Solutions
Outsourced Compliance Solutions
Senior compliance expertise, embedded in your firm: outsourced compliance for regulated businesses operating under FCA oversight.
Senior compliance expertise, embedded in your firm, without the cost of building it in-house
For most regulated firms, the compliance function is one of the harder things to staff well: hiring a senior compliance officer is expensive, retaining one is harder, and the FCA’s expectations keep moving while the day-to-day work of running the programme has to continue. That is real pressure on a business already focused on growth, on clients and on operational delivery.
When you outsource compliance to Arbor Law, you get a dedicated senior specialist embedded in your firm: the continuity, the FCA relationships and the operational ownership of an in-house compliance function, without the cost of building and retaining one yourself. You decide where the line sits between us and your team, and we work to it.
What you get when you outsource compliance to Arbor
A senior specialist, named on your file from day one
You work with one senior financial regulatory and compliance specialist who knows your firm, your client base and your regulatory profile, and who stays on the file rather than rotating off it. That continuity is the point: the difference between a real relationship and a generic consultancy engagement is whether the person on the call already knows the answer to your last question.
Specialists who have run a compliance function, not only advised one
Our specialists hold strong regulatory credentials and have worked inside financial services firms, often as the senior compliance officer themselves, with prior in-house roles at FCA-authorised firms including FirstRand Bank, Nedbank and Arma Partners, across asset management, corporate finance and advisory. The advice you get is grounded in how a programme actually runs, not only in what the rulebook says: when the FCA does come calling, you want someone in the room who has been on both sides of that conversation before.
An FCA relationship that does not start cold
Managing the FCA relationship calls for technical knowledge and experienced judgement in equal measure: the regulator notices how a firm engages, not only what it submits. Your Arbor partner runs the FCA liaison on your behalf, handling regulatory correspondence, managing reporting through FCA Connect and RegData, and representing your firm’s position in a way that is measured, well prepared and focused on the right outcome rather than the loudest one.
Support that flexes as your firm changes
Compliance demands move as a firm grows, adds products, enters new markets or changes its permissions, and the support has to move with them. Our service flexes alongside you: more hours when you need them, less when you do not, and a different shape entirely when your regulatory footprint shifts. You are not locked into a model that stops fitting six months from now.
A bill you can defend internally
Arbor lets you partner with senior, City-trained compliance specialists without the overhead of a traditional firm or a large consultancy. Fees are a fixed monthly retainer set against the size and complexity of your business: cost certainty for you, and senior-level access without the partner-leverage maths a big firm has to do. Experience at the right price point for you.
How we work alongside your SMF and exec
We sit alongside your senior management function rather than around it. Where your SMF16 or SMF17 wants us to take operational ownership of the programme end-to-end, we do that and report into them. Where the SMF wants to keep ownership and use us for senior input on the points that need it, the FCA touchpoints, the financial crime sign-offs, the SM&CR cycle, we do that too. The aim is the same either way: to give your CEO, COO and SMFs confidence that the regulatory perimeter is being held, without adding another reporting layer between them and the business.
What an outsourced compliance function actually feels like
Compliance done well is not about meeting the FCA’s minimum: it is about building the culture and the processes that make compliance a natural part of how the firm operates, so that issues are spotted early, handled with proportion, and resolved before they become the kind of problem that costs you weeks and a Section 166.
For firms that are newly authorised, growing fast, or operating without a deep internal legal and compliance bench, that standard is hard to maintain on your own. The regulatory environment is not standing still either: the FCA’s expectations on governance, financial crime, consumer protection and operational resilience continue to develop, and staying ahead of that change while running the day-to-day function takes consistent attention and real expertise.
Arbor is one of the established providers of outsourced compliance for regulated firms, and the model is built on a simple idea: good compliance support feels like part of the organisation rather than an outside service. Your specialist learns the firm in detail (its structure, client base, risk profile and the permissions it actually holds) so that the advice and oversight you get is rooted in your situation rather than a generic template.
Whether you are a corporate finance, advisory or investment firm putting a robust compliance function in place for the first time, or an established regulated business looking for a more effective and cost-efficient approach to ongoing compliance, Arbor brings the senior expertise and the operational continuity to make it work.
Get in touch today
Outsourcing compliance is a real decision, and the right way to make it is over a conversation rather than a form. Send us a short note about your firm, your permissions and what is currently on your plate, and one of us will come back to you personally, often the same day, to talk it through. The first conversation is on us, and if outsourcing is not the right answer for your firm, we will say so and, where we can, point you to the model that is.
- +44 (0)20 7355 0540
- info@arbor.law
- 20 North Audley Street, London W1K 6WE
