Full FCA permission for consumer credit.
Lending on your own book, charging interest or fees, debt collection and administration, debt counselling or adjusting as a business, or credit broking that is your trade rather than a way to sell your own goods — all of it needs full permission. We prepare and file the application.
Who needs full permission
Limited permission covers a narrow case: a firm whose main business is selling goods or services, and which offers credit to help sell them. Full permission is for firms in one of these positions.
You charge interest, or any other charge
If the customer pays you more than the cash price — interest, a fee for arranging the credit, a late payment charge, anything at all — limited permission does not cover you. Late fees catch firms out more than any other single point: an otherwise interest-free arrangement with a charge for missed payments is not interest-free as far as limited permission is concerned.
You collect or administer debts
Collecting or administering debts on someone else's behalf is a full-permission activity in its own right. A firm that buys debts and collects them itself needs full permission too — for lending, because it steps into the lender's rights.
Debt counselling or debt adjusting is your business
Advising people on their debts, or negotiating with their creditors, as a business rather than as an incidental part of selling something. A motor dealer settling the finance on a part-exchange is a different case, and sits inside limited permission.
Credit broking is your trade
Limited permission covers broking that is secondary to selling your own goods or services — the dealer introducing a customer to a lender for the car in the showroom. If introducing customers to lenders is what the business does, rather than how it sells something else, that is full-permission broking.
If the firm's activities genuinely fall inside limited permission, we will tell you so. It is a smaller application, and applying for more than a firm needs is as much a mistake as applying for less.
What shapes the application
The permissions you apply for
Each regulated activity has to be justified to the FCA on its own terms, with the systems and controls that go with it. A single permission is a much shorter application than five.
Whether you lend, or introduce
A firm lending on its own book takes on credit risk, affordability assessments, and arrears and forbearance duties, and the FCA looks hard at how it is funded. A firm introducing customers to lenders does not. This is usually the single biggest factor.
How many people need FCA approval
Every senior manager needs a Form A, a fitness and propriety assessment, a criminal record check and a statement of responsibilities. One director is straightforward. A board of five is five times the work, and the governance you have to evidence grows with it.
How the FCA grades the application
The FCA itself sorts consumer credit applications into straightforward, moderately complex and complex, and charges its own fee accordingly. That grading is a fair guide to the depth of evidence your application will need.
The FCA's own fee
The FCA charges its own application fee on every application. It is not ours and we do not mark it up; where we pay it to the FCA on your behalf, it is itemised separately on our invoice at cost. For full permission it depends on how the FCA grades the application:
| How the FCA grades it | FCA fee |
|---|---|
| StraightforwardFCA pricing category 3 | £1,130 |
| Moderately complexFCA pricing category 5 | £5,640 |
| ComplexFCA pricing category 6 | £11,260 |
These are the FCA's published figures, from its authorisation and registration application fees page, last updated 13 July 2026. The FCA sets them and revises them from time to time, so we confirm the current figure with you before it is paid. Which grade applies to your firm is one of the things the first conversation settles.
How we work on it
A full-permission application is built around the firm rather than assembled from a template. The regulatory business plan, the financial projections and the systems and controls all have to describe your actual business, and the FCA reads them closely. We agree the scope, the fee and the working plan with you before you commit to anything, and you approve every document before it is filed. We file through FCA Connect and deal with the case officer's questions through to a decision.
Common questions
Could we get away with limited permission instead?
If the activities genuinely fall inside limited permission, yes, and we will tell you so. What we will not do is apply for limited permission where the business needs full, because the FCA reads the business description and the permissions against each other, and a mismatch is one of the more reliable ways to have an application refused.
Does the engagement cover the FCA's questions?
Yes. Answering the case officer's questions through to a decision is part of the engagement, not an extra. What would change the scope is the firm itself changing — new permissions, new approved persons, a different business model — and we would tell you at the time rather than at the end.
What if the FCA grades us as more complex than expected?
The FCA's fee changes; ours does not. We tell you at the outset which grade we expect and why, and if the FCA takes a different view we pass its fee on at cost.
We are an investment firm. Is this a separate application?
Usually not. An authorised firm adds consumer credit permissions by applying to vary its permission, and the application is read alongside everything the firm has already told the FCA. See investment firms.