We Placed a DFM FC Last Month: What Made the Difference

In March 2026 we placed a Financial Controller at a discretionary fund manager running approximately £600 million of assets under management. The search ran for six weeks. We shortlisted three candidates. The one who got the role was not the candidate with the most impressive CV. This is what actually decided it.

The Brief

The DFM was a nine-year-old business founded by three former private bank portfolio managers. It had grown to twenty-two staff and was managing assets across four model portfolio strategies — Cautious, Balanced, Growth and Ethical Growth — on platform and via directly held assets. The existing FC had been with the firm for four years and was leaving to take an SMF2 role at a larger wealth manager.

The brief seemed straightforward: a replacement FC with wealth management or DFM experience, CASS 6 and 7 exposure, GABRIEL submission ownership and a working knowledge of the firm’s accounting software (Sage). Salary to £90,000.

What was not in the brief, but which became the defining factor, was this: the founding partners were not finance people. They were investment managers. They had a legitimate fear — based on one difficult experience with an interim FC three years earlier — of a finance lead who communicated downward to them rather than with them. They wanted someone who would flag a capital adequacy headroom reduction proactively, not in a way that made them feel they should already know what MIPRU meant.

The Shortlist

We put forward three candidates. All three had the technical credentials: CASS 6 and 7 experience, GABRIEL filing ownership, DFM or wealth manager background at a comparable AUM range.

Candidate A came from a large wealth manager and had managed CASS at scale. Her process knowledge was outstanding. She had managed a CASS audit and responded to a GABRIEL supervisory query. But she had only ever operated within a large finance team where the FCA regulatory reporting was one of several workstreams, and she had always had a Head of Finance above her in the structure.

Candidate B had run the finance function at a smaller DFM single-handedly for three years. Strong GABRIEL filing experience, understood MIPRU capital adequacy, had been the SMF2 designate. But he had a communication style that worked well in a structured environment and less well in an entrepreneurial one. His references were excellent. His first interview with the founders was technically impressive and interpersonally flat.

Candidate C had spent four years at a mid-sized wealth manager as the sole finance professional. Her CASS experience was slightly narrower than Candidate A’s — she had managed CASS 7 but not CASS 6. But she had built the GABRIEL filing process from scratch when the firm changed accounting systems. She understood MIPRU because she had had to research it herself when the firm moved from MIPRU to IFPRU following a permission change. And she had spent four years explaining regulatory capital to a non-finance CEO.

What Made the Difference

Candidate C got the role. She was not the strongest technically of the three. Candidate A had the deeper CASS experience. Candidate B had the more extensive SMF2 track record.

What Candidate C had was the specific combination the founders actually needed: the ability to manage a CASS-compliant finance function without supervision, and the ability to explain a MIPRU capital adequacy headroom reduction to an investment manager in plain language without making it sound alarming or trivial. She had done this at her previous firm, unpromptedly, for four years.

In the final interview, one of the founding partners asked her how she would tell the board that the firm’s capital surplus had fallen from £340,000 to £180,000 in a quarter. Her answer was not a technical explanation of the MIPRU calculation. It was a description of the conversation she would have with the CEO first, the slide she would prepare for the board pack, and the three questions she expected the board to ask. That was the answer the founders had been waiting for across all three candidates.

The lesson we take from this search — and from several similar ones at smaller DFMs and boutique wealth managers — is that the CASS and GABRIEL experience is necessary but not sufficient. The FC at a founder-led regulated firm is also the person who translates the regulatory language into board-level English. Finding candidates who do both well is the brief. See Wealth Management FC Recruitment, FC for Investor Reporting and Building the Finance Function at an FCA-Regulated Firm.

A Note on Process

This search ran six weeks from brief to acceptance. The DFM had spoken to two other recruiters before us. Both had presented candidates within a week. Neither shortlist had included anyone with direct DFM experience. One candidate presented by a competitor had come from a commercial insurance business and had no FCA-regulated firm background at all.

