Finance inside an FCA-authorised firm is a different job from finance anywhere else, and the difference is not marginal. Reconciliations happen because a rule requires them rather than because the team prefers them, deadlines belong to the regulator rather than the board, documentation is evidence rather than good practice, and in senior roles the responsibility can be personal. This library brings together everything we have written on the subject: the regime and what it requires, what the finance function actually owns in each type of authorised firm, and how to hire for it.
It is written for two audiences: finance leaders in regulated firms working out what their function needs, and qualified finance professionals deciding whether to move into the sector.
Why This Sector Is Worth Understanding
Three features make regulated finance behave unlike the rest of the market, and they explain almost everything else on this page.
Demand is created by obligation rather than growth. A firm that must file a return, complete a client money audit or evidence Consumer Duty outcomes needs someone who can do it, whatever the trading conditions. Our regulated finance hiring market report looks at current conditions in more detail.
The experience cannot be acquired outside the sector. Client money reconciliation, safeguarding, prudential capital calculation and regulatory reporting are not things a commercial business does badly. They are things it does not do at all. That creates a closed pool: the only people who have done the work are people who have worked inside authorised firms.
The premium that follows tends to hold. Regulated roles typically pay around ten to twenty per cent above equivalent commercial positions, and the gap does not narrow much with experience because the pool does not deepen quickly. Our guide to why regulated-firm finance roles pay a premium works through where it sits by discipline, and the regulated-firm finance salary guide gives the benchmarks.
Start Here: The Regime
If you are new to the sector, these establish the ground. Understanding the FCA is a plain-English account of what the regulator does and why it matters to finance, and your first job at an FCA-regulated firm covers what actually changes day to day. What the FCA expects from your finance function turns the rulebook into a list of things the function must be able to show.
The Senior Managers and Certification Regime explained is the one to read carefully if you are moving into a senior role, because it is where responsibility becomes personal rather than merely professional. The FCA’s own SM&CR pages set out the functions and the conduct rules. For senior finance managers considering a compliance oversight role, from senior finance manager to SMF16/17 covers the questions to ask first; the SMF appointments themselves are handled by our sister firm SMF Capital, and SMF2 Chief Finance Function appointments by FD Capital.
Two practical guides complete the starting set. What changes in the month-end close at a regulated firm describes the additional layers that sit on top of an ordinary close, and when compliance and finance have different numbers deals with the reconciliation problem between the two functions that most firms meet sooner or later. Compliance monitoring and the finance function covers how the second line tests what finance produces.
Regulatory Capital and Prudential Reporting
For investment firms and many other authorised businesses, capital is a calculated number monitored continuously rather than a balance reviewed once a year.
Regulatory capital explained: ICARA and the IFPR covers the framework: own funds, the own funds requirement, and the Internal Capital Adequacy and Risk Assessment (ICARA) that sits behind it. The FCA summarises the regime on its Investment Firms Prudential Regime pages. MIFIDPRU and IFPR reporting: the skills behind the returns takes the practical view: who actually builds these returns, where firms are typically short, and what to test at interview. The difficulty is rarely the regime knowledge and almost always the data, because K-factors draw on operational systems finance does not own.
RegData, COREP and FINREP explained covers the submission mechanics. FCA returns are now submitted through RegData, which replaced the old GABRIEL system. Regulatory capital in the management accounts and board pack tackles the part most firms handle least well: making the position intelligible to a board that is not prudentially literate. For the role itself, see the regulatory reporting accountant role, salary and hiring guide.
Client Money and Safeguarding
These are the obligations that most distinguish regulated finance, and the ones where hiring goes wrong most often.
CASS and client money: an introduction is the starting point, alongside the FCA’s client money and assets pages. CASS 7 vs CASS 15 is the one hiring managers should read before writing a specification, because CASS 5, 7 and 15 are genuinely different regimes and “CASS experience” on a job advert filters nobody.
The CASS reconciliation in practice covers the daily mechanics. CASS oversight versus CASS operations addresses the organisational question most small firms have never articulated: who performs the reconciliation and who checks it. The CASS audit and beyond explains what the annual examination involves and how to prepare for it.
For payments and e-money firms the equivalent regime is safeguarding rather than CASS. Safeguarding rules for payments and e-money firms covers the obligation, e-money and payments regulation for fintech finance teams the wider framework, and five things fintech FCs know about safeguarding the practitioner view. Stablecoin reserve reconciliation applies the same discipline to digital assets.
