IT Support for Financial Services Managed IT Services
Operational resilience, FCA compliance and 24/7 monitoring for UK financial services firms. From wealth managers and IFAs to trading firms and payment processors, Vertex9 delivers managed IT built for the demands of regulated financial services.
Financial Services IT Challenges
The IT demands of a regulated financial services firm are categorically different from those of a general business. Operational resilience is a regulatory requirement, not a preference — and the personal accountability framework of SMCR means IT failures carry individual consequences for senior managers.
FCA PS21/3 Operational Resilience
FCA Policy Statement PS21/3 requires all regulated firms to identify their important business services, set impact tolerances for disruption, and annually test their ability to remain within those tolerances. A single IT failure that causes a reportable service disruption must be notified to the FCA. This transforms IT resilience from a business concern into a regulatory one. Firms must be able to demonstrate, with evidence, that their IT systems are designed for the resilience their important business services require.
SMCR Personal Accountability
Under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, senior managers are personally accountable for the business areas under their responsibility — including IT. A significant IT failure in a business area that a Senior Manager is responsible for can result in personal regulatory action if the FCA finds that appropriate systems and controls were not in place. This means IT governance and oversight is not just an operational matter but a personal regulatory exposure for your leadership team.
MiFID II Communication Record-Keeping
MiFID II requires firms to record and retain electronic communications relating to client orders and transactions — including email, Microsoft Teams messages and voice calls — for a minimum of five years, or seven years for some categories. These records must be retrievable for FCA investigation within specified timeframes. Most firms significantly underinvest in communication compliance infrastructure, creating a latent regulatory risk that only materialises when the FCA or FOS requests records that cannot be produced.
Trading System & OMS Availability
Algorithmic trading platforms, order management systems, and market data feeds require near-zero downtime. A trading system failure during market hours can result in missed client orders, regulatory breach, financial loss and client relationship damage. These systems demand dedicated, high-performance IT infrastructure with robust failover, ultra-low latency networking where required, and support arrangements that understand market hours and cannot afford to wait for a general IT support queue.
Cyber Incident Reporting Obligations
Regulated financial services firms must report material cyber incidents to the FCA within 72 hours of identification. This notification obligation exists whether or not client data has been compromised — a ransomware attack affecting operational systems triggers reporting requirements regardless. Most firms are unprepared for the concurrent demands of managing a live cyber incident while simultaneously preparing regulatory notifications. An experienced incident response partner is not a luxury — it is essential preparation.
DORA — Digital Operational Resilience Act
Firms with EU-regulated operations are subject to DORA, which came into force in January 2025. DORA requires a comprehensive ICT risk management framework, mandatory incident reporting, periodic resilience testing, and supply chain risk management including assessment of third-party ICT providers. DORA's requirements extend beyond what PS21/3 demands — firms with EU operations face a dual compliance burden that requires careful IT governance architecture to address efficiently.
Our IT Services for Financial Services
Every service we deliver to financial services firms is designed with the FCA regulatory framework, operational resilience obligations and the personal accountability of SMCR in mind.
Operational Resilience & 24/7 Monitoring
We design and manage IT infrastructure that meets FCA PS21/3 operational resilience requirements for your important business services. This includes mapping IT systems to business services, defining impact tolerances with your compliance team, and designing resilient architectures — redundant connectivity, high-availability server infrastructure, and automated failover. Our 24/7 monitoring detects and resolves issues before they breach your impact tolerances, and we provide the testing and documentation your annual resilience review requires.
Explore Managed IT →Financial Services Cybersecurity
Financial services firms are among the most targeted organisations for cybercrime — client financial data and access to payment systems make them high-value targets. We deploy layered security: advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR), AI-assisted email security to block phishing and BEC attacks, network traffic monitoring, privileged access management, and vulnerability management. Incident response procedures are pre-planned and tested, with FCA notification support built into our response playbooks so regulatory obligations are met even during a live incident.
