The article
An examiner asks a short question: who could approve payments in March, and who gave them that right? In many firms the answer takes a week of screenshots, emails and a spreadsheet someone keeps by hand. Good financial compliance services make that answer take minutes, and most of the work behind it is software, not paperwork.
I have built software for 18 years, and since 2017 my team at 26 Lines of Code has grown to 70+ specialists and delivered 150+ projects. We are a software company, not a law firm and not an auditor. Your compliance officer and your counsel decide what the rules require; we build and run the systems that keep the records, the controls and the evidence. Below: how that split works, what drives the price, and a drill that shows whether your systems are ready for the next request.
Financial compliance services: the short version
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who decides what the rules require | Your compliance officer and your counsel |
| What we do | Put the requirements into your systems: records, access and approvals, monitoring, reports, vendor reviews |
| What you get | Evidence that comes out of the systems, not a folder assembled before each exam |
| Who it is for | Banks, lenders, payment and investment companies, and fintech startups in the US and Europe |
| Price | Estimated before work starts; the first call and the rough estimate are free |
| What we do not do | Legal opinions, audit opinions and attestations |
Who does what: your compliance team, your auditor and us
Financial services compliance consultants and your own compliance officer write the program: which rules apply, what each one asks and who owns it. An independent auditor tests the program and signs an opinion. Neither of them changes your systems, and that is where many findings live: an access right nobody removed, a change nobody approved, a log nobody kept.
That third part is ours. We agree with your compliance team on what each requirement means for the systems, build it and show the evidence it leaves. Whether a rule applies to you is a question for your counsel; who touched a record, or whether a backup restores, is a question for us.
In October 2026 I looked at what Google shows for this search: two news releases, a blog post and a forum thread among the first ten results, and three local compliance firms on the map. Of the three company pages I could open, none names a price, and none mentions access logs, change approvals or any other evidence an examiner asks the IT side for. A small sample, but that gap is what financial services compliance support from a software company should fill.
Financial regulatory compliance services, in software
Each part of a compliance program has a version that lives in your systems:
- Rule changes become tasks. A new requirement arrives with a summary, a jurisdiction and a date, gets an owner, and its documents stay with it.
- Records are kept as long as the rules require. Your counsel sets the period for each kind of record; the system keeps it that long, protects it from edits and deletes it on time.
- Access, changes and approvals are controlled. Who can do what, who approved that right, and a record of every change to a system that touches money or customer data.
- Transactions are monitored. The rules your compliance officer defines run on every transaction, and each alert lands in a queue with an owner. Anti-money laundering checks have their own page.
- Reports come out the same way every time. Examiners, auditors and the board get numbers generated from the systems, with the date and the source on every page.
- Vendors are reviewed. One register of who can see your data, what they signed and when each was last reviewed.
Retention and deletion of data are a subject of their own, and so are card payments, which fall under PCI DSS.
IT compliance for financial services: a rule that reads like a specification
Some rules read almost like an IT requirements document. If the FTC's Safeguards Rule applies to your company (ask your counsel, it depends on what you do), section 314.4 lists safeguards that land straight on your systems:
| The rule asks for | In your systems | The evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Access controls, reviewed periodically | Roles by job, removed when the job ends | Access reviews with a date and a reviewer |
| An inventory of data, personnel, devices and systems | A list that updates itself, not a slide | The list and its history |
| Encryption of customer information in transit and at rest | Encrypted connections, storage and backups | Configuration exports |
| Multi-factor authentication for anyone accessing an information system | A second factor on every login, vendors included | Login settings, exceptions with an owner |
| Procedures for change management | Changes reviewed and approved before release | The change log and its approvers |
| Monitoring and logging of authorized users | A record of who did what, protected from edits | Log samples and retention settings |
| Disposal of customer information no later than two years after its last use, with exceptions | Deletion jobs that respect a legal hold | A log of what was deleted and when |
Unless you monitor continuously, the same section asks for a penetration test every year and a vulnerability assessment at least every six months; a written report to the board is due at least once a year either way. If a notification event involves the information of at least 500 consumers, the FTC must be told within 30 days of discovery: the types of information, the dates and the number of consumers. Your logs and your data inventory have to answer those three questions within days.
