Case Study: Armalytix – Head of Legal & Compliance

The Company

Armalytix provides automated financial data services, including Open Banking, identity verification, and Source of Funds products to the UK professional services market predominantly within the property and legal sectors.

The FCA-regulated business works with lenders, conveyancers, and brokers to bring greater transparency and efficiency to property transactions. Armalytix is a small, growing team based in London, operating within a fast-moving and increasingly regulated environment.

The Requirement

The CEO and co-founder of Armalytix approached Compliance Professionals to appoint a Head of Legal & Compliance. Having built an 11-year relationship with him within the Compliance market, we were already a trusted recruitment partner and understood the importance of moving quickly to find the right person.

Over the previous seven years, Armalytix has developed a comprehensive framework of compliance policies and procedures as part of its FCA registration as an AISP. The role requirement was therefore not to build the function from scratch, but to appoint someone who could take full ownership of the existing framework, maintaining, evolving, and extending it as the business continued to grow and regulatory requirements developed.

The role represented an exciting opportunity as the first dedicated Legal & Compliance hire within the business. The successful candidate would inherit a well-established foundation and have the opportunity to take ownership and make the function their own. The position was weighted towards regulatory compliance, data protection, and policy, alongside commercial legal responsibilities including contract reviews, terms of service, and supplier agreements.

Given the breadth of the role, Armalytix needed someone who was comfortable operating across multiple regulatory frameworks, managing relationships with external counsel where required, and working independently as the subject matter expert across a wide range of areas.

With the role sitting within a growing start-up environment, finding someone who was both technically strong and pragmatic was critical making the support of a specialist recruitment partner particularly valuable.

Our Solution

Following a detailed briefing with the Armalytix team, Compliance Professionals began by mapping the market against the specific requirements of the role.

We leveraged our extensive network of compliance professionals, identifying suitable candidates from our existing pool while also proactively approaching high-quality passive candidates who were not actively looking for a new opportunity.

Once the initial market mapping was complete, we developed a longlist before refining this into a targeted shortlist of candidates who matched both the technical requirements and the culture of the business.

Five candidates were subsequently progressed to interview, with two candidates moving through to the final stage. Following the final interviews, an offer was made to the preferred candidate.

The Outcome

From initial brief through to final-round interview, the entire process took less than one month. Compliance Professionals’ ability to move quickly, combined with our established network and specialist understanding of the Compliance market, enabled Armalytix to secure a high-quality candidate for a specialist position.

The successful appointment gave Armalytix a dedicated Legal & Compliance professional who could take ownership of its established regulatory framework and support the business as it continues to grow. The outcome was a strong result for both the client and candidate, and another example of the value of having a specialist recruitment partner who understands the market and can quickly identify the right talent for complex, niche appointments.