There was a bug where an individual couldn’t be deleted after a cryptographic check had been done on them – this has now been fixed and they can be deleted.
We made a change to the document importer tool – when a folder is dragged in with all sorts of file types in, the uploader will only accept images and pdfs and other file types will be simply skipped. This will help provide an initial filter of non-relevant documents to go through the AI analysis.
We’ve made it clearer when going to run an Essential ID that this option is only for UK residents especially when they already have an international address entered – and redirect to the PEP and Sanctions check which is global.
We’ve added the cryptographic ID check to the verification report, so firms can quickly see who the cryptographic check is completed for (and the result).
We’ve added a ‘view’ button for a completed cryptographic check, this is showing a bit more details on what was checked in the chip of the passport including the country certificate that it comes from.
We’ve tweaked the second button in the email of the cryptographic check. We still try to redirect people to the app straight from the email, but if that doesn’t work (as we were seeing with some email providers), they get taken to a web page with a link to open the app from there.
We have a new merge tool to manage duplicate individuals:
Select two duplicate individuals from the people tab to merge
Firmcheck auto-merges as much as possible (verifications, documents, connections), and then lets you resolve any conflicts before completing the merge.
Cryptographic ID checks are here!
How it works:
Once a passport is collected for an individual in Firmcheck, you now have the option to send a cryptographic ID check to their email.
The individual receives an email with instructions to download the mobile app from their phone.
They then open the second link in the email which is their unique link to verify their passport in the app.
Scan the passport in the app and they are done!
In the background, the RFID chip of the passport is scanned and that is used to confirm against public keys that this passport was in fact a legit one issued by the passport issuer of their country. It’s a much more robust validation of a passport than a photo that is then being scanned for tampering checks, as it’s checking against the official issuer of the passport (hence why Companies House want this level of verification).
There was a bug when converting an individual to be a client, if you added a manager it wasn’t actually adding the manager once saved .
When you delete a staff member, we now delete all of their authentication access – this means they can then properly be removed and then invited to the same firm or a different firm later and the previous login issues won’t be present.
We had an issue where if a staff member had been invited to join an existing firm and they dropped off on the confirmation code page, they ended up in a limbo state where they could no longer log in or create a new account. This has now been fixed, so if they do drop off the confirmation code page, the next time they attempt to log in, we’ll direct them to the confirmation code screen and they can get the code resent to them if needed.
New reports available:
Billable items report: gives a list of verifications completed for each person for a selected month for easier management of disbursement.
CDD report: this is an expanded version of the CDD status report with additional details such as the risk assessment questions answered.
Verification report: this lists the verifications for individuals completed i.e the proof of identity and address details, electronic check details and positive results.
Bulk document importer:
Customers can drag in 1000s of identity and proof of address documents into the new Bulk Document Importer.
Firmcheck analyses and assigns the documents to clients and related parties already in the firm’s account.
Customers can review and ensure everything is correct before confirming the import.
The customer can download a mini report at the end to confirm what was imported vs discarded.
Firms can start new Firm-wide risk assessments after their first one is completed.
The new assessment is pre-populated from the most recently completed risk assessment, the users only have to update it and save.
Firms can now see the history of completed Firm Wide Risk Assessments and download historical assessment reports.
We’ve added a new endpoint to the API: “Show firm”. Requesting this endpoint will provide a list of the Services, Staff (including if they are Partner, Manager, MLRO), and Business units set up for the firm making the request (i.e they have to have the API key from that firm).
You can now delete an AML in-progress: Access this action from the menu on the client profile page. This will revert the AML status for that client back to it’s previous state (to either Not started or Completed depending if they’d completed one previously).
An additional risk level is now available when selecting AML Risk Levels: "Medium". To add it to your firm's list of levels to pick from, go to Firm Settings > General and edit your AML risk levels.
We’ve made a few changes to further reduce the duplicates that come through in the related parties when importing from Companies House:
Secretaries weren’t previously merging with directors or PSCs within the same company as they didn’t have month or year of birth to match with, we’ve loosened this logic to only match by first names and last names.
PSCs and Directors within the same company weren’t previously merging if they had first name and last name match but difference in middle name, we’ve now loosened this logic.
A bug when you added a Client that was an individual to then be a related party of another client wasn’t updating the individual to be a connected individual has now been fixed.
We’ve made the documents tab on the profile page now available for all people and organisations, not just clients.
We’ve added a ‘Duplicates’ filter on the People tab, this should make it slightly easier to find the duplicates when tidying up people after an import, and is the first step to helping us have a merge/linking type of functionality.
The API has an update that helps filter clients by changes done, this means a firm with large numbers of clients that may want to get updated data everyday don’t need to pull every single client, but rather just the ones that have had changes since a date they choose.
