01 Advisory
Regulated financial services advisory.
Most institutions do not fail on strategy. They fail at the gate: the licence application that stalls on governance, the payments product whose economics never close, the compliance framework that reads well and does not survive an inspection.
Our partners have sat on the applicant's side of those gates and on the regulator-facing side. The advice is written for the person who has to sign the submission and answer the supervisor.
Capabilities
- 01
Licensing and market entry
Digital bank, electronic money institution, payment service provider and non-bank lending licences across the GCC and Pakistan. We select the licence against the business model, build the financial case and the regulatory submission, and stay with the institution through each approval gate.
The licence is won on governance, not on product. The submission has to show a control environment the regulator can trust with customer money before a single feature matters.
- 02
Payments and digital banking
Payments strategy, merchant acquiring and collections, agent and partnership models, and the unit economics underneath them. Bank and telecom, bank and fintech, and the question of where the regulatory perimeter sits in each.
Our partners founded a national mobile money platform, built an SME payments company and supplied the switching layer beneath a market. We know where the economics break and where they hold.
Case study: From microfinance bank to national mobile money platform
- 03
Governance, risk and compliance
Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks, consumer protection and conduct, outsourcing and cloud governance, cyber and IT risk, and the board and regulator reporting that ties them together.
Frameworks are designed to be examined line by line, because a supervisor will. Remediation programmes are sequenced against what the regulator has actually asked for, not against a generic maturity model.
Case study: Cloud architecture and governance for a regulated bank
- 04
Board and regulator engagement
Board papers, capital requests, regulator submissions, inspection responses and remediation plans, prepared by people who have presented them. We rehearse the questions before they are asked.
This includes the financial case: a ten year model that is honest about how long each gate takes and what the institution costs to run while it waits.
Advisory For the client
What this means for a client.
i
The licence is won on governance.
Applicants over-invest in the customer proposition and under-invest in the control environment. The regulator is deciding whether the institution can be trusted with deposits. Product opens no gate.
ii
The economics decide the product.
Distribution, cash handling and the choice of licence determine what a payments or digital banking business can hold, settle and charge for. Those decisions belong at the start of the strategy, not the end.
iii
A framework that has not been examined is not finished.
Compliance and risk frameworks are judged on inspection, not on the document. We build them as evidence: who owns each control, how it is tested, and what the board sees.
Advisory Related case studies
The record behind this work.
Who we work with
Commercial banks and digital bank applicants. Electronic money and payment institutions. Microfinance and non-bank lenders. Telecom operators entering financial services. Regulators, investors and development finance institutions weighing a regulated position.