Bovill, a UK firm advising on regulatory compliance, has boosted its team with three new hires following what it calls a run of new business wins in the last six months.

Russell Weekes and Judith Cromwell have joined as consultants, while Edward O’Bree has joined as an associate.

Weekes was latterly a senior regulatory consultant at the risk consultancy Avantage Reply, where he focused on global insurance and asset management clients. Before this he was a manager within Ernst & Young’s regulatory and risk management practice for four years, having previously spent a decade at the Financial Services Authority as lead supervisor of major retail investment firms.

Cromwell spent the past three years as a senior associate at the Money Advice Service (a non-governmental organisation advising consumers), having previously worked at the FSA for almost five years, latterly as a senior associate in its financial capability unit.

O'Bree, meanwhile, is a qualified barrister who was most recently a military legal advisor for the British Army.

In other recent expansionary moves at the firm, in April Bovill appointed Rachel Aldridge to the newly-created role of chief operating officer. She previously worked at FBR Capital Markets, an investment bank.

The fact that Bovill has seen a significant uptick in new business is unsurprising given the increasingly rigorous regulatory regime in the UK, and elsewhere in the world. As it cracks down on the financial services industry - including wealth managers - the FSA has been doling out record fines at an alarming rate in recent years.

Adair Turner, the chairman of the FSA, said in a speech earlier this month that the old perception that the FSA was “not an enforcement-led regulator” has changed. The most recent example of rigorous enforcement from the UK regulator was the tough action it took against Barclays over LIBOR manipulation. Barclays has incurred penalties from the US and UK authorities amounting to £290 million (around $455 million) for misconduct relating to the inter-bank interest rate market.

The rising burden of compliance from new regulations is a running theme in the wealth management industry. Some wealth management firms are spending up to half of their net profits on complying with the rising burden of regulation, with the cost standing at more than £400 million (around $628 million) in 2010, according to a recent report by ComPeer, the research firm.