Website compliance · FCA Handbook
Find the gaps before the FCA does
Automated FCA-Handbook checks for authorised firms — your financial promotions, your firm-status disclosures, and your website — with the evidence to show where you stand. The compliance call stays yours.
Illustrative preview — your review reflects your live website
The problem
The rules are enforced — and the accountability is personal
The FCA reviews financial promotions at scale, and it acts on what it finds — from takedowns and website blocks to skilled-person (s166) reviews that run into six and seven figures.
Under the Senior Managers & Certification Regime, that exposure isn't the firm's in the abstract — it sits with a named senior manager. Responsibility for financial promotions can't be outsourced to a tool, and shouldn't be.
What that person needs is a clear, evidenced picture of where the website stands — fast, and kept current — so they can exercise judgment on facts, not hope.
19,766
promotions amended or withdrawn after FCA intervention in 2024 — up 97.5% on 2023.
1,600+
websites suspended or blocked in FY2024/25.
£200k–£1m
the typical cost of a skilled-person (s166) review.
Source: FCA — financial-promotions data (2024) and enforcement data (FY2024/25).
What we check
The FCA Handbook, read off your website
A working product, versioned and growing — run against your live site and your PDFs, and graded to the way the rules actually read. Sector checks switch on for the business you do; the rest are marked Not applicable, never counted against you.
50+
Automated checks
47 FCA-Handbook checks and a four-point web-hygiene baseline, run against your pages and the PDFs linked or embedded in them.
6
Guided checks
A structured human read for what a crawler shouldn't rule on alone — including the sector-applicability confirmations that decide which rules apply to you.
Live
FCA Register look-up
Your Firm Reference Number and authorisation status verified against the FCA Register at run time — not read off your own website.
Every check is automated (a confident pass or fail), AI-assisted (graded against the rule's wording, and surfaced for review rather than failed on a judgment call), or a guided check — and lands on one of these:
Pass — verified on the website
Needs attention — found but incomplete, stale or not prominent
Needs review — surfaced for a human judgment call
Fail — a required item appears unmet
Not applicable — a sector rule you don't operate under
Guided manual checklist — assessed by a person
Check families
The rules a website carries — cited by their real basis
Grouped the way the Handbook is, and labelled with the sourcebook they come from — so a finding traces straight back to the rule behind it.
Prescribed risk warnings
The FCA's prescribed wording for high-risk investments and for cryptoassets — two distinct forms — checked for presence, prominence (not collapsed behind a tab), and the link to the risk summary. FSCS-exclusion statements where they apply.
COBS 4.12A · high-risk & crypto FG
Representative APR & credit promotions
Consumer-credit promotions that quote a rate trigger the representative example. We detect the trigger, look for the example, and check the representative APR is shown with the prominence the rules require.
CONC 3
Firm status & disclosure
Authorisation and the Firm Reference Number are disclosed, the status-disclosure wording matches the firm's permission type, and an Appointed Representative names its principal.
GEN 4 · verified live on the FCA Register
Complaints & the Ombudsman
The Financial Ombudsman Service is signposted, a complaints procedure is published and usable, and complaints data is published where the reporting threshold applies.
DISP
Consumer Duty — understanding
Communications are tested against the consumer-understanding outcome, aligned to the FCA's March 2026 multi-firm review of firms' Consumer Duty implementation.
PRIN 2A — Consumer Duty
Anti-greenwashing & SDR
Sustainability claims are held to the fair-clear-not-misleading standard, and SDR investment labels and fund naming are checked for correct use.
ESG 4.3.1R · SDR
Sector-gated
Only the rules you actually operate under
We read your permissions and your promotions to work out which sourcebooks apply, then run those checks — and mark the rest Not applicable. A mortgage broker isn't chased for PRIIPs; a crypto firm isn't measured against MCOB.
No false alarms for rules you don't carry — and no genuine gaps missed for the ones you do.
Sector sourcebooks
CONC · MCOB · ICOBS · COBS
Signature check
Firm status, verified on the FCA Register
A Firm Reference Number printed in a footer proves nothing on its own. We take the FRN and check it live against the FCA Register — confirming the firm is authorised, and that the status-disclosure wording matches the permission actually held.
For firms that approve others' promotions, we check the record for the section 21 approver-gateway permission — the flag that says the firm is allowed to do it at all.
Read from the Register at run time — not taken on trust from the website.
Website footer reads
“Authorised and regulated by the FCA · FRN 123456”
We verify it on the Register
How it works
Crawl
We crawl your website — every page, and the PDFs linked or embedded in them — the way an FCA reviewer would read it.
Check
The checks run against the FCA Handbook, switched on for the sectors you operate in, with your Firm Reference Number verified live on the FCA Register.
Evidence
You get an evidence-ready report: every finding shows where we looked, what we found, and the rule it maps to — ready for a file, a board pack, or a supervisor.
Re-check
We re-check quarterly by default, so a promotion that drifts or a link that breaks is caught within the quarter — not at a skilled-person review.
What we don't do
We find the gaps and hand you the evidence. The compliance call stays yours.
Signal Layer is a detection-and-evidence tool, not a compliance verdict and not an approval. Under SM&CR the responsibility for financial promotions sits with a named senior manager, and it can't be handed to software. What we give that person is a fast, evidenced picture — so the judgment they exercise is theirs, on facts.
We never call you “compliant”
Signal Layer shows where you stand and hands you the evidence. Whether the firm is compliant is a judgment for your senior managers under SM&CR — not a badge a tool can award.
We don't approve promotions
We are not a section 21 approver, and nothing here should be read as approval. We flag where a promotion appears to miss a rule; sign-off stays with you or your s21 approver.
Behind-login journeys are out of scope
Cooling-off flows, appropriateness tests and other authenticated journeys sit behind a login an automated crawl doesn't cross. We tell you when a check needs that human path.
Judgment calls go to a human
Where a rule turns on “fair, clear and not misleading” judgment, we surface it for review rather than auto-verdict it. We don't pretend a machine settled the question.
Pricing
One service, three ways to pay
Everything's included at every tier — the full FCA report, the live Register look-up, the evidence pack and quarterly re-checks. Prices are ex-VAT.
Annual
Founding partner
Monthly
Networks, consultancies and BNPL lenders — talk to us about group and portfolio pricing
Who it's for
Built for authorised firms and their promotions
Consumer-credit firms & brokers
Lenders, credit brokers and the firms promoting their products.
Mortgage intermediaries
Brokers and advisers held to MCOB on their promotions and disclosures.
Financial advisers & wealth managers
Advice firms under COBS, with independent / restricted status to describe accurately.
Insurance brokers
General-insurance intermediaries under ICOBS.
Crypto firms
Cryptoasset businesses inside the financial-promotion regime and MLR registration.
Pension providers
Firms under COBS 19, with charges and MoneyHelper signposting to get right.
Appointed Representatives are covered too — we check that the AR names its principal, and verify the principal on the Register. Not sure the fit is right? Ask us — we'll tell you straight.
— founding programme
See where your firm's website stands.
Tell us about your firm and the website you'd like us to check. We run the FCA checks over it before we speak, so the first conversation starts from evidence — where your website stands, and what needs a look.
- Founding-partner places are limited and dated — the £999 rate is locked for two years, in exchange for a reference or case study.
- Networks, consultancies and BNPL lenders: tell us about your portfolio and we'll shape a plan that fits.