Senior Finance Manager to SMF16/17: What to Ask
A growing number of the Senior Finance Manager and Financial Controller briefs we handle at Accountancy Capital now carry the same feature: the role is advertised as a stepping stone to a Senior Management Function, usually SMF16 (Compliance Oversight) or SMF17 (Money Laundering Reporting Officer), …
Why Regulated-Firm Finance Roles Pay a Premium
A Financial Controller in an FCA-authorised firm typically earns ten to twenty per cent more than one doing comparable work in a commercial business of the same size. The gap is not a market quirk and it has not compressed in the years I have …
What a Fractional FC Achieves in the First 90 Days
Businesses engaging a fractional Financial Controller for the first time usually have a clear problem — the numbers are late, or not trusted, or nobody senior is accountable for them — and much less clarity about what should actually change and how quickly. That vagueness …
The Regulated Finance Hiring Market: H2 2026
Finance hiring inside FCA-authorised firms behaves differently from the wider qualified market. The pools are smaller, the premiums are structural rather than cyclical, and demand is driven by regulatory obligation as much as by growth — which means it holds up in conditions where commercial …
Consumer Duty MI: What Finance Must Produce
The Consumer Duty changed what FCA-regulated firms have to be able to demonstrate, and a large part of the demonstration is data. Boards must satisfy themselves annually that the firm is delivering good outcomes for retail customers, and that assessment rests on management information — …
FCA Consumer Duty: What It Means for Your Finance Function
The FCA’s Consumer Duty has been in force since July 2023 for new and existing products and services, and since July 2024 for closed products. Two years into the regime, the FCA is moving from the implementation phase to the outcomes-testing phase — and the …
Five Signs Your FCA Business Needs a Specialist FC
Most FCA-regulated businesses hire their first dedicated Financial Controller at the point where the absence of one has already caused a problem. The CASS reconciliation has failed an internal review. The GABRIEL return was submitted late. The FCA has sent a Dear CEO letter that …
What the FCA Expects From Your Finance Function
The FCA’s supervisory engagement with smaller regulated firms — wealth managers, DFMs, boutique investment firms, insurance intermediaries — is not the dramatic event the word ‘investigation’ implies. Most FC-level FCA contact is routine, bureaucratic and entirely manageable. But it is not something the FC at …
Wealth Manager FC vs Commercial FC
Ask most finance professionals to describe the Financial Controller role and they will give you a broadly consistent answer: month-end close, management accounts, board pack, audit relationship, cash management. That answer is accurate. It is also completely inadequate preparation for the FC role at a …
