Thistle Initiatives launches Managed Services solution to help financial institutions strengthen compliance, reduce operational costs and combat financial crime
Thistle Initiatives is launching a Financial Crime Managed Services offering, to help regulated companies navigate the challenges of financial crime compliance and thrive in a complex regulatory landscape.
In 2024, financial crime penalties in the United Kingdom accounted for a third (33.2%) of the £176m FCA fines. In a costly start to 2025, 100% of the over £2 million in fines issued by the FCA in just the first 50 days of the year relate to financial crime. With heavy regulatory scrutiny set to continue, the cost of compliance can be up to 5 times higher for SME lenders and fintech startups than for larger banks. The UK’s fincrime landscape is further complicated by acerbic competition for skilled experts, topped by upcoming employment cost increases in the UK placing additional pressure on financial services companies to right-size their internal teams.
“For SME financial services businesses, outsourcing or seeking temporary expert resources when needed can be an effective solution, reducing both cost and barriers to growth”, says Jessica Cath, Financial Crime Partner at Thistle.
With extensive experience in financial crime prevention and compliance, and leveraging the deep knowledge of its seasoned industry experts, our Financial Crime Managed Services combines financial crime auditing, advisory and people services, helping firms address critical financial crime needs with proven expertise and fast deployment of expert teams.
Thistle has ample experience in financial crime consultancy and services, working with clients in banking, fintech, crypto and digital assets, wealth and investment, credit, lending, neo-banks, as well as non-regulated businesses launching embedded payments and embedded financial services.
The new offering will help financial services companies develop strategic transformation plans tailored to individual requirements and needs, and implement hands-on remediation to ensure regulatory compliance, providing flexible resource augmentation for BAU operations.
Thistle has a readily available pool of Subject Matter Experts and specialist resources for customer due diligence, enhanced due diligence investigations, transaction monitoring, customer screening, sanctions and payment screening. The teams can assist firms during peak workloads, help remediate operational backlogs, or augment core teams as needed. Thistle’s experts are readily available and can be deployed and mobilised at speed, and scaled up or down with full flexibility. In a recent example, Thistle deployed a team of 15 analysts in two business days, clearing 20000+ sanctions and PEPs cases in less than three weeks.
The new service offering provides immediate access to various roles and seniorities, including analysts, investigators, team leads and quality control checkers, which can be integrated seamlessly into existing teams to enhance efficiency and output. This ensures granular reviews of AML, sanctions, market abuse and fraud alerts, as well as focused remediation across all Lines of Defence (processes and controls; policies, oversight, and governance; assurance and monitoring).
“Whilst large financial institutions have well-established teams and processes for financial crime prevention and compliance, this often becomes a significant liability and barrier to growth for scale-ups, startups and SMEs, as both the cost and the lack of reliable expertise can be overwhelming. This is why we’ve decided to pool together the various strands of fincrime expertise and launch an integrated unit, to help businesses at any growth stage effectively manage or outsource their financial crime operations. We bring access to highly experienced industry experts, who understand the intricacies and nuances of financial crime compliance; experience of industry-leading tools and software, at a fraction of the cost; and access to industry best practices, as our teams are always up-to-date with the latest financial crime trends and regulatory updates”, states Jessica Cath, Financial Crime Partner at Thistle Initiatives.