Meridian’s supervision work was being done properly. Proving it six months later was the problem. They kept their back-office books and records exactly where a regulator expects them, and we built the head-office layer on top. All 46 branches live in month nine.
Meridian Securities is an example, not a client. The firm and the numbers are made up. The shape of the problem, the parts of the engine, and the way a build runs are real.
This is the most common shape we see at head office: good people, real oversight, and no record anybody can produce later.
A daily file lands by email. Branch managers work through it in their inbox and reply when they are done. The reply is the evidence, and it is filed wherever that manager files things.
Bringing a book over from another dealer means a checklist somebody keeps locally, a lot of asking, and no way to see across the ten transitions running at once.
The trades are easy to find. The proof that somebody looked at them, when, and what they decided is scattered across inboxes and memories.
“When the regulator asks, I need the file in an hour, not a fortnight.”
Chief compliance officer, first scoping sessionFor a dealer this is not a preference. The books have to stay where the regulator expects them.
Trades, accounts and positions live in the record-keeping system. They are the registered books and records, and they stay there. We read from it every morning and reconcile before the queue is built, so head office works on the same positions the back office holds. Head office gets a new way to work without the books moving an inch.
Three sessions and one flagged trade followed end to end, at our cost.
Reviews happened, and they were sensible. Six months later nobody could show who did them, when, or what they concluded. That gap is the whole risk.
Most of their time went on gathering the picture around one flagged trade. The judgement itself took a minute. The preparation took twenty.
Without a household record across the whole book, related accounts looked unrelated. The pattern nobody wants to miss was invisible by design.
Every number they needed was already there and already correct. It simply had nowhere to be reviewed, decided and recorded.
Every morning’s exceptions in one queue, by branch, with the picture already assembled around the flagged trade: the account, the household across branches, the advisor’s history and the last review. Every decision is recorded against a person and a moment. Advisor onboarding and transitions run as a workflow with the requirements built in. And the audit file for any account, advisor or period is generated from the history, on demand.
Every item opens with the picture already assembled: the account, the household across branches, the advisor’s history and the last review. The reviewer judges, and the decision is recorded.
Illustrative screen. Positions reconcile against the back office before the queue is built, so head office and the books never disagree.
Head office needs the same records an advisor needs, seen from above. That part was already built.
The household across branches, which is what makes a concentration or a related-party pattern visible.
Requirement sets, steps and chasing — reused for advisor transitions instead of client onboarding.
Packs and files generated from live data, ready to send outside the firm.
The piece the whole build depends on: every change traced to a person and a moment.
Accounts and holdings across the book, read from the back office.
First-pass triage that sorts and summarises the queue. A person still decides.
A daily read and match of accounts and positions, with breaks shown before anybody works.
Their rules, their thresholds, their escalation path, and the sign-off record underneath.
What Meridian sends a regulator, generated from the history in under a minute.
Six of the nine pieces already existed. Three were built for Meridian.
The longest rollout of the four, because 46 branches have to come across one at a time.
Three sessions with the CCO, two branch managers and the head of operations. We followed one flagged trade from the file to the sign-off.
A real exception file, loaded, queued and reviewable, with the decisions recorded.
The queue and sign-off. Then households across branches. Then the audit file. Then advisor onboarding and transitions.
All 46 branches on the desk. The daily spreadsheet stopped going out in month nine.
The oversight did not get stricter. It got provable.
Illustrative figures for an example build.
A dealer replaces systems slowly, and for good reasons. The point is that they can, one piece at a time.
You choose the direction each month. Nothing about this build makes the next decision for you.
An RIA that wanted one place to work, without touching the system that runs performance and billing.
See the build Example build —A boutique manager whose investment process was good and whose paperwork was held together with spreadsheets.
See the build Example build —A family office that could not answer "what do we own" without three days of work.
See the buildTell us how yours runs and what you wish it did instead. Half an hour on a call. We'll tell you what's already built, what we'd have to make, roughly what it costs, and whether it's worth doing at all. Scoping after that is free.
