Frequently asked questions
Need help with your questions about Fractyl Consulting? You've come to the right place.
Why have you launched Fractyl Consulting?
The market for great interim talent is broken. It's serving the sellers at the expense of buyers. We have had lots of feedback from our network over years, and in particular over the last 18 months, that typical routes through to expert talent are slow, expensive and rarely achieve the need.
We have a great bench of highly experienced consultants, curated over 25 years, and available for you. We’re confident we can help you achieve your most important objectives.
Are you headhunters or placement agents?
No. We are Financial Services consultants at our core. We place trusted Financial Services consultants within your business, to help you when and how you need it.
A key part of our value is that we have held the roles and responsibilities that you hold. We do the work you need help with in compliance, operations, risk, investment management, change and transformation.
Do you offer outsourcing / managed services?
We do. As part of our offering, we can provide you with CxO-level support to undertake work on your behalf.
However, we’re not a regulatory host. You will need to have your required SMFs, but we can support them, cover absences, or fill-in on an interim basis.
For example, you may be preparing for a FCA visit, undertaking an Internal Audit review, considering varying your permissions, or branching out into another regulated field, we can help with the heavy-lifting to deliver the work you’ve been diverted from, or require expert assistance to deliver.
How can you deliver your services so competitively?
Most consulting firms have high cost bases, with fancy offices and big salaries to pay. We operate on a lean, remote-first basis with a bench of experienced consultants, enabling us to typically undercut our competitors by up to 50% while delivering better outcomes for you. We also make extensive use of technology where we can, reserving expensive humans to do the high value work, rather than just trying to pad-out work to rack up hours and fees.
How can I be assured of high-quality output?
We have worked for or with listed financial services firms, Public Interest Entities, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Central Banks, Regulators and National Governments, with many of our consultants having held FCA SMF functions.
We have lived the personal risks you do, as well as and the requirements of Audit Committees, Boards and Regulators in undertaking rigorous, robust work with clear audit trails and watertight professionalism.
We communicate clearly with clients around the work we can and cannot do, and we provide timely and frequent updates to our clients during engagements to ensure there are no surprises at any stage.
We also know we are the custodians of our client’s trust and that you are accountable to a wide range of internal and stakeholders. We take this responsibility very seriously.
How do you use technology and will our data be safe with you?
We make use of AI, particularly Machine Learning and and Large Language Models (LLMs) to help us search, screen and collate data where possible.
Conducting workflow, policy, control or file reviews are great examples where AI can quickly interrogate large volumes of textual information against regulatory requirements and screen for anomalies, for human review / QA. This allows us to remove the laborious / low-risk tasks typically performed by inexperienced juniors (where your current consultants make most of their margin), saving you time and money.
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Our workspace environment is hosted by Google Europe Limited with all the EU GDPR, data security and privacy safeguards you would expect from one of the leading cloud providers. We operate on a principle of least privileged access when it comes to data security for both our own and our client's data.
Do you work with HR and Procurement teams?
Yes. HR and Procurements are often our first points of contact and we have experience in assisting with aligning requirements with candidates, completing NDAs, DDQs and helping to manage onboarding requirements.
Do you work with other professional services firms?
Yes. We have worked with other Consulting firms, Law firms, Industry groups, and Technology vendors. We’re happy to help you deliver for your clients.
Will you be like every other consultant and just say ‘Yes’ to everything and then try to cobble together a solution?
No. We have the ability to use ‘Yes’, ‘No', and ‘Maybe’.
Where it's a ‘Yes’ we’ll explain why, give you concrete examples and share our credentials with you.
Where it is a ‘Maybe’, we’ll also tell you upfront, and work promptly to get to a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and give you the reason for our response.
Some requests may be outside of our skill-set, or risk tolerance and, if they are, we’d rather give you a quick ‘No’.
If it's a ‘No’, we will try to direct you to someone we know and trust. We work very hard to keep our clients happy and our reputations intact.