How long does an ODP application take?
1–3 months · Preparation to submission
6–10 months · FSCA review
7–13 months · Total
Only the first part is within anyone's control.
The two phases
Phase one — preparation to submission: one to three months
This is the whole application: capital model and three-year plan, governance framework, risk framework, compliance function, business continuity, trade reporting capability, and Form 1 for every controlling body member and senior manager.
What puts a firm at one month: an existing compliance function, capital already in the right entity, named key individuals who can evidence competence without reconstruction, and a client who turns work around in days.
What puts a firm at three months or beyond: frameworks built from scratch, key individuals whose five-year shareholding history has to be assembled, capital that has to be moved or raised, trade reporting capability that does not yet exist, and slow decision-making at board level.
The difference between one month and three is rarely the adviser. It is how much has to be built, and how fast the applicant moves.
Phase two — FSCA review: six to ten months
Once submitted, the timeline is the regulator's.
Requests for further information sit inside this window. How quickly and how completely you answer them affects where in the six-to-ten range you land — a weak answer generates another request, and each round costs weeks.
This is also why preparation quality matters more than preparation speed. An application submitted three weeks earlier but carrying two avoidable further-information rounds finishes later than one submitted properly.
What runs in parallel
Several things take longer than the documents and have to start in week one.
Key individual evidence. Certified qualifications, police clearances, and five years of investment and significant shareholding history — including specified family holdings. This is the item most often incomplete, and it cannot be reconstructed quickly.
Capital. It has to be in the applicant entity, not at group level. Moving or raising it is a corporate process with its own timeline.
Trade repository capability. The application asks for proof you can generate the required report under FMA Conduct Standard 3 of 2018, and confirmation of daily reporting. A connection and a working data pipeline take longer to arrange than most applicants allow for.
Auditor and attorney appointments. Confirmation and acceptance of both forms part of the application.
Why starting late is expensive
The six-to-ten month review does not move. So a month lost in preparation is not a month lost at the start — it is a month added to the end, after which nothing can be done about it.
Firms working to a funding round, a product launch, or a group deadline should count backwards from the date they need to be authorised, not forward from the date they start.
Where the time is won
Preparation is the only phase anyone controls, so that is where the work goes: sequencing the long-lead items first, building the documents so they agree with each other, and getting the submission into a state that does not invite avoidable questions. Then, during review, answering the FSCA's requests properly the first time.
That is the specialists' work, not ours. What we do is connect you with a practice that has done it before — and the earlier that conversation happens, the more of the timeline is still in your hands.
Regulatory sources: Conduct Standard 1 of 2018 · FMA Conduct Standard 3 of 2018
Last reviewed: August 2026
ODP Gateway
FSCA ODP authorisation, run as a single project. We connect you with the specialist practice that prepares the application.