Consult: Retainer Advisory
Senior advisory, on retainer.
Ongoing access to the Consult team for regulatory horizon scanning, technical review, board-level input, and ad-hoc problem solving. For firms that need a permanent line to senior expertise without the cost of a permanent hire.
At a glance
Why a retainer
Senior judgement, on demand, and a filter for the noise.
Regulatory pipelines now generate more volume than substance. Some obligations land hard; others produce a great deal of work for very little supervisory value, and the landscape shifts constantly as rules are amended, deprioritised, or retired.
A retainer gives the firm a standing line to senior judgement: distinguishing a regulatory obligation that requires immediate action from one that can be sequenced, evaluating a vendor proposal on its technical and commercial merits, and providing considered input on board-level questions when timing is tight.
FCA
Not all firms have been allocating adequate focus and resource to governance arrangements.
– FCA · Market Watch 79 (May 2024)
Who it suits
A line to seniority, without the permanent hire.
Retainer Advisory is built for the firms that sit at the awkward size, past the point where ad-hoc external advice scales, before the point where a full-time senior hire makes commercial sense.
Typically a CIO, COO, or CRO at a buy-side firm, a market-infrastructure operator, or a bank or broker running a fixed-income franchise where the technical and regulatory load is real but uneven.
The retainer gives them a named senior lead and guaranteed access: a direct line when a regulatory notice arrives, when a vendor proposal requires independent scrutiny, or when the board requires a well-grounded technical or regulatory assessment at short notice.
- 01 Onboarding briefingTwo-hour deep-dive on the firm's stack, regulatory posture, and active workstreams. Named lead and escalation contact assigned.
- 02 Monthly horizon-scan callSixty minutes, briefing-led. Regulatory pipeline, vendor landscape, technical decisions on the desk.
- 03 Quarterly board-pack inputDrafting and stress-testing of board-level technology and regulatory items ahead of the meeting.
- 04 Ad-hoc problem solvingCalls drawn from the monthly hours pool. Same-day response on urgent matters.
- 05 Annual posture reviewYear-end written summary: what changed, what worked, what to prioritise next year.
- 06 Hours-pool reportingMonthly utilisation report. Unused hours roll forward within the quarter.
Four common uses.
Most retainers cover the same four types of work, with the mix varying session by session depending on what the firm needs.
Regulatory horizon
Ongoing scanning of the MiFIR, MAR, DORA, and UK regulatory pipelines. What matters, what doesn't, what to start preparing for, and what can safely wait. Delivered as briefings, not bulletins.
MIFIR · MAR · DORA
Technical review
Second-opinion review on architecture decisions, vendor proposals, and internal technical plans. Senior engineers who have built the systems you're buying, reading the proposal for what the vendor isn't saying.
ARCHITECTURE · VENDOR
Board & governance input
Prep for board-level technology, risk, and regulatory items. Drafting, stress-testing questions from non-executives, and occasionally attending in person as a specialist adviser.
BOARD · GOVERNANCE
Ad-hoc problem solving
Immediate access to senior thinking when an issue arises mid-week and requires a considered response within hours. The retainer structure keeps that line available without initiating a separate engagement each time.
ON-DEMAND
Standing artefact
A monthly brief suited for board circulation.
Every retainer carries a standing monthly artefact, a written horizon-scan brief covering regulatory pipeline, vendor landscape, and technical decisions on the firm's current agenda. Five to eight pages, deliberately concise, structured for a senior reader with limited time.
The brief anchors the retainer. It frames the monthly call, drives ad-hoc work between sessions, and provides the COO or CIO with a document suitable for direct inclusion in board materials.
Retainer Brief, [Client name withheld]
How it works
Hours per month, named senior leads.
Retainer engagements are structured on a monthly hours pool, typical engagements run between ten and forty hours a month, with a named senior lead and a named escalation contact on the Consult side. Unused hours roll forward within a quarter.
For larger or more volatile workloads the retainer can be sized against a guaranteed-minimum-plus-metered model where the firm commits to a baseline and scales up by pre-agreed rates.
| Ediphy Retainer | Permanent senior hire | Big-4 framework | Ad-hoc engagement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Senior expertise on demand | Partial | |||
| No fixed payroll cost | – | |||
| Same-day ad-hoc response | – | – | ||
| Standing monthly artefact | Variable | – | – | |
| Cross-domain reach (regulatory + technical + board) | Partial | Partial |