Our process starts with a regulatory scope assessment of the brief before we approach any candidate. For a CASS 6 and 7 firm with GABRIEL filing and MIPRU capital adequacy, that rules out the vast majority of FC candidates at the seniority level who might otherwise look appropriate on paper. The shortlist is smaller. The search takes slightly longer. The placement rate is higher. See How to Brief a Finance Search and FC at FCA-Regulated Firms for the full process.

The Candidate the DFM Almost Chose Instead

It is worth being specific about Candidate B, because his profile represents a type that wealth management and DFM searches regularly produce and that hiring managers regularly misjudge.

Candidate B had everything that a traditional search process selects for. His CV was the strongest of the three. His SMF2 designation was documented and registered. His CASS experience was genuine. His references were without qualification. In the first interview he answered every technical question correctly.

What his profile did not show — and what the first interview did not reveal — was that his communication style had been shaped by three years in a structured mid-sized wealth manager where the regulatory reporting was a well-established process, the board were finance-literate, and the FC operated within a clear governance framework that defined what needed to be communicated, to whom and in what format. He had never had to build that framework from scratch. He had never had to explain a capital adequacy position to someone who did not know what capital adequacy was. The DFM’s founders were not the board he was used to.

This is not a criticism of Candidate B. He is an excellent FC in the right environment, and we subsequently placed him successfully at a larger, more structured wealth manager where his profile was exactly what the brief required. The point is that the brief at the DFM and the brief at the structured wealth manager look similar from the outside and require genuinely different candidates.

What to Include in a DFM FC Brief

The most useful thing a DFM or boutique wealth manager can do before briefing an FC search is to be specific about three things that are rarely in the formal job description but are almost always decisive.

First, who does the FC report to and how finance-literate are they? A DFM FC who reports to a former portfolio manager needs different interpersonal skills from one who reports to a former management consultant or a former finance director.

Second, which CASS permissions does the firm hold — CASS 6 (custody assets), CASS 7 (client money), or both — and is the FC expected to run the reconciliation process themselves or to manage it through a junior team member? The difference between owning the reconciliation and overseeing it is significant at smaller firms.

Third, is the FC expected to be the SMF2 designate? If so, say so explicitly in the brief. The SMF2 designation changes the candidate pool, the assessment process and the salary level.

See Wealth Management FC Recruitment, CASS and Client Money and How to Brief a Finance Search for the full briefing framework.

For those currently in post as an FC at a commercial business and considering a move into DFM or wealth management: the advice we give consistently is to apply to roles where the regulatory scope is explicit in the job description rather than implied. If the DFM says CASS 6 and 7 experience is required, and you have only managed a CASS 7 programme, say so in your application and explain what you understand about the CASS 6 custody assets framework from adjacent experience. Transparency at application stage is significantly better than a mismatch discovered at final interview or, worse, in the first month of employment.

Every search we run at a DFM, boutique wealth manager or independent investment firm includes a structured brief debrief before we approach any candidate. The debrief covers the three questions outlined above — reporting line and finance literacy of the recipient, CASS permission scope and operational model, and SMF2 designation status — plus the firm’s current accounting system, the reporting timetable, the number of client portfolios and the stage of the firm’s growth journey. With those elements confirmed, we can match the brief to candidates who have specifically managed the regulatory scope the role requires rather than candidates who look appropriate from the title and the salary.

The search described in this piece took six weeks. We could have presented candidates faster from the commercial market. We chose not to, and the DFM’s board agreed this was the right approach once we explained why. The placement has now been in post for four months. The CASS reconciliation process has been documented, the GABRIEL filing has been updated and the capital adequacy model is running monthly. That is what a correctly matched regulated firm FC appointment looks like in practice. Call 0204 553 8893 to brief a search. ICAEW Fellow Founder Adrian Lawrence FCA — verify via ICAEW.