Skip to content

Registry

Firm master and licensing

Tier: Record · Requirement module: Firm Master and Licensing Register · Status: ⬜ Not started

Purpose

One record for every licensed entity and every person who acts on its behalf. Registry answers three questions the rest of the platform asks constantly: is this firm licensed to do this, what must it therefore file, and is this user allowed to act for it.

Scope

Capability Status Notes
Licence category and status ⬜ Category drives which returns apply and the minimum capital reference
Licence number and effective dates ⬜ Bi-temporal — a licence upgrade mid-period changes obligations from that date
Registered office and branches ⬜
Directors, officers, beneficial owners ⬜ Feeds R10 beneficial ownership and R11 governance returns
Compliance officer profile ⬜ Fit-and-proper status, appointment history (R12)
Auditor and bank account profile ⬜
Historical licence changes ⬜ Append-only; a licence history is evidence
Document repository ⬜ Licence certificates, constitutional documents
User mandates ⬜ Which users may prepare, certify, or respond for which licences

Why licence category matters more than firm

Obligations are not attached to firms. They are attached to licence category × return template × period. A firm holding two licence categories owes the union of both obligation sets; a firm whose category changes mid-year owes the old set up to the effective date and the new set after.

Cadence reads this to materialise obligations, so an error here silently produces wrong deadlines for a whole market segment. Licence effective dating is therefore not a convenience — it is the input to the deadline arithmetic.

Owns

  • Licensed entities and their licence holdings
  • Licence categories, statuses, and effective-dated history
  • Officers, directors, beneficial owners, compliance officers
  • User-to-licence mandates and the maker/approver grants
  • Firm-level static data referenced by returns

Does not own

  • Authentication — the identity provider holds credentials; Registry holds mandates
  • Return obligations — Cadence
  • Risk ratings — Prism, though it reads firm attributes as inherent-risk inputs
  • Enforcement history — Docket

Open questions

  • Group structures. Where a licensed firm is part of a group with other licensed entities, consolidated supervision needs a hierarchy. Not in the current requirement; likely needed.
  • Firm-submitted changes. R29 Change Notification means the firm proposes changes to its own Registry record. That is a submission that mutates master data on approval — the only place in Kovent where a return writes to Registry, and it needs care.