Products / ExamReady & KYR
Know your regulator. Walk in ready.
A good compliance program is not enough for a good examination. You need to know what your regulator is focused on, what it is finding at firms like yours, and how it will read your program. ExamReady brings regulatory intelligence, a review of your program, a realistic examination and individual preparation of the people who will face the regulator into one engagement.
Who it’s for
For firms with an exam or inspection on the calendar, or overdue for one.
- A firm notified of an upcoming examination or inspection, or in a cycle where one is expected.
- A newly licensed business that has never been examined and does not know what the day looks like.
- A compliance team that knows the program but has never had to defend it out loud to an examiner.
- A compliance officer who wants an independent view of the program before the board asks for one.
- A firm that wants support during the examination itself, not only before it.
What you get
What you receive.
The goal is not perfection. No program is perfect. The goal is knowing where the weaknesses are before the regulator finds them, and what to do about each one. For every significant issue you get:
What we found
The issue, stated plainly, with the evidence we looked at.
Why it matters
The requirement or expectation it touches, and how an examiner is likely to weigh it.
What the regulator may ask
The questions the issue invites, so nobody hears them for the first time in the interview.
What evidence exists
What you can show today, and what is missing.
What to fix before the examination
The changes that can be made in the time available, with owners and dates.
What needs longer remediation
The issues that need a structured plan, and how to present that plan to the regulator.
How to manage what cannot be fixed in time
How to describe the issue, the plan and the interim controls honestly and without alarm.
The heat map
One page that shows where the exposure is, ordered by what to fix first.
Options
ExamReady Live: before, during and after.
Preparation is the beginning. ExamReady can stay with your team from the first document request to the last finding.
Before
- Regulatory intelligence
- Program review
- Mock examination or inspection
- Priority remediation
- Interview preparation
- Examination strategy
During
- Document request management
- Response review before it goes out
- Interview preparation, person by person
- Daily examination debriefs
- Emerging issue analysis
- Regulatory correspondence
- Management support
After
- Exit meeting preparation
- Findings analysis
- The regulatory response
- Remediation planning
- Follow-up support
- Closure
Know Your Regulator
We study your regulator before we examine you.
Rules are only part of the picture. We read current examination and inspection priorities, recent findings, enforcement actions, publications, speeches and proposed rules, and we look at what is happening to firms with a license, a product and a customer base like yours. Then we bring it together with your own regulatory profile: license, business model, products, customers, geography, history and risk. We do not prepare you for an examination in theory. We prepare you for your regulator.
What they are asking
Current examination themes, supervisory priorities and the areas receiving more attention this cycle.
What they are finding
Recent deficiencies, enforcement actions and remediation themes, which show where regulators keep seeing the same problem.
What your peers are seeing
Your firm is not examined in isolation. What regulators are challenging at businesses with similar licenses, products, customers and operating models is a chance to look at the same issue before they do.
What is coming
Proposed rules, regulatory statements, emerging risks, technology developments and changes in supervisory practice that may shape the next examination.
Your regulatory profile
All of it read against your license, business model, products, customers, geography, regulatory history and risk profile.
Through their eyes
What you say you do, what you actually do and what you can prove have to tell the same story.
A policy can look excellent on paper and still fail under examination. We follow the evidence: policies, procedures, governance, controls, testing, records and actual business practice, looking for inconsistencies, weak evidence and places where the written program does not match what happens.
What you say you do
Policies, procedures and the commitments made to the regulator in applications and correspondence.
What you actually do
How the business runs day to day, and where practice has drifted from the document.
What you can prove
Testing results, records, minutes, logs and approvals. If it cannot be shown, an examiner treats it as not done.
The examination
Once the review is complete, we stop advising and start examining.
Your team receives a realistic document request. Responses are reviewed, evidence is challenged, interviews are conducted and controls are tested. Follow-up questions come from the answers we receive, as they would on the day. We do not hand out the questions in advance. The real regulator will not either. The point is to see how the program and the people perform under pressure while there is still time to do something about it.
