Insight - Always Audit Ready

Introduction

The marketing team believes they are ready.

Campaigns are signed off, folders are neatly labelled, the next launch is days away.

Then comes the email….

“Audit scheduled. Evidence required.”

Within minutes, calm turns to chaos. Questions start flying. Which version was approved? Where's the sign-off trail? Who has the final record?

For marketing and compliance teams, the question is no longer “when will we be audited?” but “how ready are we right now?”

With more than twenty years supporting teams in financial services, we've seen time and time again strong processes undermined by evidence scattered across emails, folders and personal drives rather than a single source of truth.

This guide sets out what good looks like and how to move from reactive preparation to ongoing always audit-ready confidence.

Common audit workflow pain points

The issue is rarely intent. It is infrastructure.

In our experience, the biggest process gaps usually appear before a structured system is in place. Approvals are completed outside of formal workflows, final sign-offs are missing from records and assets are left “open” after publication.

These small breaks in control create disproportionate risk when audits request evidence.

Ask yourself:

• Could you locate every version of a campaign asset within five minutes if an auditor asked?
• Do your marketing and compliance teams agree on where the “final” record lives?

If the answer is “sometimes” or “it depends,” you're not alone.

These are the preventable weaknesses that make even well-managed audits unnecessarily stressful.

Fragmented systems mean fragmented evidence

Approvals buried in inboxes. Document versions scattered across shared drives. Spreadsheets tracking sign-offs don't always tell the same story.

Signs that may sound familiar:

• You rely on email trails to prove approvals.
• Teams save versions locally “just in case”.
• You have more than one version of a file named “final” like “final3final.docx”.

Each of these adds friction.

Manual effort leads to mounting risk

When audit preparation depends on manual effort like emails, shared folders, spreadsheets, every handover or missing file adds risk.

Reconstructing the full audit trail becomes an exhausting exercise, diverting valuable hours and increasing the chance of inconsistencies.

Try this quick test:

• Pick one recent promotion. How long would it take to show every approval, version and Consumer Duty check?

With bethebrand, there's no need to run multiple reports or assemble data manually. The information is already there. Audit trails, approval timings and right-first-time rates are instantly accessible, giving teams immediate clarity.

Reactive culture, recurring stress

Many firms only focus on audit readiness once a review is announced. That reactive cycle keeps teams on the back foot and preparing rather than proving compliance. It also reinforces a perception of audits as stressful events, rather than opportunities to demonstrate control and confidence.

This might look like:

• Audit preparation begins only when a date is announced.
• Teams rely on memory or personal folders to locate evidence.
• Duplicated work and last-minute panic are common.

The five essential proof points auditors expect

Across regulated firms, audit expectations are remarkably consistent. Whether you're a building society, wealth manager or insurance provider, auditors focus on the same fundamentals: evidence that is complete, consistent and beyond question.

Each proof point below outlines what auditors expect to see, the common pitfalls firms encounter and what good looks like.

A full asset history

What auditors look for
A clear, unbroken chain of custody for every asset from first draft to final approval. Every edit, comment and version must be traceable.

Where firms struggle

• Teams work across multiple channels and storage locations, creating blind spots between marketing and compliance.
• Final published assets are often disconnected from their original versions, losing the context of how they evolved.

In our experience, version control gaps are among the most common weaknesses clients face before moving to a system like bethebrand. Teams often discover that approvals and asset changes live in multiple locations—i.e. emails, shared drives and legacy folders—with no definitive record of which version was live at a given time.

What good looks like

• Each version is automatically logged and date-stamped.
• Easy access to version comparisons and associated comments.
• Complete lifecycle visibility showing how long an asset was live, when it changed, who changed it and why.

Approval timestamps and responsible parties

What auditors look for
Clear accountability for every approval and escalation. The who, when and why of decision-making must be visible and verifiable.

Increasingly, auditors also expect to see approval data that can be filtered and reported on, showing whether sign-offs were completed within SLA and by the appropriate roles.

Where firms struggle

• Approvals stored in inboxes or spreadsheets are difficult to reconstruct when people change roles.
• Version control confusion, i.e. multiple “final” versions with no record of who signed off on what.

