Compliance training and evidence for small IFAs
CoreCompliance is a compliance training subscription for small UK IFAs. It gives directors and compliance officers at firms under 50 staff training aligned with Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) expectations, across every topic a regulated advice firm needs to cover, plus audit-ready evidence you can produce in one click. Set up in an afternoon.
What compliance training does a small IFA firm actually need?
A small IFA firm needs training and evidence across every topic the FCA expects a regulated advice firm to cover, delivered in a way one person can run without a dedicated compliance team. That combination, breadth without enterprise overhead, is the part most small firms find hard to buy.
Most small IFAs sit somewhere between knowing they need to do this properly and not having anyone whose full-time job is compliance. The director is personally accountable under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR), the compliance officer is often the operations manager wearing a second hat, and the FCA does not adjust its expectations based on headcount.
The specific pressure points we hear from IFA firms under 50 staff:
- Consumer Duty embedding requirements sitting on top of existing SM&CR obligations, with the deadline pressure of the 2026 assessment
- The non-financial misconduct rules, which came into force on 1 September 2026 and apply regardless of firm size
- An FCA supervisory environment that has visibly hardened on IFAs in 2025 and 2026, with more Section 166 skilled person reviews and more thematic reviews
- No practical way to produce audit-ready evidence without a system, because spreadsheets and PDFs fall apart the moment a regulator asks a specific question
CoreCompliance is not an enterprise compliance programme and it is not generic online learning. It is a compliance training subscription that works for a 12-person IFA firm where the director is the person who signs off on it, and also the person the FCA holds responsible if it fails. For the underlying regulatory detail behind any of this, see the Skillcast regulatory guides.
What FCA compliance training for an IFA needs to cover
Topics a small IFA must evidence
- Consumer Duty (2026 embedding assessment)
- SM&CR and non-financial misconduct
- Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and financial crime
- Anti-bribery and corruption
- Data protection and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- Complaints handling under the FCA's Dispute Resolution: Complaints sourcebook (DISP)
- Conflicts of interest and Treating Customers Fairly (TCF)
- Vulnerable customers
- Financial promotions
- Market abuse and insider dealing
- Cyber security awareness
- Operational resilience
What your CoreCompliance subscription includes
- All of the topics opposite, in one subscription, with no add-on modules
- Interactive training that updates automatically when a rule changes
- Unlimited admin users, so more than one person can manage coverage
- Audit-ready evidence for every course, every completion, every date
- Aida, the AI compliance assistant, included on every plan
Running in minutes
No setup. No content creation. No admin burden.
Sign up, complete a training, view the completion records. There is no implementation phase and no IT involvement required. Most firms are running the same afternoon they start their trial.
- 1 Sign up for your 30-day free trial, no card required
- 2 Start up to five courses and notice the interactive format
- 3 Check the completion evidence from day one
The training and the audit trail, in one subscription
Train the whole team without creating a separate programme for every role
Small IFAs cannot afford a training-needs analysis for every hire. CoreCompliance covers everyone: advisers, paraplanners, administrators, compliance staff, directors, receptionists. Every role works through the same interactive training, assigned automatically when they join.
Produce the audit trail when the FCA asks
If the FCA sends a thematic review request, a Section 166 skilled person turns up, or a complaint escalates to the Financial Ombudsman Service with training as a factor, you need to evidence your training now, not next week. Records for every staff member, every course, every completion date, downloaded and sent.
Take training administration off your personal list
Under SM&CR, accountability sits with individuals. CoreCompliance makes defensible evidence of proper training a background function of the business, not something you have to remember to check every quarter. Automated chasers follow up with staff who have not completed their training, so nobody has to do that job by hand. The system runs. The evidence exists.
Aida answers regulatory questions for firms without a compliance officer
Every CoreCompliance subscription includes Aida, an AI compliance assistant grounded in verified regulatory sources. When an adviser has a question about suitability rules, an administrator is unsure whether a fact pattern is a reportable complaint, or a director wants to check current Consumer Duty guidance, they ask Aida. It cites the source, links back to the FCA Handbook, and refuses questions outside its scope.
For a small IFA firm without a dedicated compliance officer, Aida is often the closest thing to having one available on call.
See how Aida works →Pricing for small IFA firms
CoreCompliance starts from £349 a year, with volume pricing as your firm grows. No separate implementation fee, no annual minimum, no procurement paperwork for the self-serve subscription.
What CoreCompliance is not
- It is not a full compliance consultancy. If you need someone to write your Consumer Duty implementation plan from scratch, or represent you in a Section 166 review, you need a consultant. CoreCompliance is what you use before, during, and after that consultant relationship to keep day-to-day compliance training and evidence running.
- It is not a bespoke content builder. If you need custom courses for a proprietary product or process, CoreCompliance is the wrong fit and Skillcast Portal is the right one.
- It is not for sophisticated needs. If your firm needs custom branding, deeper reporting, HR system integrations, or dedicated account management, typically once you are past 50 staff, the Skillcast Portal product is built for that. CoreCompliance stays deliberately simple: one subscription, the same features for everyone, no configuration required.
Your questions, answered
Do I need CoreCompliance if I already have a compliance consultant?
Most small IFAs benefit from both. A consultant gives you strategic advice, reviews your permissions, and handles the deeper regulatory work. CoreCompliance handles the ongoing training and evidence that the consultant expects to see when they visit. The two are complementary, not substitutes.
We are a small IFA firm. Do we really need training on all these topics?
The FCA's expectation is that your training is proportionate to the risks your firm faces. That does not mean small firms can skip topics, it means the depth and format should match your business. CoreCompliance's courses are designed for the small-firm reality: focused, evidenced, not enterprise-length.
How does the evidence work if we get a Section 166 or thematic review?
CoreCompliance generates a downloadable report showing every staff member, every course they have completed, the date, the score, and the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) certificate where applicable. You send that report to the skilled person or the FCA supervisor. Most small IFAs never realise this is possible until the moment they need it and cannot produce it.
We have advisers who work outside conventional employment arrangements. Are they covered?
Yes. You add them as users on the platform regardless of employment status. Appointed representatives, employed advisers, self-employed advisers under a network arrangement, and consultants all get the same coverage and the same evidence trail.
Is Aida trained on our data?
No. Conversations with Aida are not used to train the model. Aida is grounded in Skillcast's curated regulatory content library and cites its sources. Your firm's data does not go into a training set.
What about the non-financial misconduct rules that came into force in September 2026?
Covered. The non-financial misconduct rules commenced on 1 September 2026 and now apply to every SM&CR firm regardless of size. The training, policy templates, and evidence structure are included as part of your CoreCompliance subscription, at no additional cost. See our full non-financial misconduct hub for what small IFAs need to have in place now.
Can we cancel?
Yes. However, cancelling stops renewal, not the current term: your subscription stays active until the end of the period you have already paid for, and there is no refund for the remaining period.