File review is a fixture of every advice firm, and its usefulness varies from a serious quality process to a formatting check performed against a deadline.
This matters because the review is the main mechanism by which a firm discovers a problem before a client or the regulator does. A review that only looks for missing signatures cannot do that.
Discussion questions:
- What does a genuinely useful file review look like in your firm?
- How is feedback given, and does it change adviser behaviour in practice?
- Where does the process become box-ticking, and what has fixed that?
Please share process observations rather than confidential documentation. Nothing here constitutes regulatory guidance.
This thread is an editorial prompt from Adviser Forum. Please answer from your own experience rather than on behalf of the profession, avoid presenting any response as regulatory or legal guidance, and strip out any detail that could identify a client, a case or an individual member of staff.