GP Tech launches DORA compliance practice for UK and EU banks
Greenwich Pacific Technology Partners (GP Tech), a UK-based banking and financial-services technology consultancy, has launched a dedicated practice focused on the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and parallel UK operational-resilience requirements. The move targets banks, payment institutions, insurers and asset managers that face mounting regulatory scrutiny but lack the in-house technical depth to operationalise compliance at scale.
DORA came into force across the EU at the start of 2025, establishing binding requirements for ICT risk management, incident reporting, resilience testing and the standardised Register of Information that documents third-party ICT dependencies. In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority are enforcing cognate rules under PS16/21, creating a twin-track compliance burden for cross-border institutions.
The compliance gap at mid-tier institutions
GP Tech's pitch rests on a structural tension that regulators and consultancies have both identified: mid-tier financial institutions generally have the organisational will to comply, but not the specialist architecture and legal contract expertise to do so without external help. Permanent headcount for a function that is inherently project-heavy is difficult to justify on most balance sheets below the top-tier.
The new practice covers ICT risk management frameworks, incident classification and reporting pipelines, threat-led penetration testing aligned to the TIBER-EU and TLPT methodologies (the European Central Bank's frameworks for testing the cyber resilience of critical institutions), third-party risk and contract remediation, and impact-tolerance scenario testing. The firm also publishes free technical guidance, including a DORA Register of Information guide and an FCA operational-resilience guide, through its insights portal.
"Most mid-tier institutions have the will to comply but not the in-house depth to translate DORA's requirements into their architecture and supplier contracts," said Timothy A. Kumar, Consulting Technical Director at GP Tech. "We help firms build the Register of Information, run proportionate resilience and threat-led penetration testing, and remediate the gaps regulators actually look for, without hiring a permanent team they can't sustain."
The broader regulatory and market context
The launch sits within a wider consultancy market that has expanded rapidly around DORA since the regulation's applicability date. For cross-sector readers, DORA is significant beyond financial services: the regulation's third-party oversight requirements extend to cloud service providers, data analytics vendors and critical ICT infrastructure suppliers, meaning technology firms selling into European financial markets must themselves demonstrate resilience standards. That supply-chain dynamic is gradually pulling non-financial technology vendors into compliance conversations they previously considered someone else's problem.
For capital allocators, the regulatory compliance services market in financial technology is a steady-fee, recurring-revenue business model that attracts predictable institutional demand. Boutique specialist consultancies in this space have in recent cycles attracted acquisition interest from larger professional services firms seeking regulatory practices that generate durable revenue independent of market cycles. GP Tech is the consulting arm of Riverbank Solar Ltd, a registered Scottish entity, which itself represents an unusual corporate pairing of financial technology services and energy, though the release does not elaborate on any strategic link between the two.
The firm operates across the UK and Europe, and the practice launch signals that smaller specialist advisers are moving quickly to stake territory in the DORA compliance market before larger consulting houses fully resource the space.