What firms ask before starting

What is E1?

E1 monitors what creators and affiliates publish about FCA-regulated firms and scores each post against the UK financial promotion rules. It surfaces promotions that breach a rule, citing the specific rule and the wording it turns on. E1 is a monitoring and evidence layer — it does not approve promotions, does not certify compliance, and does not make compliance decisions on a firm’s behalf.

Does E1 approve financial promotions?

No. Approving a financial promotion for an unauthorised person is a gated regulated permission under section 55NA FSMA, obtained through the FCA’s section 21 gateway. E1 does not hold that permission and will never sign off, approve, or warrant the compliance of any promotion. E1 shows a firm what its promoters have published and how it scores against the rules; every decision about what to do next belongs to the firm.

Does E1 discharge our monitoring obligation?

No. COBS 4.10.2R requires firms to monitor approved promotions for their lifetime, and the standard of what counts as adequate monitoring is principles-based — it remains the firm’s own judgement and its own risk-management decision. E1 provides evidence toward that obligation: a timestamped record of what was published, when it was detected, and how it scored. Acting on that evidence, and judging whether the overall approach is adequate, stays with the firm.

Is E1 legal or compliance advice?

No. E1 is a detection and evidence tool. It reports what a post contains and which rule that engages. It does not advise on what a firm should do, whether a firm is liable, or how a regulator would view a given case.

Who is E1 for?

FCA-authorised and MLR-registered firms that run creator, influencer, or affiliate programmes where promoters can induce investment in a qualifying cryptoasset. That includes firms with their own token, exchanges and brokers promoting third-party assets, and wallets or payments apps whose promoters route users toward buying or holding crypto. The qualifying question is not what the firm sells — it is whether third parties publishing about the brand can cross into promoting an asset.

What problem does it solve?

The gap between what a firm briefs and what promoters actually publish. Firms brief campaigns, sign off creative, and then have no visibility of what goes out or what changes afterwards. Under section 21 FSMA, a firm can be liable for promotions it caused to be made even where it did not write them and has never seen them.

How does E1 find posts about our brand?

By searching the public footprint for posts that name, tag, mention, or carry a code or link for the brand, then grouping them by the account that published them. The promoter account is the unit of the report, because that is what a firm can act on.

How does E1 decide whether a post is a financial promotion?

It applies the section 21 FSMA perimeter test: is the post an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity, made in the course of business. Posts that fail that test are organic references, not promotions, and are never scored against the rules or reported as breaches. Scoring a non-promotional post as non-compliant is a perimeter error, and E1 is built to avoid it.

Which rules does E1 score against?

For qualifying cryptoassets, the restricted mass market investment regime under COBS 4.12A: the prescribed risk warning and its exact wording, the statement that consumers should not expect FSCS or Financial Ombudsman protection, the ban on incentives to invest under PS23/6, prohibited claims such as “guaranteed”, “protected” or “secure” under COBS 4.2.5G and FG23/3, promotional use of regulated status under GEN 4.5, and warning placement and persistence under FG24/1.

What is the difference between section 21 and COBS?

Section 21 FSMA is the perimeter — it determines whether a communication is caught at all and who may lawfully communicate it. COBS sets what the content must contain once it is caught. FG24/1 is FCA guidance on how those content rules apply on social media; it creates no new obligations. E1 runs the perimeter test first and only applies the content rules to posts that pass it.

Can E1 tell us whether a post was approved?

No. Approval status lives in a firm’s own records and is not visible in the public footprint. E1 will never label a post “unapproved”. It reports that a promotion exists and how it scores; the firm checks it against its own approval log.

Can E1 tell us whether a promoter was paid?

No. Affiliate contracts and payment records are not public, and E1 does not assert that a firm caused any promotion or has a relationship with any account. The report shows which accounts are promoting the brand and how those posts score. Mapping that to a roster is the firm’s step, and it is the step that determines liability.

Does E1 read video and images, or only captions?

Both. On-screen text, visual content, and spoken audio are extracted and scored alongside the caption, because on social media the promotion and the risk warning frequently live in the media rather than the text. A warning on one surface does not satisfy the rule for a promotion on another, and E1 assesses them separately.

What does E1 not capture?

Brand references that appear only in speech or only inside an image, with no handle, tag, code, or link, are not discoverable by text search and are not captured. In practice, promoters with a commercial incentive need a trackable link or code to be paid, so the highest-liability posts are generally the discoverable ones.

What if a post is not about a cryptoasset?

It falls outside the crypto rulebook and is not scored against it. E1 reports it as out of scope with the reason, rather than silently dropping it — including where a post promotes a non-crypto investment product governed by a different part of COBS. Being an e-money or payments firm does not put a brand permanently out of scope: the perimeter test runs per post, and an affiliate promoting a token alongside the brand brings that post into perimeter.

What changes for crypto firms in October 2027?

Cryptoasset firms come into the full FCA authorisation regime. Because authorised firms communicate their own promotions, the external section 21 approver drops out of the loop — the pre-publication check disappears. At the same time the Consumer Duty applies and retail customers gain Financial Ombudsman access. The check moves from before publication to after, and the party performing it is the regulator.

What is in a report?

Each promoter account, the posts it published about the brand, and a per-post verdict with the rule cited and the wording quoted. Posts that fall outside the perimeter are listed separately as associations, with no verdict attached. Every post is judged on its own, against the rule in force when it was published.

How does pricing work?

Monthly, metered on the number of promoters under continuous monitoring rather than the number of posts. Post volume is the promoter’s behaviour, not the firm’s, so it does not drive the bill.

How do we get a report?

Request a scan of a brand’s public footprint. It requires no access to internal systems, approval packs, or your affiliate contracts and payment records — it works from the public record and the rules alone. Sharing your affiliate list lets E1 cover named promoters directly, and everything it reads is still their public content.

What do you need from us to start?

Your affiliate and introducer list — the accounts themselves, not their contracts, payment records, or approval history. E1 reads only what those accounts have published publicly, so there is no integration, no approval pack, and no setup project.