4. Starting the First Review
Every Relationship in Proofdesk can be Reviewed. A Review captures everything you know about your relationship with a customer customer at a single point in time such as their details, the services you provide, and your assessment of the risks.
You’ll complete your first Review when onboarding a new customer, and then again whenever you perform periodic or trigger event reviews. The process you follow for each review is always the same.
The Review Workspace
When you open a Relationship, you’ll see a list of previous reviews in the right-hand sidebar under the History section. If you have not created a review yet or there is not a review in progress, you can start a new one by clicking the "Start Review" button.
Reviews can be assigned to any team members who have permission in the system to conduct reviews, referred to as reviewers. These team members are typically managers, compliance team members, or Directors.
When you click a previous review or start a new one, you'll be taken to the Review Workspace for that Review. The purpose of this Review Workspace is to enable reviewers to look at all the different documents associated to the relationship as effectively as possible, checking each document off as they go. In this separate area, reviewers can approve the relationship while having access to all the facts available at a glance. If reviewers catch any discrepancies which would prevent their approval, they can also assign tasks to be completed by other team members from this workspace.
The Review Workspace is initially split into two panels:
On the left, every form connected to this relationship is shown in a tick list organised by category. This half of the page is for the reference of the reviewer, and completing the tick list is optional.
On the right, the approval form is shown, which is the responsibility of the reviewer to complete before a relationship is considered as active and approved to proceed. Additionally on this side, we have the Tasks tab which can be used to set tasks for other team members.
To complete the review, ensure all forms on the left-hand panel are as they should be and complete the Approval Form as detailed in the section below.
Completing the Approval Form
The layout of the Approval form varies between organisations, but it always includes two key fields:
Final Risk Level: the approver’s decision about the relationship’s overall risk category.
Approval Signature: confirming their authorisation for the relationship to commence or continue.
Many firms also include extra questions or confirmations, depending on how their account is configured for example detailing Enhanced Due Diligence, mitigations or reviewer notes.
When the first approver completes the form and clicks Sign Approval, their name and the date are added to the bottom of the form, and it becomes read-only.
When the first approver completes the form and clicks Approve, their name and the date are added to the bottom of the form, and it becomes read-only. They can’t edit or comment on the form as their role is to add a countersignature, confirming that they agree with the approval.
Proofdesk automatically tracks how many approvals are required based on your Risk Classification Policy, and shows progress until all have been received.
Assigning Tasks
Tasks can optionally be used to make note of any changes that need to be made before an approval can be signed. When tasks are assigned to a team member, they receive notifications in their notification panel located in the top navigation bar.
It's worth noting that tasks are also available in the relationship sidebar, located on the right hand side of a relationship page. In addition, tasks across the system from all relationships can be viewed on the dashboard page.
When approval is complete
As soon as all required approvals are recorded, Proofdesk automatically:
Sets the Relationship status to Active,
Records the Final Risk Level against the relationship, and
Calculates the next Scheduled Review Date according to your Risk Classification Policy.
At that point, the Review is complete and locked as a permanent record. You can open it at any time to see exactly what information was known, who approved it, and when.
Once a relationship becomes active, it moves into its normal lifecycle. You can continue to upload documents, add notes, or make updates to the linked entities at any time.
Using External Approvals
Proofdesk has external approvals, which are a way to record an approval that happened in the past or before transitioning to Proofdesk. They allow you to attach documentation of such approvals and record when in the past they happened. For more information see the Specialist Guide: Using External Approvals.