One counterparty, several reviews: inside the evidence file

You take over a counterparty and find several completed reviews: two versions of one pack, older source records, an approval made by an officer who has since moved on. Before you can assess anything new, you have to work out which record belongs to which decision. The counterparty name will not tell you. Neither will the most recent filename.

That is the job of the evidence file: one place where a counterparty's packs, facts, source records and decisions sit together without their histories blurring into one another. This walkthrough follows one counterparty from its proof packs into its facts, its evidence history and its decisions, then opens a source marked for refresh. The film runs one minute.

Watch: One counterparty's evidence file

Find the pack and the version it replaced

From 0:00, after the title card, the proof packs list shows one row at revision 2, marked ready. Its predecessor is still listed as a historical pack, marked superseded, with a reference to the replacement.

That link answers a question filenames leave open: did someone replace this pack, or do these files belong to different reviews? The earlier version stays listed, so an officer can identify the replacement without losing what came before. Read the assessment and the revision together. Revision 2 replaced revision 1 within one review's history; it is not the answer to every question about the counterparty.

Our guide to audit-ready evidence packs covers what one pack has to preserve. The evidence file solves the next problem: finding those records when the relationship has been reviewed more than once.

Open the source behind the ownership fact

At 0:11, the walkthrough moves into the fact dossier and opens an ownership entry: a 74 percent holding, with its source record, the time it was retrieved, the source address and the record hash.

A number copied into a summary loses its date and its origin. A source-linked fact gives the next officer something specific to check: is this the source relevant to the period under review, and does it support the ownership conclusion, or is another document needed? The file supplies the recorded context. The officer judges whether it is enough for the review in front of them.

Read checks and decisions separately

At 0:25, the evidence history shows the monitoring checks with their own active and superseded states. The walkthrough then moves to decisions, where a recorded trigger-event approval names the MLRO, the date and the evidence pack it rests on.

These views answer different questions. The history says which check records are retained. The decision says who made the call and when. The pack holds the material behind that assessment. Keeping them apart stops a new reviewer from treating an active check, a ready pack and a human approval as the same status. Start from the decision you need to understand, then open the records that belong to it.

If the question is why a customer was approved, reconstructing an approval takes that further. Here the point is being able to find the decision inside a longer history at all.

Find the source that needs attention

At 0:42, the walkthrough returns to the fact dossier and filters for needs refresh, searches for a registry source and opens a record marked stale.

Evidence can remain relevant to an earlier decision while needing an update before it supports another one. Keeping the older record explains what was held at the time; marking the source shows what has to happen before anyone relies on it again. The question becomes specific: what does this registry record establish, and what current evidence do we need before using it?

Our monitoring walkthrough covers the separate task of responding to a new signal. This film stays with the evidence already held.

Try the handover without the original officer

Choose a counterparty your team has reviewed more than once. Give a colleague access to its records and no explanation from the person who handled it. Ask them to find a pack that replaced an earlier version and identify both. Then pick one material fact and follow it to its source. Find the human decision behind the assessment, and name one source that needs refreshing before anyone relies on it again.

Watch where they leave the record to ask someone, search an inbox or guess from a filename. Those are the handover problems to fix. Do not score the exercise by how fast they find a folder. Ask whether they can say which review they are looking at and why each record belongs to it.

Why it matters for your team

In cmpliance, agents prepare the evidence and the decisions stay with accountable people. The counterparty evidence file keeps the results of that work findable across reviews: retained packs, source-linked facts, check history and human decisions each have their place in one file, and none of them overwrites another. The next officer starts from an inspectable history instead of asking the previous one to explain their folders.

See how cmpliance works and what makes an evidence pack audit-ready. Bring us one of your team's difficult handovers.

Agents do the work. Humans make the call.

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