The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) sets itself a timeline for reviewing and approving or rejecting licence applications. The FCA's review clock stops if it needs to ask you questions about your application and seek further materials.
In our experience, firms that rush their applications and meet only the minimum information requirements or which have not implemented all practical steps before submission (e.g., having appropriate management or risk controls in place) end up taking longer to get approval than firms which spend time perfecting their submission upfront. Spending two extra weeks reviewing and perfecting an application before it is submitted can save months of FCA questions following submission and could be the difference between approval or rejection.
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