Regulatory Warning List

A warning list is a register published by a financial supervisor naming firms it believes are soliciting business without the authorisation required to do so, or that are impersonating a firm which has it. The lists are free, searchable and maintained by the authority itself rather than by any commercial site. Two kinds of entry sit on them and mean different things. An unauthorised-firm entry records that the supervisor has seen a firm offering regulated services it has no permission for. A clone-firm entry describes a site reusing an authorised company's name, registration number and sometimes its address, which is why a licence number that checks out is only meaningful together with the domain and legal entity it is attached to. The limits are as important: a list records what a supervisor has noticed, so absence from one is not clearance, and each authority covers only its own jurisdiction.