Compliance Audits & Health Checks

Independent compliance audits to safeguard your firm’s future success.

Ensuring Compliance, Strengthening Controls, and Reducing Regulatory Risk

At C&G, we provide expert compliance audits and health checks designed to help firms assess, enhance, and future-proof their compliance frameworks. Our approach is practical, risk-based, and tailored to your firm’s specific regulatory obligations, ensuring compliance is not just a function but an embedded part of your business strategy.

Does Your Compliance Framework Meet Your Regulatory Obligations?

Regulatory scrutiny is increasing, and firms are finding themselves on the FCA’s radar for avoidable issues such as late or inaccurate regulatory returns, outdated permissions, and ineffective compliance frameworks. To mitigate risk, firms should regularly review their policies, procedures, and governance arrangements, ensuring they meet FCA expectations and operate with a proactive, risk-based compliance strategy.

Our Compliance Health Check provides firms with independent assurance that their compliance arrangements are fit for purpose. Whether your firm is preparing for FCA engagement, assessing internal compliance risks, or seeking to improve regulatory readiness, our tailored reviews and audits help firms stay ahead of compliance challenges.

Health Checks vs. Audits

Our health checks and audits serve different but complementary purposes. We tailor each to ensure firms receive the right level of assessment based on their needs.

Compliance Health Checks

Our compliance health checks are high-level, diagnostic reviews designed to identify obvious gaps and weaknesses in a specific compliance area or across the compliance framework as a whole. These are desk-based assessments that review relevant documentation, policies, and governance structures, providing firms with a clear understanding of any immediate areas of concern.

We also offer a compliance framework health check, which provides a broader diagnostic review of a firm’s entire compliance function, helping firms identify whether their policies, procedures, and governance arrangements meet regulatory expectations.

Compliance Audits

A compliance audit is a more in-depth, targeted review of a specific compliance area. While it does not cover the entire compliance function, it provides a deeper, more comprehensive assessment of critical compliance risks, such as financial crime controls, CASS & safeguarding, market abuse frameworks, or operational resilience.

Audits involve detailed testing of processes, governance structures, and regulatory reporting to assess compliance effectiveness and adherence to FCA requirements. They provide firms with clear, actionable recommendations to strengthen their compliance controls and mitigate risk.

How Our Compliance Health Checks & Audits Benefit Firms

  • Regulatory Readiness – Ensuring firms are FCA-compliant and prepared for supervisory engagement, thematic reviews, or regulatory inquiries.
  • Independent Assurance – An objective review of compliance effectiveness, providing actionable insights to enhance frameworks.
  • Risk Mitigation – Identifying potential gaps and weaknesses before they lead to regulatory breaches or enforcement action.
  • Bespoke, Practical Recommendations – Clear, tailored remediation plans that align compliance with business objectives.
  • More Effective Resource Allocation – Helping firms prioritise compliance efforts and direct resources where they are needed most.
  • Integration of Regulatory Changes – Ensuring firms have correctly understood and implemented new FCA compliance regulations within their frameworks.
  • Governance & Accountability Support – Supporting Senior Manager Function (SMF) holders in demonstrating they are taking reasonable steps to maintain regulatory compliance.

Areas Covered in Our Compliance Health Checks & Audit Process

Compliance Framework & Governance

A high-level review of corporate governance structures, SMCR frameworks, Board effectiveness, and internal compliance oversight to identify weaknesses in compliance leadership and oversight functions.

Financial Crime & AML Compliance

Independent reviews of AML frameworks, financial crime controls, customer due diligence (CDD), transaction monitoring, and SAR reporting.

Consumer Duty & Conduct Risk

Evaluation of Consumer Duty compliance, fair customer outcomes, product governance, and culture-related risks.

Compliance Monitoring & Internal Controls

Assessment of Compliance Monitoring Programmes (CMPs), regulatory change management, and internal compliance reporting processes.

Market Abuse & Trade Surveillance

Review of MAR compliance, market abuse frameworks, trade surveillance effectiveness, and suspicious transaction reporting (STORs).

Regulatory Reporting & FCA Correspondence

Ensuring firms meet FCA reporting obligations, data accuracy, and timely submission requirements.

CASS & Safeguarding

Specialist audits focusing on CASS compliance and safeguarding of client assets and funds, ensuring firms meet regulatory expectations for protecting client money.

Operational Resilience

Assessment of firms’ ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from operational disruptions, in line with FCA expectations on operational resilience.

Prudential Compliance

Review of ICARA, Remuneration Policy, and MIFIDPRU Disclosures, ensuring firms comply with prudential regulatory requirements and capital adequacy standards.

Thematic & FCA-Driven Reviews

Support for firms undergoing FCA scrutiny, thematic reviews, or skilled person assessments, ensuring they can effectively respond to regulatory concerns.

Why Choose C&G Regulatory Solutions?

With a team of former FCA compliance specialists, Heads of Compliance, and MLROs, we provide firms with practical, risk-based compliance assurance that balances regulatory requirements with commercial priorities.

  • Specialist, hands-on experience in conducting FCA-aligned compliance audits.
  • Clear, actionable recommendations that support long-term compliance effectiveness.
  • Flexible audit and review options, from full-scope compliance framework health checks to focused regulatory audits.
  • Cost-effective compliance oversight, ensuring firms receive high-quality independent assurance without unnecessary costs.

Get in Touch

If your firm requires a compliance health check or targeted audit to strengthen its regulatory framework, we are here to help.
Contact us today to discuss how our independent compliance assurance services can support your business.