The Firmcheck API is now officially live! We’ve moved out of beta. We have our 3 API endpoints:
Get client list
Get client
Create client (Individual, Sole traders, Companies House companies)
And more endpoints will be added over time! We’ve also added a changelog to our API documentation to show the changes over time: https://developer.firmcheck.com/changelog#/
Our API is live (but in beta V0.1):
Our first couple of API endpoints have been built: List clients and Show a client
And we have one more endpoint in-progress: Create a client.
See all the API documentation at developer.firmcheck.com
Fixed a bug with the new education page that was returning error screens when you went to navigate to a different area of Firmcheck after the education page.
Fixed a bug that wouldn’t let you make changes in firm settings (such as risk assessment templates) if you had a firm policy uploaded.
Added an alert message if we aren’t able to OCR read an uploaded doc so it’s clear the form couldn’t be pre-populated in that scenario.
The Country on Companies House clients is now shown in the client profile, this was getting missed and confusing when country was Scotland or Ireland.
The recently added trading address for companies house companies has also been rolled out to work for bulk import clients.
We’ve added a new option to pick when assigning a role to related parties “Secretaries” and auto-add that role to secretaries coming from Companies House.
And, our first version of In-App Education is now live!
All staff will see the Education tab in the navigation
They can watch videos on that page to get CPD training and meet AML training requirements.
MLRO’s can see the education status for all of their staff.
We’ve added the ability to add a trading address for Companies House companies from the client profile – this will then show in the AML workflow and AML completed report.
We had some consistent errors when firms were trying to delete staff – this was often because the staff was tied to certain actions across the app. The team have now fixed the logic for those staff assignments so you should be able to delete staff without issue now.
There was also a fix last week that we can now import clients from this list from Companies House – so all active companies, limited partnerships and LLPs that are registered as England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland companies.
OCR service now picks up document number for identity documents
We added document number as a field for identity documents
OCR will auto-populate this field if it can find an identifying number on the document (passport number, driver licence number etc)
This document number is also picked up from the result of an Advanced ID check
We made a change in bulk client imports (individuals and sole traders) so that we accept UK and England as a country in the residential address, rather than throw an error - and we convert it to United Kingdom automatically.
Rather than downloading a document, we give the option to open the document to open it in a new tab, where they have the option to download it or use the browser zoom tools.
Made a fix to connect duplicate records of people coming from Companies House where the person had same name but different nationalities – the common scenario was a person with same name but “English” as the PSC record and “British” as the director record so it wasn’t previously merging these records.
We added a green link icon on the client tabs to show all organisations and people that are connected to Companies House.
We’ve added a notes box when reviewers are approving AML - this will then show on the AML record next to the reviewer details.
You can now open in a new tab from the client pages (Clients, people and organisations) – this wasn’t working previously.
Auto-populating manually added evidence is live
Manually adding an ID or Proof of address will now have data extracted with OCR technology and then structured with OpenAI to pre-populate as much of the form as possible.
New ID Check pricing plan is now live in the app
When in Freemium mode, you can choose which plan to activate your account with ID check plan or Compliance plan.
When you are subscribed to the ID check plan, access is removed from Firm section, Work section and all AML workflows. Checks can be run from the Clients tabs.
The pricing when running a check will show the cost (or free) depending on which plan you are on.
Firms can easily switch between the two plans on the “Manage subscription” page.
All existing customers that were on our current subscription will be on the Compliance plan by default (at the same subscription price) with Watchlist Monitoring and Essential ID checks now free.
Downloading AML was broken for clients that had symbols in their name, this is fixed
We also changed the way we zip the download AML to better handle AML records with heaps of documents.
We’ve improved the Work columns behaviour so that each column scrolls independently, and also added in infinite scrolling for each column so you can view all cards if needed.
We’ve made an update to the “Pull latest” button for Companies House clients:
When pressed, this button will now pull the latest list of active Officers and PSCs in addition to updating the company info.
It will remove any inactive / ceased officers and PSCs.
It won’t update the details of those related parties that have already been edited in Firmcheck i.e if date of birth, residential address etc have been edited those details will stay as is.
The client’s name has been added to the email sent to reviewers to review the clients, instead of just a generic ‘you have a client to review’ message.
We've added the column 'Client status' to the new report based on feedback – so it's easier to see which clients are prospects vs existing clients
We’ve made the partner and manager dropdown lists in alphabetical order by first name to make it easier to scan through.
You can now search by client reference number in the clients page search box.
We’ve changed some of the text inputs on the AML workflow to text areas (CDD level notes, Risk level notes, Additional due diligence text inputs), this means the boxes can be expanded to accomodate larger comments. There’s also a new expand/collapse link added once it’s saved if it is a really long chunk of notes so it doesn’t make the page too long
Filters have been added to the Work page: you can now filter by Partner, Manager and Business unit which will update each column of the Work page.