Explore Cybersecurity →Communication Compliance & Archiving
We implement Microsoft Teams call recording, email archiving via Microsoft Purview, and retention policies that ensure all relevant communications are captured, stored securely and retrievable for the required MiFID II retention periods. eDiscovery configurations allow rapid retrieval of specific communication records in response to FCA or FOS requests. Supervision workflows can be configured to enable compliance team review of communications for conduct monitoring purposes.
Explore M365 Compliance →Disaster Recovery & BCP
We design and test disaster recovery solutions calibrated to your specific impact tolerances. For most financial services clients, this means sub-4-hour RTO for critical systems — and for some trading operations, sub-1-hour. Recovery procedures are documented and rehearsed, with evidence-based reporting that your compliance team can use in annual resilience testing submissions. We also assist with broader business continuity planning, ensuring IT recovery procedures align with your wider BCP framework.
Explore Disaster Recovery →Cloud with UK Data Residency
Cloud adoption in financial services requires careful management of data residency, third-party risk and regulatory requirements. We design cloud architectures that keep client financial data within UK data centres where required, implement appropriate security controls, and ensure cloud services are assessed as third-party ICT providers under your DORA obligations where applicable. Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 are deployed with financial services compliance configurations from the outset.
Explore Cloud Services →SMCR Governance Reporting
We provide Senior Managers with the IT governance reporting they need to demonstrate appropriate oversight under SMCR. Regular reporting covers IT security posture, system availability, incident history, patch status and key risk indicators. This gives Senior Managers the information they need to exercise genuine oversight — not just receive assurance — and creates the audit trail that demonstrates appropriate IT governance to the FCA if required.
Explore IT Governance →Regulatory Compliance for Financial Services
The regulatory landscape for financial services IT has expanded substantially. Understanding the specific requirements of each framework — and how your IT infrastructure must respond — is our specialism.
FCA PS21/3 Operational Resilience
PS21/3 requires all FCA-regulated firms to identify important business services, set impact tolerances, and demonstrate they can remain within those tolerances during severe but plausible disruption scenarios. The March 2025 compliance deadline passed — firms now need to have operationalised their resilience frameworks. We work with your compliance team to ensure your IT infrastructure delivers the resilience your important business service mapping requires, and provide the annual testing evidence your policy documentation needs to reference.
DORA — Digital Operational Resilience Act
DORA applies to financial entities with EU-regulated operations and their ICT third-party providers. It requires a comprehensive ICT risk management framework, mandatory incident classification and reporting, digital operational resilience testing (including penetration testing for significant firms), and third-party ICT risk management — including contractual requirements for ICT providers. Vertex9 supports DORA compliance through risk assessments, resilience testing and appropriate contractual frameworks.
MiFID II Record-Keeping & FCA SYSC
MiFID II requires electronic communication records to be retained for five to seven years depending on category. FCA SYSC sourcebook requirements mandate appropriate systems and controls for operational risk management. We implement communication archiving infrastructure that meets retention requirements, with search and retrieval capabilities designed for compliance team use. SYSC-compliant IT risk management documentation is produced as a standard deliverable of our managed services engagement.
UK GDPR — Client Financial Data
Client financial data constitutes personal data under UK GDPR, and in some cases — where health or other special categories are involved in investment decisions — sensitive personal data. The ICO expects financial services firms to apply appropriate security measures proportionate to the risk. Data subject access requests from clients must be fulfilled within one month. We implement the technical controls — encryption, access management, data mapping — that underpin your GDPR compliance and Data Protection Impact Assessment documentation.
Why Financial Services Firms Choose Vertex9
Managing IT for a regulated financial services firm requires an understanding of the regulatory environment that most general IT providers simply do not have. We build our services around the specific frameworks that govern your operations.
Regulatory Framework Knowledge
We understand FCA PS21/3, SMCR, MiFID II, DORA and UK GDPR as they apply to IT systems. You will not need to translate regulatory requirements into IT language for us — we already understand the connection.
