Atlas Verum · Evidence, engineered · London
Atlas Verum is a London advisory and delivery firm for UK financial services and regulated businesses. We design, test and automate the controls that boards, auditors and regulators rely on, across financial controls and Provision 29, AI governance, finance automation and regulatory reporting. Delivered by practitioners from Big Four and FTSE 350 backgrounds, as a project, a fixed scope or day-rate capacity.
If it cannot be evidenced, it is not finished.
The brief
Monetary policy · Bank of England
Bank Rate stays at 3.75% after the 6–3 hold on 17 September, but with Brent above $100 markets now price three to four rises over the next year. The next decision is 5 November, a week after the Budget. Plan funding, ECL and covenant headroom for rates that rise from here, not just stay high.
UK economy · ONS and S&P Global
CPI rose to 3.1% in August, led by motor fuels. The final September services PMI came in at 52.1 and the composite at 52.0, both above the flash readings. Input cost inflation was the strongest since June and service firms raised prices at the sharpest pace since May, while staffing fell for a second year.
Markets · London
The FTSE 100 traded near 10,468 on 7 October, down about 0.7%, as the US 10-year Treasury yield climbed to around 5.3% and miners fell with metals. Brent rose to about $101 a barrel on Strait of Hormuz risk; sterling slipped to $1.32.
Government · HM Treasury
The Budget is on Wednesday 28 October, with the OBR’s economic and fiscal forecast alongside it. Covenant tests, deferred tax positions and capital plans priced before then carry re-forecast risk.
Payments · FRC and FCA
On 30 September the FRC opened consultation on a safeguarding assurance standard for payment and e-money institutions, replacing its March interim guidance; responses close 26 November. Firms now need daily reconciliations and an annual safeguarding audit, so reconciliation controls are where the evidence is tested.
Prudential · PRA
Basel 3.1 applies from 1 January 2027 under PS1/26, with the detail still moving. Liquidity and reporting expectations continue to tighten for mid-tier firms.
FRC · Reporting
Provision 29 declarations apply to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2026, so first declarations land in early-2027 annual reports. IFRS 18 comparatives need to be running now for 1 January 2027 adoption.
AI supervision · FCA
The Mills Review maps how AI reshapes retail finance to 2030 and floats an agentic supervisory model. No new rules yet, but a visibly higher evidence bar for machine-assisted work.
For context, not investment advice. Compiled on 8 October 2026 from Bank of England, ONS, S&P Global, FRC, FCA, PRA and HM Treasury publications; market levels intraday, 7 October 2026.
When firms call
Usually when a finding has landed, a declaration is due, or AI has reached finance without an owner. The auditor has raised a control deficiency; the board must sign its Provision 29 declaration; a regulatory return needs resubmitting; a close still runs on spreadsheets and goodwill. Each has a defined answer, and an evidence trail behind it.
“Prove it first. Then make it faster.”
The operating principleWhat we do
Every engagement is scoped as deliverables before it starts, and held to one test: a reviewer who has never met us should reach the same conclusion from the file alone. Beyond these six, we take on bespoke work shaped around the business need.
Material controls scoping and ICFR design, walkthroughs and testing, control gap remediation, and a declaration support pack for the board.
02An inventory of every AI system in use, risk tiering against the EU AI Act, controls mapped to ISO/IEC 42001 and the NIST AI RMF, sample testing, and a board paper with owners.
03Agentic AI placed into finance, audit and controls workflows, with approval points, logs and evidence designed in. AI enablement programmes from use-case selection and roadmap through to production and adoption.
04Monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annual close re-engineered: reconciliation and matching with maker-checker approval, tolerance thresholds and a run log, multi-entity consolidation and disclosure assembly.
05COREP, FINREP and ICAAP with the governance supervisors expect behind them: written procedures, clear ownership between Finance and Risk, and a ledger reconciliation trail for every submitted figure.
06Statutory financial statements prepared to professional standard under IFRS and FRS 102, audit-ready files, judgement papers and prior-year findings cleared, with a panel of audit firms for statutory audit and taxation services.
Need something not listed? Bespoke engagements start from the business need. Describe it in two sentences.A written scope, fee and timetable within 48 hours of the first conversation.
Start an enquiryHow engagements work
We confirm whether it fits, and say plainly if it does not or if someone else is better placed.
Priced by the day or as a fixed fee, in writing, before any work starts.
A short weekly status note, issues raised early, and nothing that lives only in our heads.
So the work stands up to your auditor and your second line after we leave.
By the day: contract capacity inside your team, inside or outside IR35 as determined for each engagement, directly or through your preferred agency. By the deliverable: agreed outputs, agreed price, written acceptance criteria.
