If you need pensions, trusts and a family cash-flow, hire a private office. Rathbones and The Private Office are built for that. They are FCA-authorised because they recommend regulated products. The FCA does not regulate cash-flow planning, estate planning or tax in the same way — which is why those firms are careful to say so. None of that is a finance seat in a plant.
Four other markets, one confusion
Mid-tier firms — Forvis Mazars, BDO, Grant Thornton, RSM — will outsource the finance function as a team. Useful if you want a bench and a name the audit committee already knows. You buy the firm. The person on the file can rotate.
Fractional networks — The CFO Centre, The FD Centre — are the largest UK model. Hundreds of part-time CFOs, typically for SMEs between two and fifty million of turnover, matched rather than named. Coverage is the product. Manufacturing costing is only in the room if the match happens to have it.
Placement shops and newer boards — FD Capital, GoCFO and a long tail — introduce an independent. Some of those listings start at a few hundred pounds a month. That is a reporting pack, not an FC. Turnaround houses — FTI, AlixPartners, FRP, Quantuma — are the right call when the directors’ duties have changed. They are not a retained close.
What you are buying here
A named principal, in manufacturing, production, logistics or professional services, at FC, FD or CFO height. Board reporting and the operating close on the same letter. Strategy or the weeds; both if the brief needs both. No product shelf. The accountant and the solicitor stay in post. Capacity is limited because the principal stays on the work.