AR oversight that stands up to the FCA.

If you run a principal firm, none of this will be news.

• Spreadsheets

  Your AR data lives in spreadsheets

  Twenty ARs tracked across Excel, SharePoint and somebody's inbox. Change one thing and you update it in four places. Miss one and you get to explain it to the FCA.

• Annual reviews

  Annual reviews are a scramble

  82% of principals say they complete their annual reviews. The FCA rated 43% of them good quality. A review written the week before it is due is not the one that holds up.

  Grant Thornton, Appointed Representatives survey

• Evidence

  You can't prove oversight in a hurry

  A supervisory visit asks for two years of evidence. You have folders, a shared inbox and a compliance log that is not quite current. You already know how the rest of that meeting goes.

1. Ready to submit

   Onboard

   Structured due diligence, documents collected in one portal, register checks run as you go. You finish with a pack that is ready to submit.
2. Avon Advisers · return overdue

   Monitor

   Merrin watches every AR for overdue returns, failed checks and register changes. You hear about it first, which is rather the point.
3. Annual reviewLow

   • Fit & propriety
   • Financials
   • Controls

   Review

   Guided annual reviews aligned to SUP 12.6A. Fit and propriety, financial position and adequacy of controls, each one evidenced and dated.
4. 9 of 14 returned

   Attest

   Secure attestation links go out to your ARs. Responses come back captured, logged and timestamped, and the stragglers get chased for you.
5. Evidence pack · FY2024

   Prove

   Export an evidence pack for any AR and any period. When the FCA asks what you knew in March, the answer takes a minute.

• Is Merrin available today?

  Yes. Book a walkthrough and we will run it against your own AR network rather than a tidy demo one.
• How does Merrin integrate with FCA Connect?

  Merrin assembles everything a Connect submission needs. The FCA does not currently offer an API for third-party submission, so a human on your team still presses the button. They do it with the whole package evidenced and ready to paste, rather than half-built from memory.
• Where is our data hosted?

  UK data centres only, encrypted at rest and in transit, processed under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Identity documents are held apart from the rest of the record.
• Does Merrin make the decisions for us?

  No, and deliberately so. The FCA's 2024 review criticised principals who leaned on automated checks in place of judgement. Merrin gathers the data, runs the checks and puts the file in front of a named person. Your team makes the call, and the record shows who made it and when.
• What's the commitment?

  Annual or monthly. Cancel at renewal. No three-year lock-ins, and your price holds for the term.
• Who else uses Merrin?

  A small but growing number of UK principal firms. We work closely with every one of them, and we are happy to put you in touch with a firm that looks like yours.