Client handover template for Fintech

The client handover with the items a regulated financial product cannot afford to lose: the review record and which creative sits under which reference, the market restrictions and where they are configured, the disclosures and their placements, and the register of what is live today.

Everything else is the general handover, unchanged. One row per item, named exactly, verified from the receiving side, with ownership distinguished from access.

Use it whenever the account changes hands, and treat the review record as the first item rather than the last. A successor who cannot say what is running under which review has inherited an account they cannot defend.

Start it weeks ahead, because ownership transfers and verifications both have platform queues.

In most handovers the ad account is the first item. Here it is the second, because an account whose review history is unknown is an account nobody can defend.

The review register is the document that maps every reference to its date, its reviewer, and the creative it covers. Handing it over, and reconciling it against every ad that is currently live, is what lets the successor answer the question this category always eventually asks.

Do the reconciliation as part of the handover rather than leaving it as a task. It produces a clean baseline: on this date, these ads were running, under these references, verified by these two people. Everything afterwards is the successor's, and everything before is not — which protects both sides.

The second item is the set of market restrictions and, crucially, where each one is configured.

It is not enough to say the product runs only in certain markets. A successor needs to know that the restriction lives in a particular campaign setting, or in an exclusion list, or in a location targeting rule, because a restriction whose location is unknown is one that will eventually be removed by somebody doing something else.

Where restrictions are fragile — held in a single setting that a duplicate would not inherit — say so in the notes. That is a risk the successor should know about on day one rather than discovering after a duplication.

Disclosures live in two places: the cleared wording, and how it actually appeared.

The wording sits with the review. The appearance sits nowhere unless somebody captured it, which is why the handover should include dated screenshots of the rendered ads on each placement and the landing pages as customers saw them.

That evidence cannot be reconstructed afterwards. Ads change, placements change their rendering, pages are redeployed. A successor who inherits the screenshots inherits a record; one who does not has to take the previous team's word for it.

A short document, and the one most useful in the first fortnight: every live ad, its campaign, its market, the claim it carries, its review reference, and the landing page it points at.

It is the thing a successor will consult constantly and could not assemble quickly themselves. It is also the baseline against which the first audit runs, which means the first audit becomes a comparison rather than a discovery exercise.

Produce it on the handover date rather than a week before, and have the receiving side confirm they can reproduce it from the account.

Automated rules need particular attention here because of one specific behaviour.

A rule that turns campaigns or ads back on, under conditions, can reactivate creative that was stopped for a reason — including creative stopped because its review lapsed. That is a rule doing something nobody intended and nobody is watching.

List every rule with what it does, what it can turn on, and what bounds it has. Then decide explicitly: transfer, stop, or rebuild. A rule inherited without a decision is authority that belongs to nobody.

The notes column carries something unusually valuable in this category: what has already been refused, narrowed, or qualified at review, with dates and reasons.

That history is invisible in an account and it is the most practical guide available to what this product may say. Without it, a successor proposes the obvious claim, spends a review cycle, and gets the same answer somebody got two years ago.

Hand it over as a document, and keep it with the review register so the two are read together.

Finally, the ordinary handover discipline applies with a sharper edge: at least two current people able to administer anything the product depends on, and an explicit list of who can edit live creative.

The second list is the one worth being deliberate about. Where a large number of people can change an ad in place, the review record is only as good as everybody's discipline, and a handover is a natural moment to narrow that list rather than simply to transfer it.

The pages a campaign points at carry half of the obligation, and they are frequently owned by a different team or a different supplier.

List each one: where it is hosted, who can edit it, what claims and disclosures it carries, and when it was last checked against the current terms. Where a page was built by an agency on its own infrastructure, that is an ownership row rather than an access row, and it needs to move.

Then have the receiving side open each page through a real ad link rather than directly, because redirects and parameters can change which version is served, and a page that looks correct in a browser can be different in the journey the customer actually takes.

Seven checks. Items are listed by category and named with identifiers. The review register has been handed over and reconciled against every live ad, on a dated baseline. Market restrictions are documented with where each is configured, and fragile ones are flagged. Dated screenshots of rendered disclosures and landing pages have moved. A register of what is live today exists and the receiving side can reproduce it. Every rule has an explicit transfer, stop or rebuild decision, including any that can reactivate creative. And the history of refused and narrowed claims is handed over with the register.