After years of doing FinTech compliance consulting, I am now in the enviable position of being able to be picky about my clients. I have declined to join projects – and left some of my (former) ones – over a dozen times over the last 24 months. These decisions have very little to do with money or the clients’ state of compliance, which is why I’d like to share some insights about my positioning as a consultant – and alternative ways of getting things done on the compliance side.

I want to work with exceptional people, building genuinely (!) innovative products and services, where my compliance and regulatory expertise can be a massive value-add. That’s it. Really. This is why I don’t do “maintenance” or remediation work. It’s too boring.

I also don’t want to reinvent the wheel, which is why all my clients build their compliance programs and policies using a set of continuously revised and updated  FinTech Compliance Self-Starter package (by the way – Join here!), and I regularly run online workshops on compliance topics, too. Both of these can actually be a better (and cheaper) solution for early-stage startups on a budget compared to working with me (or any other consultant, for that matter).

When it comes to actual consulting work, though, there are three typical situations I have experienced that lead me to reject a new client or leave an existing one:

• Clients who take too long to make their decision and enjoy discussing unimportant details

If an organization wants me to participate in numerous introductory meetings, expects to see a ppt presentation (a few times) where they ask 1000+ “but what if” questions before getting the project approved by the corresponding committee several weeks later, it’s a clear no-go. The same goes for endless back-and-forths regarding price negotiations, obscure NDA clauses, and so on. The way how your company makes decisions about working with me is a good indication of how you are going to implement my recommendations. Where it comes to startups who want to grow, democracy in decision-making is overrated. If you don’t trust my judgment and want to second-guess everything, just don’t hire me.

• Clients who want my scope of work to include more things than what is needed

What happens occasionally is that clients want me to fill a middle-management or project management role in their compliance or regulatory affairs teams. This essentially comes down to managing the team’s daily operations and deliverables, task distribution, deadline tracking, overall supervision, and team discipline.

I have managed compliance teams before and efficiency comes naturally to me, but hand-holding is not where I add the most value or get a lot of satisfaction. I am happy to provide insights about hiring the right people or recommend other experts, or share my past experience, or take over the task during a short transition period but I am way too expensive (and overqualified) to be doing this on a daily basis. If your FinTech startup can afford regulatory consultants, it can also afford a project manager/team leader. 

• Clients who think they need my help but actually don’t

Increasingly frequently, I get approached by founders who were told by someone that their activity absolutely and inevitably requires this or that specific license. Then they send me an email, or we get on a call, and it turns out that their business model either does not require a license at all, or there are alternative ways of delivering their value proposition to customers – for example through a white label solution or a partnership with a licensed entity.

Here, it’s really just a matter of my integrity and intellectual honesty: While some consultants may choose to “milk” their clients on projects that are not optimal for their business, I’d rather quickly point someone in the right direction and wish them well on their journey.

So, if you are a FinTech founder, and you are certain that you don’t belong into any of the three categories mentioned above, I am always open to new contacts and conversations. Especially now – if you’d like to utilize my FinTech Self-Starter package of policies and procedures and additionally have a possibility to work with me 1:1, consider investing in the Compliance That Makes Sense Helpline.

Send me a DM or an e-mail if you have questions!