Outsourced COFA Support Services for Law Firms

A COFA — Compliance Officer for Finance and Administration — is a role required by the SRA for all authorised firms. The COFA must be a manager or employee of the firm and is personally responsible for taking all reasonable steps to ensure the firm complies with the SRA Accounts Rules, for recording any known or reasonably knowable breaches, and for reporting material breaches to the SRA. The personal and non-delegable nature of this obligation means that a COFA who fails to maintain adequate compliance oversight can face individual regulatory consequences, even if they did not personally cause the breach.

No — and this is an important distinction. The COFA role is a personal regulatory appointment that must be held by a manager or employee of the authorised firm. It cannot be outsourced to a third party. What we provide is independent support for your designated COFA: auditing the work done by your cashiers, maintaining breach records, producing monthly compliance reporting packs, and identifying systemic risks before they become regulatory events. The responsibility remains within your firm; we give your COFA the independent evidence and documentation needed to discharge that responsibility with confidence.

When the SRA conducts a financial compliance review, inspectors typically request evidence of your most recent three-way reconciliations (signed and dated), your breach register for the preceding 12 months, your client account withdrawal approval records, and evidence of how the firm responds to and remediates identified breaches. A firm that has regular, documented reconciliations, a maintained breach register (even one that shows minor technical issues properly handled), and clear approval controls will fare significantly better than one that has clean accounts but cannot produce the documentation to prove it. Our COFA support service is designed to produce precisely that documentation.