We run that kind of IT: managed IT services with financial compliance built in, from access and logging to recovery that is rehearsed. Penetration tests are a service of their own.
The examiner's drill: can your systems answer these in a day?
Before an exam or a partner bank's review, hand each request below to the person who would answer it and time the answer. A request that takes more than a day, or comes back as a screenshot, is the next thing to fix.
| The request | The answer should come from | A warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Everyone with admin rights to the payment system, and who approved each right | The access review | Someone has to log in and look |
| Every change to production last quarter, with its approver | The change log | Changes made straight on the server |
| Proof that last night's backup restores | A dated restore test | "We have backups", and nothing more |
| The vendors that can see customer data, and when each was reviewed | The vendor register | A list in someone's inbox |
| Who opened this customer's record last month | Application logs | Logs kept for a week, or not at all |
| Every alert raised last quarter, and what happened to it | The alert queue | Alerts closed without a note |
| The rule changes adopted this year, and who owns each | The task list of regulatory changes | A folder of PDFs |
| The records deleted under your retention policy | The deletion log | Nothing is ever deleted |
Every warning sign is a piece of work with a clear end: a review that runs on a schedule, a log that is kept, a list that updates itself.
Our work
PBM Source is compliance software for pharmacy benefit managers: not a bank, but the same problem financial compliance teams have with rule changes. New laws, regulations and guidance arrive on a dashboard as tasks, each with a summary, a jurisdiction and a date, and each marked by line of business: fully insured commercial, self-insured, Medicare or Medicaid.
The hard part was relevance, so that a team sees the rules that concern it and skips the rest. Tasks sort by topic, jurisdiction, compliance date or assignee, and every message and document stays with its task. More in the PBM Source case.
Second Chance is a crypto trading platform with automated strategies, built with security first: funds and data are protected, and every transaction is monitored and shown to its owner in a personal account. The hard part was an engine that runs complex strategies by itself while the dashboard stays simple for beginners and useful for professionals. More in the Second Chance case.
How it goes, and what stays yours
A first call, with an NDA signed before you share details; a free rough estimate; an agreement with scope, budget and timeline; then two-week sprints with a demo at the end of each. The whole start is in from first call to first release. Invite your compliance officer to the demos. That is where a requirement turns into a working control, and where a misunderstanding costs two weeks instead of an exam finding.
The code we write for you is yours once it is paid for. Every access and service we set up is documented, so your own team or another vendor can take over, and offboarding ends with a clear list of what to revoke.
What the price depends on
This work has no price list, because no two firms start from the same systems. The estimate depends on:
- how many systems hold money or customer data, and how they connect;
- whether a platform covers part of the work, or your systems need their own connectors and checks, which is compliance automation;
- how much evidence already exists, and in what shape;
- whether you need a project, a running service or our engineers inside your team: staff augmentation starts from $35 an hour.
A custom internal tool, such as a tracker of regulatory changes, is a web application, from $5,000 for a first version. Everything else is estimated before work starts, and the first call and the rough estimate are free.
When we are the wrong call
- You need to know whether a rule applies to you. That is a question for your counsel.
- You need an audit opinion or an attestation. It comes from an independent auditor; we prepare the systems and the evidence the auditor will test.
- You need someone to be your compliance officer. We work with that person; we do not replace them.
If your systems fail two or more rows of the drill, that is a good first call. Tell us what you run and what the last exam or review found; we sign an NDA before you send the details and answer new requests within 30 minutes on weekdays, 9:00-18:00 Miami time.
My team holds 5.0 on Clutch from 26 verified reviews as of September 2026, without a single negative review. The rest of our work for regulated companies is on the compliance page.
