What the regulatory business plan is

The regulatory business plan (often shortened to RBP) is a clear description of your business and how it will operate compliantly. It's the document that ties the whole application together — your policies, your forecasts and your governance all hang off it. Get it right and the rest of the application makes sense; get it wrong and the FCA starts asking questions.

What the FCA expects it to cover

For a consumer credit application, the FCA generally expects the plan to address:

  • The nature and scale of your activities — what your business does, how big it is, how many sites and staff;
  • The customer journey — how a customer comes to take finance through you, from first contact to agreement;
  • Your financials and forecasts — supported by accounts or realistic projections;
  • The key risks to customers and how you mitigate them — honest, specific risk assessment;
  • Your governance — who is responsible, including the senior manager holding the relevant function;
  • Your systems and controls — including how you'll monitor that you're following the rules.

Why generic, templated plans get rejected

The single biggest mistake is submitting a plan full of generic wording that could describe any business. The FCA explicitly looks for substance specific to your firm — it wants evidence that you understand your risks and operations. A concise plan that's genuinely specific beats a long one stuffed with boilerplate every time, and generic plans are a common cause of delay or refusal.

It has to be consistent with everything else

Your plan must line up with your policies and your financial forecasts. Inconsistencies between documents — different figures, contradictory descriptions — are one of the most common reasons the FCA comes back with queries, which slows everything down.

You don't have to write it from a blank page. Our application pack gives you a structured regulatory business plan tailored to your business, with the sections the FCA expects already laid out — so you add your specific detail rather than guessing the format. It still needs your real information, and sign-off, but it removes the hardest part: knowing what good looks like.

To see how the plan fits the wider process, read our step-by-step guide to getting authorised, or DIY vs using a service if you're deciding how to prepare it.