The platform everything runs through
Client portals, portfolio and advisory systems, and the reporting built on top of them. Where one system is the only route in, it is a single point of failure.
Sectors
IT support for financial services firms
In a financial services firm the technology is the service. When a platform stops, so do client instructions, payments and the advice sitting behind them. We keep those systems running, and help you hold the evidence that shows how.
30 mincritical response, SLA backed
24/7monitoring and alerting
What this protects
The services clients depend on, and the record of how you protected them
A financial services firm is judged on continuity and on proof. Both are built before anything goes wrong.
Delivery that cannot pause
Client instructions, payments and trading access do not wait for a fix. An hour of downtime is advice not given and revenue not earned.
The evidence trail
Mapping, tolerances, test results and incident records are what a firm is asked to produce. Reconstructed after the event, they convince nobody.
Client and market confidence
A visible outage reaches clients quickly in this sector. A relationship that took years to build can be damaged in an afternoon.
Compliance
What we help you evidence
We are not an FCA-authorised firm. We do not provide compliance advice and we cannot guarantee compliance. Operational resilience obligations sit with the firm, and their scope varies with size, permissions and business model. What we do is build the technology controls and help you assemble the evidence behind them.
Important business services
Working out what the firm genuinely cannot stop delivering, and the systems, suppliers and access each of those services depends on.
Impact tolerances, mapping and testing
A tolerance is only real if it has been tested against. We map the dependencies and run the tests that show where recovery would actually land, rather than where it is assumed to.
Outsourcing and third-party risk
Oversight does not stop at your own front door. We document our own controls and dependencies so they can be assessed, and help you ask the same questions of everyone else in the chain.
Access control and least privilege
Named accounts, multi-factor authentication, and access reviewed as people and roles change. In a firm holding client data or client money, uncontrolled access is the quietest way a control fails.
Incident response and recovery
Who does what if it happens, who gets told and when, and how you get back up from a backup that has actually been restored from rather than assumed to work.
Audit evidence and cyber resilience
Access reviews, patch state, change history and test results kept current as the work happens, so a review means producing records rather than reconstructing them months later.
Proactive IT Experts is not a compliance consultancy and does not provide legal or regulatory advice. We put the technical controls in place and help you assemble the evidence. Meeting your regulatory obligations remains the responsibility of your firm.
What the rules ask of the technology
Operational resilience comes down to four practical questions. What are your important business services? How much disruption can each one tolerate? What do they depend on? And can you show that the answers still hold?
Those are technology questions as much as governance ones, because the dependencies are usually systems, suppliers and the access that ties them together. We work on that side of the picture, and we keep the records current while the work is happening rather than assembling them months later.
Where the exposure usually sits
Suppliers you did not choose
Your obligations extend to the providers holding your data and the software you depend on. Most firms can name their suppliers. Fewer can evidence what those suppliers actually control.
Access as people and roles change
Joiners, leavers, contractors and slow permission creep. In a client-money environment, access that is never reviewed is the quietest way a control stops working.
What we put in place
- A map of the systems and suppliers sitting behind each important business service
- Recovery tested against your stated tolerance, with the result written down
- Monitoring across servers, endpoints, networks and the backup jobs themselves
- Multi-factor authentication and least-privilege access on every route to client data
- Access reviews, patch state and change records kept current rather than reconstructed
- Segregated client data environments, and encryption on anything that leaves the building
- A written incident response plan that names who to ring, internally and with us
Working inside your change control and audit cycle
A regulated firm cannot have a supplier changing things at will. Work goes through your process, in windows you choose, and we provide the documentation your risk and audit functions expect to see.
Where a control is your responsibility rather than ours, we will say so plainly and help you evidence it anyway. Blurring that line helps nobody in a review.
Response, terms and named engineers
Critical issues get a 30-minute response, backed by SLA, with round-the-clock monitoring. Two named engineers and an account manager know the environment.
Agreements are rolling monthly, with no multi-year lock-in and no exit fees.
Why evidence beats reassurance in a regulated firm
Any provider can say it takes resilience seriously. In a firm that answers to a regulator, that sentence is worth very little without a dependency map, a tested tolerance and a record of the test.
We would rather be assessed than trusted. Where your supplier oversight process needs to audit us, our controls and dependencies are documented, so the exercise produces answers instead of a chase.
Questions we get asked about financial services
Yes. Scope varies enormously between firms, so we start by understanding your permissions, your business model and which services matter most. We are not an FCA-authorised firm and we do not give compliance advice, and we say that early rather than late.
We help with the technology side: mapping the dependencies behind your important business services, testing recovery against your tolerance, and keeping the evidence. The obligation itself stays with the firm, and we are clear about that.
We document our own controls, dependencies and incident routes so your oversight process has something real to assess. Where the risk sits with other suppliers rather than with us, we help you ask them the right questions.
We would expect that, and we can provide the detail your due diligence and audit processes need. A provider that resists being assessed is telling you something worth hearing.
No. The same rolling monthly agreements apply here as everywhere else, with no multi-year lock-in and no exit fees.
Not sure what your sector actually requires of you?
Bring us the questionnaire, the audit finding or the tender requirement. We will tell you what is already covered, what is not, and what it would take. That conversation is free and it is 60 minutes.