Do You Need a Compliance Consultant? (And When Software is Enough)
Compliance consultants charge £800 to £1,500 a day. Monthly retainers run £5,000 to £10,000. On a project of any size you are into tens of thousands before anyone has filed anything.
Sometimes that is money extremely well spent. Rather more often, you are paying expert rates for administration. Telling the two apart is worth doing before the invoice arrives.
When you genuinely need a consultant
Getting FCA authorisation
First-time applications are genuinely hard. Hundreds of questions, prescribed formats, and a fair few places to put a foot wrong. A good consultant has done it dozens of times and knows what the FCA wants to see in a regulatory business plan. Pay for the expertise. Getting it right first time is cheaper than getting it wrong.
Facing enforcement or an FCA visit
If the regulator is at the door, get professional help and get it early. You want someone who knows how the FCA works, can hold the relationship steady, and will not say something in an interview that costs you six months.
Genuinely novel regulatory questions
“Can we structure the product this way?” or “Does this new activity need its own permission?” Those need judgement from someone who has seen the question land badly before.
When you're wasting money on consultants
Here is what most firms are actually paying a consultant to do:
“Paying £1,000 a day for recurring admin is like hiring a barrister to do your filing.”
Chasing deadlines and filing returns
Tracking what is due, filling in the form, submitting to Connect on time. That is not £1,000-a-day work. That is a calendar with teeth.
Reviewing the same policies every year
The annual manual review. Updating procedures when the Handbook moves. Comparing your documents against the requirements line by line. Consultants charge thousands for it, and most of it is mechanical comparison.
Tracking who's done their training
Recording completions, chasing the people who have not done it, and producing something respectable for the board pack. Necessary, unquestionably. Worth a day rate, no.
Reviewing every financial promotion
Every advert, email and social post needs sign-off. At consultant day rates you either go broke or you start cutting corners, and the second one is what usually happens.
Monitoring your AR network
If you are a principal, you are answerable for everything your ARs do. Continuous oversight, document collection, attestations chased twice. A consultant will happily do all of it, and you will be paying £1,000 a day for somebody to send reminder emails.
The pattern
There is a fairly clear line running through that.
Consultants are worth every penny on one-off, complex, high-stakes work. Very little of your oversight burden is that. Most of it is recurring and process-driven: the same tasks, in the same order, every month, for years.
Still think you need a consultant?
Ask yourself:
- Is this a one-off project or ongoing work?
- Does it require genuine expertise or just process?
- Am I paying for thinking or for admin?
If the honest answer is ongoing, process-driven admin, that is what Merrin is for. Keep your consultant for the hard questions, where they earn their fee, and stop paying them to chase attestations.