24/7 Monitoring & Response
Financial markets do not observe business hours, and operational resilience requirements do not either. Our monitoring and incident response operate continuously — detecting and resolving issues before they breach your impact tolerances or trigger reporting obligations.
Evidence-Based Compliance Reporting
We produce the IT governance reporting that Senior Managers need to demonstrate SMCR oversight and that compliance teams need for annual resilience testing submissions. Reporting is structured around FCA expectations, not generic IT metrics.
Incident Response with FCA Notification
In a cyber incident, we manage technical response while simultaneously preparing the regulatory notification your compliance team needs to submit to the FCA within 72 hours. Pre-planned response procedures mean the 72-hour clock does not run out before anyone knows what to file.
UK Data Residency
Client financial data stays within UK data centres where required. We design cloud architectures that maintain data residency compliance, with clear documentation of where data is stored and processed — essential for FCA regulatory returns and client agreements.
Scalable for Growth
Whether you are onboarding new advisers, expanding into new asset classes, or meeting the IT demands of a newly awarded regulatory permission, Vertex9 scales your IT infrastructure to match your regulated firm's growth trajectory without compromising resilience or compliance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions from financial services firms considering managed IT services from Vertex9.
Can you help us achieve FCA PS21/3 operational resilience compliance?
Yes. We work alongside your compliance team to map important business services to the underlying IT systems that support them, help define appropriate impact tolerances from a technical feasibility perspective, and design the IT architecture changes needed to ensure you can remain within those tolerances. We then provide the annual resilience testing — simulating disruption scenarios — and document outcomes in a format suitable for FCA review. This is an ongoing programme, not a one-time project.
How do you support MiFID II communication recording requirements?
We implement Microsoft Teams call recording for relevant staff, email archiving via Microsoft Purview with appropriate retention policies (five to seven years depending on communication category), and compliance supervision configurations that allow your compliance team to monitor and retrieve communication records. eDiscovery is configured for rapid retrieval of specific records by date, sender, recipient or keyword — essential when the FCA or FOS issues a request with a tight turnaround. All archived records are tamper-evident and admissible as evidence.
What recovery time objective (RTO) do you design for financial services clients?
RTOs are designed around your specific impact tolerances, not a generic standard. Most of our financial services clients operate with a sub-4-hour RTO for critical systems. Trading firms with market-hours dependencies typically require sub-1-hour RTO and may require active-active infrastructure rather than traditional DR. We test recovery procedures quarterly, document actual achieved recovery times, and use this data to refine recovery architecture. Theoretical RTOs are not acceptable evidence for PS21/3 compliance — actual tested performance is.
Can you help with DORA compliance for our EU operations?
Yes. DORA requires financial entities to implement a comprehensive ICT risk management framework covering identification, protection, detection, response and recovery. We build and maintain this framework, conduct the third-party ICT risk assessments required under DORA's supply chain provisions, and establish incident classification and reporting procedures that meet DORA's mandatory timelines. For firms in scope for DORA's advanced resilience testing requirements, we arrange and manage the necessary penetration testing programmes.
Do you understand SMCR and the personal accountability implications for senior managers?
Yes. SMCR creates personal regulatory accountability for the Senior Managers responsible for areas where IT systems sit. We work directly with Senior Managers and their executive assistants to design governance reporting that gives them genuine oversight of IT risk — not just periodic assurance that everything is fine. In the event of an FCA investigation into an IT-related incident, the governance documentation we maintain demonstrates that appropriate oversight was exercised. We also support Senior Managers in preparing their Statements of Responsibility where IT governance is a relevant component.
Strengthen Your Firm's Operational Resilience
Speak to a financial services IT specialist at Vertex9. We will review your current IT infrastructure against FCA PS21/3, DORA and your specific impact tolerances — and identify the gaps before your next annual resilience test or regulatory review does.