Consumer Duty
This is the obligation that has moved the most new work into finance functions, and the one firms most consistently under-resource. The FCA’s Consumer Duty pages set out the outcomes; our guides cover what finance has to produce to evidence them.
What Consumer Duty means for your finance function gives the overview. Consumer Duty MI: what finance must produce sets out the requirement in detail. The price and value assessment in particular needs product-level cost and margin analysis at customer-segment granularity, which many firms had never produced before. Consumer Duty: two years on covers what firms have learned since, including that the hard part was product costing rather than compliance.
Hiring Finance for an FCA-Regulated Firm — 0204 553 8893
Financial Controllers, Finance Managers, CASS and safeguarding accountants and regulatory reporting specialists, permanent, interim and fractional. Same-working-day response on every brief; permanent shortlists typically within one to two weeks, interim and fractional within days.
By Firm Type: What the Finance Function Owns
The obligations differ enough between sectors that experience is not fully transferable, which is why these are worth reading individually.
Insurance intermediaries
Finance in insurance intermediaries covers CASS 5 client money and risk transfer (the concept everything else rests on, and the one candidates from adjacent regimes most often get wrong), plus insurance premium tax, binder accounting and commission recognition. Hiring an FC for a broker or MGA is the assessment companion.
Investment firms
Finance in an investment firm sets out the prudential half of the role, the ICARA, and CASS 6 and 7 where the firm holds client assets. The framing that matters: the prudential work is a second job, usually done by someone hired for the first.
Asset management
Finance in asset management covers the fund-side and firm-side split, two separate accounting exercises that job specifications routinely blur. Fund accounting basics and the fund accountant job description and salary guide cover the fund side in detail, including the distinction between production and oversight.
Wealth management
Wealth managers sit between investment firm and intermediary, holding CASS 7 client money with Consumer Duty value assessment applying to ongoing advice fees. Why a wealth manager FC is nothing like a commercial FC explains the difference in practice.
Payments and e-money
Payments and e-money finance is defined by safeguarding, scheme settlement and money permanently in flight, which makes the daily reconciliation genuinely difficult. Hiring an FC for a payments firm covers testing for real safeguarding experience, and hiring a safeguarding accountant covers the specialist role beneath the FC. Financial Controllers for fintech firms sets out what the FC role looks like across the wider fintech market.
Cryptoassets
Finance in a cryptoasset firm under the FCA regime covers the perimeter question, reserve reconciliation across on-chain and fiat sources, and the valuation judgements where practice is least settled. The FCA’s cryptoasset pages track the regime as it develops.
Consumer credit
Lenders and credit brokers combine Consumer Duty value work with arrears and impairment data that finance must reconcile to compliance reporting. The FCA’s consumer credit pages cover the permissions; the Consumer Duty and month-end guides above cover most of the finance-side work.
Building and Hiring the Function
Hiring finance for a newly authorised firm is the one to read if you are in the application process. Authorisation arrives with a date and the obligations start on it, and a search plus a notice period can easily take a quarter, which is why the finance hire should be planned during authorisation rather than after it.
Building the finance function at an FCA-regulated firm and when your regulated firm needs its first qualified accountant cover the sequencing. Five signs your FCA-regulated business needs a specialist FC covers the trigger points.
Hiring finance staff with the right regulatory experience and regulated versus commercial financial control address the question employers actually ask: will a strong commercial FC cope? The answer turns less on regime knowledge than on who in your business would notice if they got it wrong.
For assessment, our CASS interview questions with breach scenarios and regulatory reporting interview questions cover the two disciplines where a generalist interview will not reach the differentiating knowledge. The CASS accountant job description and salary guide covers the specification.
Where Fractional and Interim Fit
Small authorised firms have a genuine problem: the obligations are real and dated, but they do not always fill a week. Fractional FC for FCA-regulated firms sets out when the model works and where it has limits. Daily client money reconciliations do not compress because a Financial Controller is part-time, which means the fractional appointment is the oversight rather than the operation. Fractional and interim finance in FCA-regulated firms compares the two models side by side.
Our wider fractional finance guide library covers the model across the whole finance function.
For Finance Professionals Moving Into the Sector
How to move from non-regulated to regulated finance covers the routes, and the practical advice is worth repeating: stop applying for the specialist roles and start applying for the general ones at authorised firms. A firm hiring a CASS specialist needs someone who already is one; a firm hiring a management accountant will take a good candidate and let the regulatory knowledge accumulate.
