Permanent resilience expertise. Named senior specialist. Year-round regulatory evidence.

The FourthLine Annual Resilience Retainer gives mid-tier financial services firms a named senior resilience specialist embedded in their programme for the full year - delivering quarterly scenario testing, board MI packs, regulatory horizon intelligence, and ongoing programme management aligned to FCA, PRA, and DORA requirements. Not a project. A permanent programme.

From £60,000 + VAT p.a | Fixed Annual Fee | Quarterly Billing in advance | 12-month contracted term

Book a Scoping Call with Kieran

Download the Retainer Product Overview

the problem this solves

Operational resilience is not a project obligation. The FCA and PRA require firms to maintain, test, and evidence their resilience capability on an ongoing basis; with annual scenario testing, continuous mapping maintenance, board-level governance, and regulatory horizon monitoring built into the permanent programme architecture. Most mid-tier firms run this on an ad-hoc basis, producing evidence in bursts before supervisory reviews and allowing it to drift between them.

The Annual Resilience Retainer is the structural solution to that problem. It converts operational resilience from a project your firm keeps restarting into a managed programme with a named specialist, a confirmed annual delivery calendar, and board-ready evidence produced every quarter not assembled in a rush when a review is imminent.

what the retainer delivers

Two annual scenario tests - designed to challenge, not confirm. Each produces a regulatory-grade evidence pack with findings, lessons learned, and documented remediation actions
IBS maintenance - annual review of Important Business Service definitions, dependency maps, and impact tolerances to reflect organisational change and regulatory developments
Supplier exit plan refresh - annual update of critical supplier exit plans to reflect contract changes, technology changes, and testing findings
Quarterly regulatory horizon intelligence summary - what FCA, PRA, and DORA developments mean specifically for your firm
Quarterly board MI pack - position-based reporting for board or Risk Committee. Formatted for genuine governance challenge, not programme status updates
Quarterly steering committee - Fourthline Partner & chairs or co-presents. Programme status, remediation tracker, upcoming obligations, emerging risks
Monthly 30-minute check-in — progress against calendar, open items, emerging risks
Regulatory questions answered in-retainer — no proposal required, no additional fee for reasonable ad-hoc queries
Board attendance — Engagement Director available for 1–2 board or Risk Committee sessions per annum where retainer materials are being presented
Annual self-assessment refresh -& SS1/21 Chapter 8 self-assessment updated and board-approved

What our clients receives each quarter

Q1:

Annual programme plan agreed and circulated
Q1 board MI pack produced and delivered
Regulatory horizon summary: Q1
Scenario test 1: design and scenario selection

Q2:

Scenario test 1: execution and post-test report
Q2 board MI pack produced and delivered
IBS maintenance review initiated
Regulatory horizon summary: Q2

Q3:

IBS maintenance completed, impact tolerances refreshed
Supplier exit plan refresh underway
Q3 board MI pack produced and delivered
Scenario test 2: design and scenario selection
Regulatory horizon summary: Q3

Q4:

Scenario test 2: execution and post-test report
Annual self-assessment refreshed and board-approved
Q4 board MI pack and annual review produced

three Tiers. Fixed Annual Fee. Contracted for 12 months

Foundation

Up to 4 IBS. 2 scenario tests. Quarterly MI. Annual self-assessment refresh. Mapping maintenance.

£60,000-£70,000 + VAT P.A.

Standard

Up to 6 IBS. 2 scenario tests. Enhanced supplier review. Quarterly MI. Board attendance. Self-assessment.

£70,000-£80,000 + VAT

Enhanced

Complex structure. 7+ IBS. DORA scope. Enhanced TPRM. Additional scenario testing. Embedded secondment option.

£80,000-£90,000 + VAT P.A

Combined

Combined Op Res & BCM, TPRM including full Supplier Exit Plan testing and IT Disaster Recovery Planning.

£160,000 + VAT P.A

The firm entered its PRA supervisory meeting with a complete, evidenced operational resilience programme. The board evidence pack provided the regulator with the documentary record it requested on day one of the review. No remediation notice was issued.

Chris Sanford

Product Designer, Chetwood Financial

View Case study

Why Fourthline as your resilience partner

The expert you meet is the expert who delivers

Every retainer is led and delivered by Kieran Maplesden and a named senior associate. Not a senior partner who appears at kick-off and quarterly reviews while analysts do the delivery. The expert who scoped the retainer is on every check-in, produces every MI pack, and chairs every steering committee.

Position-based board reporting, not activity reporting

The quarterly board MI pack tells the board what they need to know to exercise genuine governance challenge - where the firm's resilience position is, what has changed, what the regulatory horizon looks like, and what decisions the board needs to make. Not a list of completed project tasks.

Scenario tests designed to find gaps, not avoid them.

Every scenario testing exercise FourthLine runs is designed to challenge the firm's resilience assumptions under stress. The findings are honest. The evidence pack produced is regulatory-grade. An exercise designed to produce a clean result is not a regulatory evidence asset - it is a liability.

How the retainer connects to the diagnostic

Most retainer clients start with a Diagnostic Assessment.

The Diagnostic identifies the current-state gap and produces the remediation roadmap. The Annual Resilience Retainer is the structured mechanism for closing that gap and maintaining the programme on an ongoing basis. Most clients who complete a diagnostic move to the retainer within 6–8 weeks - with the retainer scope scoped directly from the diagnostic findings.

Book a 30 minute Scoping Call

In 30 minutes a FL Certified Resilience practitioner will walk through what a resilience retainer programme looks like for a firm at your maturity stage, what the annual deliverable calendar would contain, what fee tier applies based on your IBS count and structure, and how the retainer connects to any existing programme work. No obligation.

Book a 30-minute scoping call

Start with a Diagnostic Assessment