EMI authorisation: why three statutory months become twelve

When founders ask us how long an EMI licence takes, they usually already know the statutory number. The Bank of Lithuania must decide on a full e-money institution application within three months, or within two for a restricted licence. Both figures are accurate - and both measure something much narrower than most applicants assume.

The window is counted from a complete application. Not from the day you decide to apply, not from the day you first meet the regulator, and not even from the day you file. Complete in the regulator's judgement - every annex present, every key person documented, every policy attached, every shareholder evidenced. Anything less, and the count has not begun.

That single definition explains most of the gap between the statute and the calendar. Around the three statutory months sit stages the statute does not count at all: the pre-application programme, the drafting and build of the file itself, a completeness check that can restart the count, and rounds of regulator questions that stop the clock once the substantive review is under way. Add key-person interviews, which have to be scheduled around real diaries, and a three-month review sits comfortably inside a nine-to-twelve-month project.

Lithuania is our worked example because its process is unusually transparent and, in our mandate figures, it sits at the faster end of the EU range alongside Malta. But the mechanics generalise. Every EU member state runs a variant of the same loop - engage, file, complete, answer, interview, decide. The country changes the pace, not the shape.

In Lithuania, meeting the regulator before you file is not a courtesy - it is standard practice. The Bank of Lithuania's Newcomer programme puts prospective applicants in front of the supervisor before an application exists: you present the business model, the funding, the team, and you hear what the regulator is likely to push on. In our experience, most other member states run some equivalent, formal or informal, whether it is badged as pre-application engagement or simply an introductory meeting.

Founders sometimes treat this stage as optional and skip straight to drafting. That is usually a false economy. An objection raised in a pre-application meeting is cheap to fix - you adjust the plan before anything is filed. The same objection raised as a formal question six months later stops a statutory clock and demands a documented response.

The cost is calendar time before you have filed anything: preparing the presentation, scheduling the sessions, digesting the feedback and adjusting the model. In a realistic counter this consumes the first one to two months. The return is a file shaped around the regulator's actual concerns - which is what shortens everything downstream.

Filing is not the finish line of preparation; it is the start of the completeness check. Before the substantive review begins, the regulator confirms that the application is actually complete - and if it is not, the statutory count restarts rather than pauses. A missing annex, an unsigned declaration, an ownership document that stops one layer short of the real beneficial owner: each is enough to send the file back and reset the timeline to zero.

This is the least visible and most avoidable of the timeline killers, because it is entirely within the applicant's control. The practical rule we apply is simple: file once, file complete. A file that spends an extra three weeks in internal review before submission routinely saves a multi-month restart after it.

It also changes how you should read jurisdiction marketing. A short statutory window is worth little if your file bounces at completeness. The applicants who actually experience Lithuania's three months are the ones whose applications were complete on day one.

Every application should expect at least one full round of regulator questions. That is not a sign the application is weak - it is the normal operation of the process, and any plan that assumes zero question rounds is a plan built to slip. Each round stops the statutory clock. It restarts only when your response lands, and a thin response tends to breed a second round, which stops the clock again.

This makes the quality of the first response round the single biggest controllable factor in the whole timeline. A complete, consistent, well-evidenced first response can close the round and let the clock run. A rushed one converts a three-month review into a six-month exchange of letters - with the statute technically respected the entire time.

In practice, this is where advisers earn their keep or reveal that they are couriers. Drafting the file is table stakes; managing the question rounds - anticipating them in the file, answering them in one voice, and keeping key people ready to defend the answers - is the discipline that moves the calendar. It is also the core of how we run a mandate: the response round is planned from day one, not improvised when the letter arrives.

Initial capital for a full EMI under the EU framework is EUR 350,000, and the funds must be in place at authorisation. That sounds like an end-stage formality, but regulators examine the funding plan as part of the application - so the money, its source and its route into the company need to be documented long before the decision date. Treating the capital as a last-minute wire transfer is a reliable way to add weeks at exactly the point the process should be closing.

Key-person interviews are the other late-stage variable. Board members and senior managers - typically including the head of compliance - can expect to be interviewed, and the sessions have to be scheduled around real diaries on both sides. The interviews test whether the people match the paper: whether the directors actually understand the business plan filed in their name, and whether the compliance lead can operate the framework the policies describe.

A candidate who stumbles here does not merely cause delay. Regulators can ask for a key person to be replaced, and a replacement means new documentation, a new assessment and, often, a new interview. The cheapest insurance is preparation: the people named in the file should have written it, or at least be able to defend every line of it.

A common mental model puts banking after the licence: get authorised first, then open the accounts. The process does not work that way. Safeguarding arrangements and banking are assessed as part of the application itself - the regulator wants to see where customer funds will sit and how they will be protected before it grants anything.

Starting the banking search after approval is one of the most common causes of a stalled launch. The result is an institution that is licensed but cannot operate: authorised on paper, with no safeguarding account to receive its first customer euro. The licence clock stops mattering and a new, unregulated clock starts - the one where a credit institution decides whether to onboard you, on its own timetable.

The fix is sequencing. Safeguarding and banking conversations belong in the application-build phase, running in parallel with drafting, so that the arrangements described in the file are real by the time the decision arrives. We have written separately about how new EMIs actually get a safeguarding account - the short version is that it takes longer than founders expect, which is precisely why it cannot wait for the licence.

Once you accept that the statutory window and the project timeline are different things, the planning question changes. It is no longer "how do we compress three months" but "which of the nine to twelve do we control". The answer is: more of them than most applicants use. Pre-application preparation, the internal quality bar before filing, the discipline of the first response round and the early start on banking are all applicant-side decisions - and together they are the difference between the faster and the slower end of the range.

What you do not control is worth naming too: regulator workload, the scheduling of interviews, and the depth of scrutiny your particular model attracts. Products that touch higher-risk flows should expect more questions, not fewer, and no adviser can promise otherwise. Anyone who offers you a guaranteed date is describing their marketing, not the process.

The practical output of a well-run scoping exercise is therefore not a single number but a phased counter like the table above - anchored to the statutory rules, honest about the stages the statute does not count, with the controllable phases resourced properly. That document is what lets you time hiring, funding rounds and commercial commitments against reality rather than against the statute.