Choosing Your Regulatory Path to Market with Antler, HSBC Innovation Bank & Cooley
A closed-door roundtable for fintech founders.
This is a frank, practical conversation about how founders actually approach regulation, held under the Chatham House Rules. Some founders in the room will have already been through authorisation or a partnership. Others will be making the call right now.
The decision on the table: when do you need the FCA, and what’s the right way in?
Most founders have three routes, from lightest to heaviest lift:
Stay outside the perimeter: design the product so it avoids a regulated activity altogether.
Partner: outsource regulated activity to a licensed firm, or become an appointed representative, agent or distributor of a principal firm.
Go direct: apply for your own FCA authorisation, or buy a business that already has it.
Each route has trade-offs in speed, cost, control and what investors will expect. Choosing the wrong one, or the right one at the wrong time, can cost you months.
We’ll cover:
How to tell whether you’re inside the perimeter, and the most common ways to structure around it
Appointed representative and agent models, and lending and payments partners: what they cost, what they restrict, and when to move on
What direct authorisation really takes in people, policies, capital and timeline
Buying a regulated entity as a shortcut, and the pitfalls
Budgeting compliance into your next round
Joining the conversation:
Adam French, Partner, Antler in the UK; Co-founder at Scalable Capital and NED at Innovate Finance
Charlotte Witherington, Partner, Cooley
Nick Miller, Early Stage Fintech, HSBC Innovation Banking
Who it’s for: founders from pre-seed to Series A building in regulated financial services, particularly payments, insuretech, consumer lending and investments. Ideally you’ve raised capital and are facing, or have recently made, a regulatory decision. Founders who’ve already been through authorisation or a partnership model are especially welcome; you’ll get as much from the room as you give.
Spaces are limited and registration is by approval. We’re curating the room so the discussion is useful for everyone, and we’ll be in touch to confirm your place.
Light breakfast and coffee provided.
About Antler
Antler is where founders come to go further, faster. Antler is the world’s most active early-stage investor and most active investor into AI startups globally, backing exceptional people at the very start of their journey—and supporting them from inception to scale. Across more than 25 cities worldwide—including New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Dubai, Bangalore, Singapore, Seoul, and Sydney—the firm helps founders remove the barriers to building by connecting them with world-class peers, validating business models, and providing initial capital. To date, Antler has backed more than 2,500 startups globally, including five unicorns: Airalo, Lovable, Pixverse, Dream and micro1. For founders who go on to build breakout companies, Antler Elevate—the $285M emerging growth fund—invests beyond the early stages, managed through offices in London, Singapore, New York and San Francisco.
About HSBC Innovation Bank
HSBC Innovation Banking is the dedicated bank for the innovation ecosystem. It supports venture backed companies from first institutional raise to exit across Fintech, Enterprise Software, Deep Tech, Climate Tech, Consumer Tech, Health Tech and Life Sciences.
About Cooley