The Compliance Onboarding Process
Becoming an Appointed Representative.
What is involved in our process
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU WANT TO BECOME AN APPOINTED REPRESENTATIVE?
We follow a clear and defined process with all our Appointed Representatives to ensure that onboarding and set-up is as seamless and as quick as possible.
- Fact-finding meeting: We will meet you with to understand your business, the people involved, the regulatory permissions required and how you see your business evolving. This ensures that we provide the correct fee structure and service package to meet your requirements.
- Onboarding: We will conduct in-depth due diligence on our Appointed Representatives as an FCA requirement. This is at Firm, ownership and employee level. This will include checks on credit history, criminal records, regulatory references, CV validity and qualifications. We will at this point assign relevant training to individuals and in some cases recommend exams. This is to meet the FCA standards required to ensure that you are ‘Fit and Proper’. We will ask you to provide a business plan, financials and marketing materials so that we can assess the compliance framework you require.
- Set-up and Procedures: We will provide you with all relevant compliance policies,procedures and manuals. We will set up for you required logs such as client contacts, client classification and financial promotions.
- Ongoing monitoring and support: On an ongoing basis we will provide compliance oversight and support. This will include office visits, monitoring and ongoing support to ensure that you are remaining compliant.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE
Typically, onboarding can take around 1-3 weeks but this will depend on references being received etc. Once this is complete a submission will be made to the FCA to notify them that the company is requiring approval as an Appointed Representative and the Approved Persons applications will be submitted at the same time. Frank Investments is required to provide the FCA 30 days’ notice of the appointment of the Appointed Representative. Approved Persons applications may be approved within this time-frame or this can take longer. We must stress that once submissions have been made to the FCA the timings and outcome are out of our control, but we will provide continued updates so you know where you stand.