With the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) authorisation gateway opening on September 30, firms are being advised to submit applications by the end of February 2027.

This allows the regulator enough time to process the anticipated high volume of requests before the full regulatory regime for cryptoassets takes effect on 25 October 2027. 

Those failing to do so may face limitations on operations or be required to implement wind-down plans. Zumo found in a survey of cryptoasset service providers serving UK customers showing that half (50%) are concerned about the prospect of financial penalties or regulatory sanctions. 

Firms operating in the UK market now face a practical problem: the rules are spread across policy statements running to hundreds of pages each, plus FCA Handbook sourcebooks.

Many of the rules are written as amendments to existing provisions rather than as a clean list of actions, with compliance teams left sifting through lengthy PDFs to determine what’s relevant to their business.  

When asked about their organisation’s single biggest challenge when it comes to operating under the incoming UK regulatory regime, three in ten providers said it’s determining which rules apply to them and what permissions are needed. 

The new tracker tells firms, in plain English, what the new rules will require them to do, depending on their type of business activity – whether they’re a crypto broker, a trading platform, a stablecoin issuer, or offer any other in-scope activity.

The Tracker also maps timelines for regulatory milestones, tagged by type and running from the beginning of cryptoasset supervision in the UK through to the publication of the final rules in June 2026, the close of the application window next year, and then full implementation in October 2027.

Users can work through papers in sequential order, starting with PS26/11, which sets out final conduct and operational rules for regulated cryptoasset activities. Each summarised obligation sits under the rulebook section it comes from, and links directly back to the source text. Importantly, nothing reaches a user without a named regulatory analyst at Zumo approving it. 

Nick Jones, founder and chief executive at Zumo, said: “Everyone else publishing a UK regime tracker is a law firm or a consultancy. That work is valuable, of course, but it stops at the same place every time: here is what the rule says, here is what you should think about, and then the hard sell is to come and talk to us about your position.”

“We’re developing our Tracker as industry operators. Building it has meant reading the regime rules right down to the level of every individual obligation, mapping each one to the regulated activity it attaches to, and keeping that mapping current as further papers land.”