Send your client one link. Back comes one dated page for the file: the identity evidence, the sanctions and PEP screening, what was checked and when, and anything a fee earner needs to look at. The verification decision stays yours.
Built by someone who thinks a solicitor's ID check should cost what an ID check costs.
£99 + VAT a month · 50 checks included · £1.50 + VAT per additional check · Unlimited staff seats · First month free, no card
Per-check pricing exists because most CDD tools resell licensed data and charge what the market will bear. The sanctions lists are published by the UK government (FCDO and OFSI), OFAC and the UN; the PEP roster comes from OpenSanctions, covering politically exposed persons plus their relatives and close associates. We check the sanctions lists for updates every day and refresh the PEP roster every week, into our own screening engine, and the biometric match runs on our own servers. It's a solved technical problem that costs little to run, so you pay what the check costs and keep the rest.
Three steps. A few minutes for the client. One page for you.
Add the client's name and email. They get one secure link that works on any phone. No app to install.
The client photographs their ID and a proof of address and takes a short selfie, following the on-screen steps: a few minutes on any phone.
The document read, the face match and the sanctions/PEP screening come back to your firm for review, dated and ready to keep with the matter. The verification decision is yours.
A possible screening match needs a person to review it. It does not by itself establish that this is the same person. Your firm decides what further checks are needed before proceeding.
A PDF that says 'verified' isn't an answer to an inspector's question. This page is.
See the full sample record →£99 + VAT a month · 50 checks included · £1.50 + VAT per additional check · Unlimited staff seats · First month free, no card
Every day I see good businesses buried under rules that keep multiplying, when all they want to do is serve their customers. Most of those rules are fair. The cost of meeting them isn't. Somewhere between the regulator and a small firm sits an industry charging what the market will bear for what a solved problem actually costs to run.
So I built tools that do one job each, at the price the job costs, with no contract. You keep the rest. Let's go and do good work.
Paul Morton, founder
FirmGuard supports your judgement; it never replaces it. Client due diligence decisions, including enhanced due diligence and anything a screening result flags for review, remain the responsibility of your firm's COLP/MLRO. We give you the evidence and the audit trail; the call is yours.
Our evidence is document + biometric + screening. We read the client's identity document, biometrically match it to a live selfie, and screen against the sanctions and PEP lists; you make the verification decision with that evidence in front of you. FirmGuard is not on the digital verification services register, and HM Treasury and DSIT's approved guidance of 26 February 2026 says a service outside it “cannot reliably be deemed suitable for identity verification in compliance with the MLRs”, so treat our record as evidence alongside your own verification or a registered provider's check. We do not currently run credit-bureau electronic-footprint checks or a source-of-funds workflow. If you need those today, we'll say so rather than sell around it. Source-of-funds support is on the roadmap. On an iPhone a client can instead tap their passport to read its chip; our server does not yet verify the chip itself, so a chip read always goes to your firm for review. The document-plus-selfie flow above is the one that returns the document read and face match for your review.
We are independent. FirmGuard is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the SRA or the Law Society. The sanctions lists we use are the official published UK Sanctions List (OFSI/FCDO), US OFAC and UN lists, checked for updates every day; the PEP roster is the OpenSanctions dataset, refreshed every week. Every check records which list versions it ran against.
The LSAG mapping, section by section. The guidance's own Technology principles ask you to document any electronic ID&V tool you use: its role and its data sources. We wrote that document for you: how a FirmGuard check maps to the April 2025 LSAG guidance, section by section, including what stays your firm's judgement. Read the LSAG mapping →
Identity and screening evidence for your CDD process. Your firm retains its risk assessments, further due diligence and decision to proceed.
Use it when the next suitable matter opens. Keep re-screening results alongside the original check.
A passport has a chip signed by the government that issued it, and on an iPhone your client can read it with a tap. Our server does not yet verify that signature itself, so a chip read always goes to your firm for review rather than returning a clear result.
The client taps the link and holds their passport to the phone. The chip is read there and then, and the check comes to you for review.
The same link runs a photo of the document and a live selfie. This is the flow that can return a clear result.
The record says which method was used, chip read or document photo, and a chip check says plainly that our server did not verify the chip.
Document capture with a server-side face match against a live selfie. Stronger evidence than a database ping: you hold the document read and the match, not just a reference number, and you make the verification decision.
Every client screened against the UK Sanctions List (OFSI/FCDO), OFAC and UN lists, checked every day, and against the OpenSanctions PEP roster, refreshed every week, with the list versions recorded in the evidence, and doubtful matches escalated for review.
Set re-screening per client: monthly, quarterly or annually. Each run re-checks sanctions and PEP status on the details already held, and is logged whether or not anything changed, giving you a dated record of each re-screen for your Regulation 28(11) ongoing-monitoring file. If a re-screen finds a worse result than the last, you are alerted by email. The rest of your ongoing monitoring stays with your firm.
A running file per client, and a dated audit pack you can hand to an inspector: what was checked, against which lists, with what result. It is stored under a 5-year retention lock.
For corporate clients: the ownership chain is walked from Companies House and every beneficial owner screened individually. That is the April 2025 LSAG update's hardest new ask, handled. The register alone isn't enough (reg 28(9) says so). See the LSAG mapping →
Every fee earner and support-staff member on one account, one price. No per-user charges: who runs the check should never be a licensing decision.
FirmGuard doesn't have to be another island your team logs into separately. Push completed checks straight into your own systems with Clio or a signed webhook, no code required.
Use Clio? Start a check from the contact and link it to the Matter. When the check completes, a note and a link to the full evidence record are added there. A Contact-only check writes to the Contact instead.
Signed, real-time cdd.check_completed events push completed checks into your own systems. Read the developer docs →
A listed Zapier app is on the way, so you'll be able to send completed checks to the tools your team already uses, without code.
Case-management connector: a note and a link to the completed check will land on the matter.
Case-management connector: a note and a link to the completed check will land on the matter.
Send one to yourself to see the customer experience, then use it on your next suitable matter. Set-up takes a few minutes. If your firm is on the SRA register, its details are usually already in our register data.