The people
The regulator is not interviewing your compliance manual. It is interviewing your people.
A good program can have a bad examination. We prepare everyone who may face the regulator: compliance leadership, senior management, operations, the front office and board members where relevant. Preparation is individual, because people respond differently under pressure. We do not give people scripts. We make sure they understand the program well enough to speak for themselves. Confidence matters. Credibility matters more.
Answer the question that was asked
Not the one you prepared for.
Explain a control clearly
What it does, who runs it, how you know it worked.
Support the answer with evidence
Know what exists and where it is.
Handle what you do not know
How to say so, and how to come back with the answer.
Stay composed when the examiner keeps pushing
Pressure is part of the method. Preparation is the answer to it.
Your side of the table
The regulator controls the examination. You should still control your side of it.
An examination becomes difficult very quickly when nobody is clearly managing it. We set the structure before the regulator arrives, and we prepare management for the hard moments: difficult conversations, emerging findings, the exit meeting and the remediation discussion that follows.
Who leads
One person runs the process and one voice speaks to the regulator.
How requests are handled
Every document request logged, every response reviewed before it goes out, every piece of evidence controlled.
When to escalate
What counts as an issue, who hears about it and how fast.
Who sits in interviews
And how the team handles the follow-up questions afterwards.
The examiner is changing too
Prepare for the examination happening now, not the one someone remembers from five years ago.
Regulators have more data and stronger analytics than they used to, and the use of artificial intelligence inside financial institutions has become an examination topic in its own right. We follow regulatory priorities, findings, enforcement, speeches and changes in supervisory technology continuously, so your preparation reflects how examinations are run today.
Different name, same pressure
Examination, inspection, supervisory review, thematic review.
Regulators use different words around the world. Whatever it is called, someone is coming to look under the hood. ExamReady is built for investment advisers, funds, broker-dealers, banks, fintechs, payments firms, digital-asset businesses and other regulated financial institutions, in the United States and internationally. It is led by former regulators, chief compliance officers and senior practitioners who have built programs, run them, defended them and managed the remediation that followed.
How it runs
How it runs.
Know
We study your regulator, the requirements that apply to you, its current priorities, what your peers are being asked, and its recent activity.
Review
We examine your program and the evidence behind it. Important gaps are found early, so there is time to address them.
Simulate
Your team goes through a realistic examination or inspection: document requests, interviews, testing, challenge and follow-up.
Prepare
We work individually with each person who may face the regulator, on their responsibilities, their evidence and where they are likely to be challenged.
Fix
Findings are prioritized. Immediate fixes are separated from issues that need structured remediation, each with an owner and a date.
Ready
Your regulatory intelligence, examination strategy, response process and people come together before the real examination begins. If you want us there for it, ExamReady Live continues from the first request to closure.
Questions
Asked before, answered plainly.
- What does “Know Your Regulator” mean?
- That readiness starts with knowing who is examining you and what they expect of a firm like yours: their priorities, their questions, what they are finding elsewhere, how they grade what they find. ExamReady briefs your team on exactly that, then rehearses it.
- Who runs the mock exam and the training?
- Practitioners who have been examined and who have examined: former compliance officers and former regulators, matched to your regime.
- Do you stay for the real examination?
- If you want us to. ExamReady Live covers the examination itself: document request management, response review, interview preparation, daily debriefs, regulatory correspondence, and the exit meeting, findings and remediation afterwards.
- Does the training replace the mock exam?
- No. The mock exam shows where the program and the people stand; the training fixes what the interviews revealed. They are one product because each is weaker without the other.
- Can anyone guarantee a clean examination?
- No, and anyone who promises one should probably appear in your risk assessment. What we can do is find the weaknesses before the regulator does, prepare your people for difficult questions, and make sure you walk in knowing exactly where you stand.
ExamReady is an independent assessment and training program by compliance practitioners. It is not a regulatory examination, not legal advice, and no outcome with a regulator can be guaranteed.