Who we serve
The method was shaped on bank, building society, markets and fintech files, under PRA, FCA and audit-regulator scrutiny. It applies wherever a close has to be run, a control environment evidenced and routine work automated.
IFRS 9 ECL governance, prudential and liquidity reporting, ICAAP and ILAAP, finance controls and the evidence a PRA review expects to find.
MIFIDPRU and ICARA, client money and CASS assurance, trade-to-ledger completeness, settlement and margin controls.
Fund and AMC reporting, valuation governance, fee and NAV controls, consolidation across fund structures and SPVs.
Safeguarding reconciliations and audit readiness under the 2026 regime, first statutory audits, control frameworks that scale, revenue completeness at volume.
Portfolio reporting, acquisition accounting, carve-out and IPO readiness, and reporting to the standard limited partners now expect.
Outside financial services, controls, close and automation mandates are taken on where the fit is clear. Ask.
Who does the work
Atlas Verum draws on a network of experienced professionals from Big Four advisory and audit, FTSE 350 finance and risk functions, and bank control teams. Each engagement is staffed by people who have done the work before, in first line, second line and advisory roles. The firm is led by DK Buledi, Director, who is ACCA qualified with eleven years across PwC, Deloitte and BDO and now works in second-line finance controls at a global bank. Atlas Verum is not a registered audit firm and does not sign audit opinions or issue certifications.
“Embedded, not visiting.”
How engagements runAgentic AI & enablement
Most AI in finance stalls between pilot and production, and rarely because of the model. It stalls on data, ownership and evidence. We work as a solution provider, not only an adviser: mapping the process, building and integrating the system, and running it under supervision, across finance, audit, controls, tax and risk.
Process-level automation
Reconciliations, matching, journal proposal, screening, drafting: executed by agentic systems at full population, against the live ledger, on the real deadline.
Governance-level automation
Review queues, approvals, audit trails, model documentation: every machine action evidenced, attributable and reversible. “The agent did it” is never the answer; the trail is.
Mapping close, reporting and assurance workflows; deciding what is automatable, what stays human, and where the control points sit.
Ledger and sub-ledger data pipelines, full-population analytics, and the data management discipline that makes AI output defensible.
Scoping, building and evaluating agentic systems for finance and audit work: guardrails, retrieval, tool use, and the product decisions that get them adopted rather than tolerated.
Audit trails for AI-assisted work, model documentation, and the governance a regulator or audit committee will actually accept.
Getting agentic systems into production against real ledgers and real deadlines: integration, monitoring, human-in-the-loop review, and the run-book when something drifts.
Bringing the team with it: training, role redesign, and the operating model that decides who reviews what once the routine work is machine-done.
Machines take the routine. People keep the judgement.
Talk to usTechnology
Engagements run on the firm’s own tooling: professional standards translated into executable procedure, full populations tested rather than sampled, and every output produced to inspection standard, across the close, controls, reporting and risk.
The tools the firm ships are designed in-house: interfaces finance teams actually want to use, with the evidence one click from every number. The dashboard shown uses illustrative data.
Close acceleration
The close is where automation pays first and pays most. We rebuild record-to-report from source to sign-off: data in from source, reconciliations run continuously, journals proposed and evidenced, consolidation and disclosure assembled, so the cycle compresses without a single control coming off the file.
Illustrative target profile. Actual compression depends on ledger quality, entity count and control maturity, and is scoped before any commitment is made.
Controls stay on the file at every cycle.
Continuous reconciliation, automated accruals and allocations, consolidation and multi-GAAP reporting, disclosure assembly.
Touchless invoice matching, exception routing with a recommended resolution, duplicate and fraud screening at full population.
Cash application, credit and collections prioritisation, deductions and dispute handling, revenue completeness.
Variance analysis on close, driver-based reforecasting, board and investor pack generation from one dataset.
Prudential and statistical returns, tax provisioning and CbCR data, filing-grade audit trails on every submission.
Controls executed and evidenced by the same run. No separate testing exercise bolted on at year end.
Of companies plan to put agents into production, against those that have
KPMG AI Pulse, 2026Of finance teams already run fully integrated AI agents
Deloitte Finance Trends, 2026Of finance teams expected to be using agentic AI in 2026
Wolters Kluwer, 2025Say their organisation lacks the internal capability to exploit it
Forrester for AWSAlmost everyone intends to deploy. Very few have. The blockers are not model quality; they are data, governance, and the fact that “the agent did it” is not an answer an auditor or a regulator accepts. That is the problem this firm is built to solve.
Insights
Contact
Let’s talk.Tell us the question, or where the file is stuck. Two sentences is enough. A written scope, fee and timetable follows within 48 hours. Download the capability statement (PDF).