Growthenetworkwithoutgrowingthecostofoverseeing it.
One view of every firm and every adviser, current enough to act on, built from the files, promotions, calls and public record your network already holds. Not a spreadsheet fed by hand.
The risk picture exists.It is just held together by hand.
Most networks already have one: a spreadsheet that pulls in complaints, file reviews and onboarding checks and traffic-lights the firms. It asks the right questions: which advisers to look at more often, whose volumes jumped, whose business mix shifted. The problem is what feeds it. Every input arrives in a different shape, the evidence is written in documents rather than fields, and by the time the picture is assembled it describes a quarter that has ended.
Oversight to the standard the rules already describe.
The FCA expects a principal's oversight of an AR's activities to be of a comparable standard as if they were an individual directly employed by the principal. In September 2024 it published what it found when it tested how principals were implementing those rules. Separately, HM Treasury has consulted on a specific FCA permission to act as a principal, which the FCA could vary or withdraw. Those are proposals. They would require changes to legislation and are not in force.
Oversight to the standard the rules already describe.
The FCA expects a principal's oversight of an AR's activities to be of a comparable standard as if they were an individual directly employed by the principal. In September 2024 it published what it found when it tested how principals were implementing those rules. Separately, HM Treasury has consulted on a specific FCA permission to act as a principal, which the FCA could vary or withdraw. Those are proposals. They would require changes to legislation and are not in force.
Everything a network answers for, on one engine.
Nine areas, from taking a firm on through advice quality, promotions and financial crime to complaints, competence and consumer outcomes. Each area is a set of checks. Each check reads what it needs to and returns one report with the evidence behind every answer. Turning an area on is a configuration change, not a project.
Firm onboarding
Six independent sources, from the FCA Register through Companies House to the app stores, in one comparably shaped report per firm. Including a three-tier permitted-scope test: the principal's ceiling, the appointment record, then each individual's Directory roles.
Adviser onboarding
The fit and proper evidence, plus the thing most networks cannot do at onboarding: judge competence from actual work, with every probation case reviewed and the gaps named.
Ongoing supervision
Risk signals per firm and per adviser, drawn from every check that has run, refreshed rather than rebuilt.
Advice-file review
Suitability, affordability, disclosure, vulnerability and the record, against your checklist and your wording, per case type.
Financial promotions
What your advisers actually publish, read on a cycle you set and graded against your own breach taxonomy. Including whether something is a promotion at all, and whether something accurate when published still is.
Financial crime
Identity, screening, control and source of funds, plus document forensics run on the file itself rather than on what it says.
Complaints
The file re-examined against the nature of the complaint, the root cause named, and whether the same cause appears elsewhere in the network.
Training and competence
A named gap with the specific files and calls that evidence it, and a re-check at the next files to see whether the learning worked.
Conduct and consumer outcomes
Vulnerability, fair value, understanding and outcomes, aggregated for the board and traceable back to what produced each figure.
A risk rating gets betterthe more it is built from.
Networks sample because reading every file was too expensive, not because a sample tells you enough. Read every file in scope and a firm's finding rate becomes a real rate: comparable with every other firm, trendable by quarter, rankable. A baseline appears, so a finding is judged against what is normal in your network. And a weakness that is forgivable in one advice file is unmistakable when it also turns up in a promotion, a call and a complaint.
Every area lands on one record.One adviser. One firm. Every finding.
The pattern that matters is rarely inside one area. A thin rationale in an advice file, a missing risk warning in a post, a complaint six months later. Each is forgivable on its own. Recorded against the same adviser and the same firm, they are one pattern, and it is visible before it becomes the next complaint. One record per adviser, per firm and per network. Nothing assembled by hand.
Supervise the firms that need it,at the depth they need.
Most networks already supervise on risk and tier their supervisors accordingly. What is missing is the evidence underneath: enough current, comparable information to defend why one firm gets a visit this month, another a deep sample of twenty files, and a third less attention because it has earned it. A risk position built from every check makes those calls easier to make and to defend. Your team makes them.
Grow the network. Not the oversight bill.
Four things change when the reading and the collating are absorbed. Three release time. The fourth is where that time goes.
Better reporting
Board, committee and Consumer Duty reporting drawn from evidence that already exists rather than assembled when somebody asks. Every figure opens the file that produced it.
Less manual assembly
The reading and the collating are absorbed. Your team spends its time on judgement, on the borderline files and on the conversations that need somebody in the room.
Better coverage
Reading every file in scope, rather than a slice, produces risk signals on each firm and each adviser. The risk-based approach adjusts as the picture moves.
More time with your firms
Less time compiling data about AR firms, more time in front of them. Oversight becomes part of the proposition your firms compare against other networks, not an overhead.
Built for the day someone asks how a decision was reached.
The obligation is yours and it does not transfer. It is your review, your judgement and your sign-off. Curvestone changes what the review is built from: every file read, every finding cited to its page, and a trail your board and your regulator can read without us in the room.
Cited
Every finding points to its document and page. Every override keeps the name and the time.
Reproducible
Any past decision can be re-run and reproduced exactly as it was made.
Yours
Your compliance officers own the configuration. It is versioned, exportable, and leaves with you.
Checked
Accuracy is tested against a graded corpus, with variance reported to you quarterly.
- UK South hosting
- ISO 27001
- ISO 42001
- Change control to PRA SS1/23
- Exports for a Section 166
- Your data never trains a model
What networks ask before the first meeting.
Start with the areathat costs you most.
Networks usually begin where the manual effort concentrates: advice files, firm onboarding, supervision or promotions. Every area runs on material you already hold, and further areas follow at whatever pace you set. The public footprint check needs nothing from inside your systems at all, so it is the fastest way to see the platform on your own network.