitch?
No. If you are a fit, I will show you exactly how it works, what it costs and what happens next. If you are not, you will hear that on the call rather than after three follow-ups. Either way you leave ahead of where you started.
What does it cost, and how long am I tied in?
Pricing depends on your permissions, your size and how much of the load moves, so I will give you a real number on the call rather than a range on a page. You can step out on around thirty days' notice, there is no severance and no morale hit on a team, and you keep everything built either way.
Who is this not for?
If what you want is the lowest day rate, an offshore team, or someone to rubber-stamp what you already have, I am the wrong person and I will say so on the call. I take a small number of firms and I take them seriously.
Find The Gaps Before The FCA Does
Free, about 30 minutes. Bring your scepticism. Leave knowing the one place you are most exposed.
Your name is on the Register. Nobody else in the firm carries it, and right now nobody is helping you carry it either. That can stay true for another year, or it can stop this week. The gap does not close itself, and the calendar does not care that you are on your own.