What good looks like

• Named approvers linked to each sign-off, with automated timestamps.
• Full visibility across marketing and compliance departments.
• Escalation paths that are followed, not bypassed.
• Our data shows that firms using structured, time-stamped workflows typically achieve higher right-first-time approval rates, as accountability is embedded into the process rather than dependent on individual memory.

Consumer Duty and vulnerable customer checks

What auditors look for
Evidence that fairness and customer understanding were actively considered, not assumed. Auditors now routinely ask how vulnerable customer considerations are embedded within marketing approvals.

Where firms struggle

• Areas like fairness and accessibility reviews happen informally, without documentation.
• Marketers assume compliance has reviewed an asset/s for Consumer Duty, while compliance assumes marketing has.
• These checks often sit outside approval workflows, meaning firms cannot easily prove when or how they were completed.

What good looks like

• Documented checkpoints that verify Consumer Duty standards have been applied.
• Explicit sign-off fields for vulnerable customer considerations.
• Ability to surface all assets reviewed under specific Consumer Duty criteria.
• Many bethebrand clients have addressed this by introducing mandatory fields for Consumer Duty and vulnerable customer considerations within each workflow.

Consistency

What auditors look for
That governance processes are followed every time, not just written in policy manuals. Auditors cross-check evidence trails to confirm real-world compliance.

Where firms struggle

• Manual sign-off sequences create room for human error or skipped steps.
• Process deviations are rarely documented, making “exceptions” hard to explain.

What good looks like

• Every campaign follows an identical, auditable workflow.
• Ability to demonstrate a 100% adherence rate across all approvals.
• Visibility of bottlenecks or missed deadlines for process improvement.
• Continuous reporting on workflow adherence, tracking metrics such as overdue tasks, average review duration and number of review cycles, helps firms prove not only that processes exist, but that they are followed consistently.
  (In our experience, these metrics also highlight training gaps and process bottlenecks before they become audit findings).

Data integrity

What auditors look for
That final approved records are tamper-proof. Once something is signed off, it must remain immutable to protect evidential integrity.

Where firms struggle

• Shared drives and folders allow inadvertent edits or overwrites.
• PDF versions stored separately from approval records create gaps that auditors challenge.
• Our team frequently uncovers these risks associated with shared folders and editable PDFs, as they create the potential for accidental overwrites or unrecorded updates that undermine evidential confidence.

What good looks like

• Immutable records for approved assets.
• Full traceability between approved and published versions.
• Audit-ready systems that lock records after final approval, ensuring they cannot be retrospectively edited.

Considerations for internal vs. external audits

Same goal, different pressure

Both types of audits test how well your controls work and whether your evidence stands up to scrutiny, but the experience can be different.

In practice, both audit types draw from the same evidence base. We typically see internal audits focus on process adherence and training, while external reviews emphasise traceability and documented decision-making.

A well-structured system supports both without additional preparation.

How to spot gaps proactively

Audit readiness is built over time, not assembled overnight. Teams that maintain continuous visibility over their marketing compliance evidence perform more strongly under both internal and external review.

We recommend tracking right-first-time approvals, average review durations and overdue tasks as early indicators of where process discipline may be slipping. These operational metrics often surface issues months before they affect audit readiness.

1. Look for patterns beyond one-off errors
   Repeated issues indicate process gaps rather than individual mistakes.
2. Track process adherence
   Compare documented workflows with how tasks are actually completed day to day.
3. Test evidence accessibility
   Check that approvals, version histories and Consumer Duty records can be retrieved within minutes, not hours.
4. Encourage shared ownership
   Marketing and compliance teams should collaborate on audits, sharing accountability for improvement rather than treating it as a policing exercise.
5. Treat internal reviews as rehearsal
   Use internal audits as realistic run-throughs to build resilience and familiarity with evidence retrieval.

Conclusion

Audit readiness isn't about expecting the unexpected; it's about being absolutely prepared for it.

When marketing and compliance teams build strong habits of documentation, communication and reflection, audits become a validation of good practice rather than a disruption.

In regulated marketing, true audit resilience means calm under scrutiny, clarity in process, and confidence in every decision.