Licence Variation

A licence variation is a formal change to an existing financial services licence or authorisation, approved by the regulator that granted it. Firms apply for a variation when they want to add activities, such as a payment institution adding payment initiation or an electronic money institution adding a new payment service; to remove permissions they no longer use; or to change conditions, such as limits on transaction volumes or client types. A small firm moving to full authorised status may also go through a variation or a fresh application, depending on the regime. In the United Kingdom the Financial Conduct Authority handles these requests as variations of permission. The regulator assesses capital, safeguarding, systems, governance and anti-money laundering controls for the new scope, so a variation can take months. Operating outside the current permissions before approval is a breach of the regulatory perimeter and can lead to enforcement.