Partner and Manager drop-downs now include their last names
If you tried to submit a Identity or Proof of address form without attaching a file, a 500 error was showing, this has now been fixed and instead alerts you that a file attachment is required.
A bug showing 24 year and 36 year review times instead of months has now been fixed.
Links have been added to the firm page where AML is not up to date, overdue, or coming up for review. These links take you to the clients page with the matching filters.
Our first downloadable report is now available. The report is a CSV with a list of all clients and a summary for each from their most recent AML work.
Made a fix so that we continue to get up-to-date company data from COmpanies House every day when searching to import a new client or pulling latest details to update the client in Firmcheck.
Removed ceased and resigned people from Companies House coming through as related parties.
Added Preview of file to remaining areas of the app: Documents tab, Additional due diligence and Client information tab.
UKCH bulk import was breaking when related parties had no middle names, this is now fixed.
Some migrated firms had errors after trying to approve an AML, this has now been fixed.
The bug where additional due diligence form for related party CDD was not saving has now been fixed.
And the bug editing due diligence on one AML related party organisation can remove it from other in-progress AMLs for a firm.
A bug when editing sole trader profile leading to an error was fixed.
We’ve added a new filter to the People’s tab “Verification status” - this makes it easier to see the verification status across all people especially if you want to prioritise the ones needing action or needing to get started.
The “Review positive PEP result” modal now has the preview of the PEP report PDF so no need to download to record the PEP result.
We’ve also added the PDF preview to the completed FWRA and Policy document so no need to download it to view those documents.
A bug where historical completed AMLs where showing more recently added documents has been fixed.
There was a bug where archived clients were showing in the counts of complete/incomplete AML, and also on the Work page for in-progress AML, this has now been fixed and archived shouldn’t show here.
Trust bulk imports is now live!
Small difference to previous bulk imports is there are two templates to upload – one for the trusts themselves, and one for the related parties. It also means there’s 4 steps to complete the import as you review each template in it’s own step.
On mobile sized devices, the work page was not usable, this has now been fixed and can swipe across between the work columns.
We’ve fixed a bug where incorrect numbers were showing in the ‘missing ID’ and ‘expired ID’ counts on the firm page.
We’ve added the preview image functionality to the Confirm proof of address flow that happens after a client completes the Advanced ID check – again it means customers don’t have to download the pdf to view it and can confirm the address matches looking side-by-side.
Fixed a bug where the Firm-wide risk assessment was counting risks from the same client multiple times if they had completed multiple AML for that client.
Tidied up the profile view for archived clients so that it’s clear AML cannot be added to in archived state.
Fixed an issue where errors were happening if date of birth was older than 1900, and also now prevent unrealistic birth dates.
Fixed a bug where the identity and proof of address missing document count was not including documents collected from the Advanced ID flow.
Fixed a bug when a new risk assessment template is assigned to a client type this wasn’t being applied when starting a new AML or review for a client.
You can now preview the images that have already been uploaded as proof of identity and proof of address.
You now get a preview of the files you are adding to proof of identity or address evidence! This will make it easier to fill out the document details as you can see the image along side it
Fixed an issue so that the verifications status on the work page now reflects the correct status from the AML in progress.
Fixed a bug where viewing longer supporting notes in a completed AML was getting cut off due to the disabled input.
We now show a tooltip over the final ‘Go to review’ when the button is disabled explaining why.
Added hover states over close buttons and other clickable icons to make it more obvious what’s clickable.
Added extra spacing at the bottom of the pages on the AML workflow to make it easier to select elements at the end of the forms.
When adding a new client from Companies House, we now hide the rest of the form until the company has been selected, to give clearer focus.
When manually adding identity or proof of address evidence, you can now drag and drop from your computer files to the modal.
Fixed ‘licence’ typos to follow UK spelling.
Browser tab titles have been updated to better reflect the areas of the app.
We now hide manager, partner or business units in Add/edit client views if none exist in the firm.
We’ve added a loading spinner on download buttons to make it clearer something is happening.
Made a fix so that navigation is now accessible on smaller sized devices.
Also made the related parties step when adding a new organisation tidier on mobile sized devices.
Added filters to the Clients > People list: can filter people by verification gaps (missing Identity, missing Proof of address, expired identity).
Added link from firm page where verification gaps are highlighted to the new filters above.
We’ve got a first slice of a firm-compliance overview. It’s a summary of incomplete AML and incomplete evidence collection, and highlighting the gaps based on how many clients and people they have in Firmcheck
You can now delete people. To delete, the person needs to not be a CDD candidate of in-progress AML, but removing them from that AML will then let you delete.
This also applies for organisations that aren’t clients or selected CDD candidates – you can delete them.
