The FCA's FSMA gateway is open for five months. Firms that get a complete application in keep trading through determination. Firms that miss it run off their UK business. We write the applications, and we have run the businesses they describe.
The pack is free, there is no call attached, and we do not ask for a phone number.
Every firm carrying on cryptoasset business in the UK needs authorisation under FSMA. Registration under the Money Laundering Regulations does not convert. What happens next depends only on when a complete application lands.
A saving provision lets the firm continue operating while the FCA determines the application, including past the commencement date.
The firm falls into the transitional provision. New business is restricted and what remains is a narrow contractual run-off.
UK operations must be wound down before the regime commences. There is no later door.
Source: FCA, Cryptoassets: how the gateway will operate. Dates as published, September 2026.
Not a network of freelancers assembled per project. An executive team that built, ran and reported a dual-regulated payments business together: the chief executive, the compliance officer, the finance officer and the technologist. Between them they cover every section of an application, they have all four left to do this full time, and the people who sell the work are the people who do it.
Veteran Payments and FinTech CEO & COO of regulated payments platforms in the UK, EU and MENA. Chief executive of two further regulated financial services businesses. Built stablecoin on and off-ramp partnerships from the operator's side of the table, and has taken businesses through more than fifteen regulatory bodies.
Writes the regulatory business plan, because that document is the application and it has to describe a business that works.
Chief compliance officer and FCA-approved MLRO, working across FCA, DFSA and Federal Reserve regulated environments. Has designed and rebuilt enterprise financial crime frameworks for fintechs, EMIs, crypto businesses and global banks, led Section 166 skilled person reviews, and taken firms through intense supervisory scrutiny, banking partner assurance and supervisory exit.
Owns the financial crime framework and the compliance monitoring programme, which is where applications most often come back.
A KPMG-trained chartered accountant, twenty five years as a chief financial officer across EMIs, payments, consumer lending and technology businesses. Prepared an electronic money institution application to the FCA covering the business plan, financial plan, safeguarding and risk management procedures, and took it through to authorisation.
Owns the financial projections, capital adequacy and safeguarding sections, and has built client money reconciliation, regulatory reporting and liquidity forecasting from nothing inside a dual-regulated UK and UAE payments business.
Chief technology officer across fintech and financial services, including a consumer banking platform built from the ground up. Works in cloud architecture, security and data infrastructure, and has spent twenty years on the side of the business where the platform either holds up or does not.
Owns the systems and controls, architecture and operational resilience sections. These are the parts of an application that read as hand-waving when they are written by people who have never run the stack.
Nobody else in this market puts a number on the page. We do, because you should be able to work out whether this is worth a conversation without having one.
Where you actually stand against the application the FCA expects, and what has to happen between now and February.
The complete application pack, drafted and assembled, through to submission on Connect.
Submitting is the halfway point. The FCA comes back with questions, and silence is the thing that kills applications.
| Option | What you get | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|
| City law firm | Authoritative legal opinions and regulatory interpretation, with a name your board recognises. | Six figures, and a legal opinion is not a regulatory business plan or a financial model. You will still need someone to write those. |
| Big four | Scale, method, and the ability to put a large team on it quickly. | Expensive, process-heavy, and the people who sold it are rarely the people who write it. |
| Licence consultancy | Cheap, fast, and familiar with the forms. | Template-driven. The FCA has seen the template, and a business plan that reads like everyone else's invites questions rather than closing them. |
| The FCA itself | Pre-application support meetings, free of charge, direct from the regulator. | The FCA states plainly that it does not give advice, and that a commitment to provide further information later is not an acceptable substitute for a complete submission. Use the meeting. Just do not walk into it unprepared. |
| Perimeter Advisory | The executive team of a regulated payments business writing the application, at a published fixed fee. Chief executive, compliance officer, finance officer and technologist, covering every section between them. | Four people, so capacity is genuinely finite. Between now and February we are taking a limited number of builds, and when they are gone they are gone. |
The FCA's application information document and financial data template, turned into something you can actually work from. Written for the person who has to do this, not for the person selling it.
Prefer to score your firm right now? The same twenty four questions run as a self-scoring assessment: no email, about fifteen minutes, and it works out your capital position as you go.
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Often you should not, and we will say so on the call. The firms that benefit are the ones whose compliance function is running supervision of a live business and cannot also produce a complete authorisation pack inside five months. If your team has the capacity, the recent authorisation experience and the financial modelling, keep it in house.
No. The FCA has been explicit that MLR-registered firms need authorisation under FSMA when the regime begins, and that once the gateway opens it will encourage firms to pursue authorisation rather than registration. A prior registration helps you, because the underlying work exists. It does not exempt you.
Very likely, and this is the group with the least time to react. If you are carrying on cryptoasset activity in the UK, the gateway is the route in. Firms relying on reverse solicitation should get the activity mapping done first, because that analysis determines whether you have a five month problem or a different one.
A readiness review starts within a week of signature and delivers in ten working days. A build needs a longer conversation about scope and capacity, and given the February deadline it needs to happen this quarter rather than next.
No. The gateway is the urgent piece, so it is what the front page talks about. We also work on e-money and payment institution authorisations, EU and UAE market entry, safeguarding compliance under the rules that took effect in May 2026, and remediation for stalled applications. Ask.
Not a sales call. Bring your permissions and your current documentation and you will leave the call knowing whether you have a five month problem or a five week one.