Your FCA annual invoice: what the £1,170 is actually made of

The headline fee

Limited permission consumer credit firms sit in the FCA's CC1 fee block. For the 2026/27 fee year the periodic fee is £1,100.

The important characteristic is that it is flat. The same £1,100 applies whether your consumer credit income is £2,000 or £200,000; a variable element only starts once that income passes £250,000. Unlike most regulatory costs, it does not scale down for a smaller firm.

If you have read elsewhere that a small firm pays a few hundred pounds a year, that figure is out of date. The CC1 minimum has been rising in staged increases since 2022, and 2026/27 is the final year of that uplift; after that it rises in line with the FCA's own costs.

The levies on the same bill

The FCA collects money on behalf of other bodies alongside its own fee. For a limited permission firm in 2026/27:

FCA periodic fee (CC1)	£1,100
Financial Ombudsman Service general levy	£55
Money guidance levy	£10
Illegal money lending levy	£5
Approximate total	£1,170

Budget for the invoice, not the headline fee.

Why your first invoice is smaller

The FCA's fee year runs from 1 April to 31 March. A firm authorised part-way through that year pays a proportion of the periodic fee reflecting the part of the year for which it holds the permission, so the first invoice covers only from your authorisation date to the following 31 March.

This surprises firms in the opposite direction a year later: the second invoice, covering a full year, is larger than the first. It is not an increase — it is the first one having been partial.

Complaints are a separate cost

If a customer complaint reaches the Financial Ombudsman Service, there is a case fee of £680 — though firms receive a £2,000 case fee allowance each financial year, so the first few are effectively covered. Handle complaints properly in-house and most small firms never see the charge, but it is worth knowing it exists before you start offering finance rather than after.

Getting the income figure right

You report your consumer credit income yourself, and it determines whether any variable element applies. For a typical broker it means commission received from lenders, not overall business turnover — reporting turnover by mistake is an expensive error. The figure comes from your CCR007 return, which is another reason to take that return seriously.

Paying it

Invoices are issued and paid through the FCA's online invoicing system. Set that up when you are authorised rather than when an invoice appears, and make sure the email address it uses is one that will still be checked in three years' time. Our guide to ongoing obligations covers the rest of the annual cycle, and the FCA fees guide compares application and annual costs.