The skills that make a regulated-sector FC or finance manager covers what employers value, interview preparation for a regulated-firm finance role what they test, and building a finance career in fintech the sector route.
What the Sector Pays
Indicative UK base salary ranges for finance roles inside authorised firms. Full detail by role and region is in the regulated-firm finance salary guide linked above.
| Role | London | Regional UK |
|---|---|---|
| CASS Accountant / Client Money Manager | £62k–£88k | £54k–£75k |
| Regulatory Reporting Accountant | £62k–£85k | £54k–£72k |
| Financial Controller (regulated firm) | £80k–£115k | £70k–£98k |
| Head of Finance | £100k–£145k | £86k–£122k |
| Finance Director / CFO (via FD Capital) | £130k–£195k | £110k–£165k |
| Interim CASS / regulatory reporting (day rate) | £500–£800 | £450–£700 |
A professional qualification (ICAEW, ACCA or CIMA) is the baseline throughout; the regulatory literacy on top is what commands the premium. Remuneration for material risk takers also falls within the FCA’s remuneration requirements, including deferral and clawback, which changes the timing of cash compared with an unregulated equivalent.
The Four Mistakes Employers Make Most Often
Specifying “CASS experience” without naming the regime. CASS 5, 7 and 15 are different jobs with different calculations, different failure modes and different audits.
Assuming fintech experience means regulated experience. Many businesses describing themselves as fintechs operate as agents of an authorised principal and have never safeguarded anything. The question that prevents the mis-hire takes ten seconds: was your firm authorised, and did it hold relevant funds?
Requiring the full stack. Client money, prudential reporting, Consumer Duty MI and statutory accounts, at manager level, on one salary. In a pool this thin that produces no shortlist.
Recruiting against the reporting calendar. Searching in the fortnight before a submission or a CASS audit is the hardest version of the search. An interim accountant covering the period is frequently better than a rushed permanent appointment. The FCA Handbook sets the deadlines and they do not move.
The Key-Person Problem
One pattern recurs across every discipline on this page, and it is one of the most common reasons firms come to us. One capable person owns the client money reconciliation, or the capital calculation, or the returns. They built the spreadsheets, they know why each judgement was made, and none of it is documented. The firm functions perfectly well until that person is unavailable in the wrong week, or leaves.
It is a business continuity issue before it is a hiring one. Getting the methodology written down so a competent outsider could follow it costs very little, makes the eventual hire easier, and is what the auditor will ask about.
Talk to Us About a Regulated Finance Appointment
Accountancy Capital, one of the five specialist firms of FD Capital Group, recruits qualified finance professionals into FCA-authorised firms across the UK: client money and CASS, safeguarding, regulatory reporting, financial control and commercial analysis, on a permanent, interim or fractional basis. Our main service pages are FCA-regulated finance recruitment, CASS accountant recruitment, regulatory reporting recruitment and Financial Controllers for FCA-regulated firms. By sector we cover insurance intermediaries, investment firms, asset management, wealth management, fintech, cryptoassets and digital assets and financial services more broadly.
Call our recruitment team on 0204 553 8893 or email recruitment@accountancycapital.co.uk. Fees are agreed in writing before a search starts. Candidates never pay a fee. We work from 167–169 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5PF, and Watling Court, Orbital Plaza, Watling Street, Cannock WS11 0EL.
Adrian Lawrence FCA — Founder, Accountancy Capital
Fellow of the ICAEW | Chartered Accountant holding an ICAEW practising certificate | Part of FD Capital Group
Adrian is a former listed-company Finance Director with a BSc from Queen Mary College, University of London. He built this guide library because regulated-firm hiring goes wrong most often at the specification stage, before a single candidate is seen. Our recruitment team uses these guides to agree the regime, the scope and the salary with each client before going to market.
Related Pages and Resources
Regulated Finance Recruitment
Our core services for authorised firms.
Client Money and Safeguarding
CASS and safeguarding roles and guides.
Capital and Reporting
Prudential regime and returns.
Regulated Finance Recruitment — 0204 553 8893
Qualified finance professionals at £50,000 and above for FCA-authorised firms across the UK. Same-working-day response on every brief. Email recruitment@accountancycapital.co.uk.