Building Board-Grade Financial Controls for a Fast-Growing Financial Services Business
The Challenge
A rapidly scaling UK financial services business had outgrown its controls environment. Revenue had doubled in three years, audit findings were escalating, the CFO had lost confidence in the management accounts, and the board was making strategic decisions without reliable financial visibility. The symptoms all pointed at finance — but the team was already working flat out.
Our Approach
Altiora diagnosed the controls environment end to end, combining forensic accounting expertise with systems capability. We traced each audit finding back to its source and found the real cause wasn't effort or competence: controls were bolted on manually, duties weren't segregated, and the monthly pack was assembled by hand from disconnected sources. Finance was one capability under strain in a business that had outgrown its operating model.
The Solution
Our own team designed and built the fix in-house, then embedded and ran it: segregation of duties across every financial process; automated approval workflows for commitments above defined thresholds; a real-time financial management platform replacing the manual monthly pack; an audit-ready documentation framework generating automatic evidence trails; and board reporting delivering accurate management accounts within 3 working days of month end.
Results & Impact
The business achieved a clean internal audit for the first time in three years. The CFO described it as 'the governance infrastructure of a much larger business with the agility of a scale-up.' The board now receives management accounts on day 3, enabling monthly strategic decisions that were previously impossible.
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