We’ve added the menu you get on the people and org lists to the profile view so you can convert to client or add to watchlist monitoring from this page.
We’ve added a “Verifications” tab to the client profile for all people – this is great to directly see the evidence or checks directly for a person rather than having to go through the AML flow.
Name, date of birth and residential address returned from the Advanced ID check will now update this person’s profile across Firmcheck (we give a warning that this will happen when they send it off).
You can now add multiple files when adding proof of identity or address. For example sometimes there are 2 separate images for the front of the driver licence and the back.
For residential address, postcode is required (and needed for the Essential ID checks), however we found some non-UK addresses were blocked as they don’t have post or zip codes in their country – we’ve made an adjustment so that any non-UK country selected will no longer require a postcode.
We’ve added a “AML history” tab to the client profile so you can see more than just the last AML done on the client, and instead all the AML done over time.
We’ve fixed the ability to delete staff (it was breaking if they were still assigned as managers, partners etc, now we just warn that those roles will be removed from the client).
There is space to add date of birth before you assign a person to Watchlist monitoring, this will give better match rates and reduce false positives.
We’ve done a much needed update to the ‘Download AML’ for completed AMLs – the AML PDF now reflects all that is inputted in the AML workflow including recently added components – source of wealth etc, and the download also includes all the files that were added throughout the AML workflow.
When verifying people, documents that have been saved as proof of identity or address now show a ‘view’ button which opens a modal of the details entered.
We’ve made an improvement to the second step of creating organisation clients where the presentation of related parties are now condensed and easier to read.
This means you can easily scan the list especially when it’s a longer list of directors + PSCs from UKCH, and can quickly update their roles.
To edit the related parties, rather than doing it from this view, you can use the new client profiles.
If you’re adding a brand new related party, you still get the option to add all their details in this step.
On the client profiles, we now show the count in the tab for documents and notes if they have at least one.
You can now include organisations as CDD candidates and add additional due diligence as part of the verification process.
Watchlist monitoring is now live! Add individual people to Watchlist monitoring and get daily checks and alerts against PEP, Sanctions, and Adverse media lists.
Fixed bug where 500 error was showing for completed AML records
Fixed a bug where the final AML record wasn’t handling multiple files.
Fixed a bug where it looked like you could click on the Additional due diligence headers.
We have a new “Pull latest” button for Companies House UK companies. Clicking this button will pull the latest Company name, Company type, Registered address from UKCH and update in Firmcheck.
A new documents tab is on the new profile view where staff can add client documents.
Client manager has been added to the bulk import files so can be included when bulk importing clients.
On the People tab, the Verifications column now reflects the verification status for that person that’s been done in the AML workflow.
Added some AML details and actions to the client profile so you can jump back into AML from here.
Additional due diligence has been added to individuals. This section is optional.
Can now add new related parties to organisations on the new profile view
A new notes tab is on the new profile view where staff can add client notes
Client profile is enabled for clients, simply click on the row to go to the profile from where you can edit client details, view and edit related parties, notes.
Fixed a bug where x icon was showing after a manual ID document was added.
Fixed a bug where weird scrolling was happening on clients tabs
Fixed a bug where sole trader name was being saved as every sole traders name.
Can now remove related parties from organisations on the new profile view
Can now add existing related parties from organisations on the new profile view
New staff role added: Client managers
When you add or edit a staff member, you can now pick if they are a client manager.
You can then assign clients to a manager, and then filter clients by managers.
This is one of the additions to support our migration project, but it is also valuable for larger firms as they have multiple staff involved in one client’s AML work, and assigning managers will help here.
We’ve added in the ‘additional notes’ field for the authentication of manually added documents.
A bug where the next review date for next Firm-wide risk assessment was showing as the completed date instead of +1 year has been fixed.
A bug where an email notification was being sent to yourself if you picked yourself as a reviewer has been fixed.
When there is a positive match for PEP, Sanctions, and Adverse media, you can now manage the result either marking them as a false positive, or confirming they match as PEP, Sanctions and/or Adverse media. If there is a true result, you can also decide if based on those results you are approving or not approving the person with space to add notes and additional documents.
The Related parties tab has been added to the new client profile (visible for non-clients at the moment), can view related parties and edit their roles.
Client risk assessment template builder is live! Create client risk assessment templates completely with your own questions to meet your own firm’s policies. Templates can be assigned to different client types so that they automatically are assigned the correct template when starting a new AML for that client.
We’ve added alerts to show that an Advanced ID check has been sent, when it’s close to expiring, and when it’s expired.
We’ve added an alert when you try to run an essential ID check on a non-UK resident, prompting you to switch to PEP check instead.
If an Advanced ID check is filled in by the client with a non-UK address, only the PEP check will be run instead of the Essential ID checks after the client submits.
We are live with our refreshed version of Firmcheck!
