Compliance Is the Product

Every expert completes a written declaration before a consultation is confirmed, and completes it again for each engagement rather than once at registration. We ask them to declare current and recent employment, board and advisory positions, shareholdings in organisations connected to the brief, government or regulatory roles held in the past two years, and any commercial relationship with the parties named in the request.

The declaration is matched against the brief and against restrictions the client supplies. A consultation does not proceed where the expert holds a position that would place them on both sides of the question, where they hold an economic interest in a named party, or where the topic would require them to comment on a matter they are currently advising on.

Where an expert is employed, we confirm that consulting is permitted before they are put forward. The expert is asked to confirm the position under their employment arrangements and any internal approval requirement that applies to them, and to provide written confirmation from their employer where their employer requires it.

Where consent cannot be confirmed, the expert is not shortlisted for that brief. Where an expert's employer permits consulting subject to conditions — excluded topics, excluded counterparties, or a notification requirement — those conditions are recorded and enforced as scope boundaries for the consultation.

Every brief is screened before sourcing begins. A research associate reviews the questions for anything that would require an expert to disclose material non-public information: unpublished financial results, live transaction terms, confidential board or regulatory deliberations, or specific unannounced decisions of a named organisation.

Where a question carries that risk, we rewrite it with the client into a form an expert can answer from market knowledge, or we decline it. Declining is a normal outcome and we say so in the response rather than quietly reframing the request.

Each consultation carries a complete record: the brief as submitted and as screened, the candidates considered, the declarations signed and their timestamps, the consent position, the screening outcome, the moderation record, the consent captured for recording, and the transcript and summary produced.

The record is retained as an append-only log and is exportable to the client's own compliance function. Clients whose internal policies require evidence of pre-consultation clearance can obtain that evidence for every engagement they have run with us.