Montréal fintech: Law 25 compliance shipped in 6 weeks.

Six weeks before a Quebec privacy commission (CAI) audit, a Montreal fintech (B2B, ~80 employees, FR-CA cross-border payments) realised their Law 25 compliance had stayed at the PowerPoint stage. Their internal DPO had resigned, the external law firm delivered a privacy policy but no technical pipeline. Worst case: CAI fine up to CA$25M or 4% of global revenue.

Our engagement

Three engineers from Abbeal's Americas hub (Montreal), 6 weeks of dense delivery in one-week sprints. Audit-as-code approach, continuous delivery, weekly review with the CTO and the law firm. Full mapping of 47 endpoints touching personal data (9 critical), rewrite of the consent module with granular per-purpose opt-in, sub-72h incident response pipeline, Cypress test suite covering 200 consent scenarios.

Outcome

CAI audit passed with zero reservations two weeks post-delivery. No product roadmap impact (parallel sprints continued). 40% faster turnaround on data access requests (3 days vs 5 previously, vs 30 allowed by law). Consent pipeline reusable as template for future jurisdictions (Ontario PIPEDA rollout planned Q3 2026).