Financial Position and Prospects Procedures
The one sponsor confirmation the 2024 listing reform did not remove.
The new UK Listing Rules dropped the three-year track record and much of the old eligibility burden. They kept UKLR 24.3.2R(5) — the sponsor must be satisfied your directors have procedures giving them a reasonable basis to judge the group’s financial position and prospects. Eligibility got lighter. Sponsor comfort did not.
- 72
- criteria
- 9
- FPPP areas
- 7
- gate items
- 31
- in the free scan
Not “IPO readiness”. The FPPP.
“IPO readiness” is a service word: unbounded, and scoped to whatever the consultant says. FPPP is a named requirement with an enumerable checklist, a named counterparty and a binary outcome. That difference is the whole product.
| “IPO readiness” | FPPP | |
|---|---|---|
| Enumerable? | Whatever the consultant says | ICAEW TECH 14/14CFF App.1 — objectives A–H |
| Named in a rule? | No | UKLR 24.3.2R(5); UKLR 2.2.1R |
| Required? | Optional best practice | The sponsor cannot file without it |
| Binary? | A grade | The opinion is given, or it is not |
A self-assessment you can fail
Most readiness questionnaires cannot tell you anything you did not already type in. This one can, because the criteria are not independent: some are impossible to satisfy without another. Claim the first, deny the second, and you have contradicted yourself — no documents required, and a reporting accountant would notice in the same breath.
Dependency
Claims that cannot stand up
You have market-abuse procedures, but no disclosure committee — and the disclosure committee is the body that decides what is inside information.
Perimeter
Group readiness is the weakest entity
A group policy three subsidiaries never adopted is not 60% done. The rollup is min() across the perimeter, not an average — which is what Excel gets wrong.
Timeline
Whether the plan is credible
Comparable transformations run 12 to 18 months. Nine months with gate items missing is not a schedule a sponsor will accept.
The nine areas
Directors' risk assessment of FPP
Whether the directors can identify and manage the risks that bear on the group's financial position and prospects — and have written that assessment down.
9 criteria · 1 gate · ICAEW §A
High-level reporting environment
The governance structure, the people and the control environment underneath financial reporting: board and committees, the finance function, internal control, internal and external audit.
11 criteria · 2 gate · ICAEW §B
Forecasting and budgeting
Whether the group can forecast well enough to manage market expectations and support a working capital statement — the one area where the evidence is a model, not a document.
8 criteria · 1 gate · ICAEW §C
Management reporting framework
The quality, timeliness and content of the financial and operational information the board actually receives — including between reporting dates.
6 criteria · 1 gate · ICAEW §D
ESG, climate and sustainability reporting
Procedures for identifying, managing and reporting environmental, social and governance matters — including how climate risk reaches the risk register, the forecasts and the impairment models.
9 criteria · ICAEW §A
Significant transaction complexity
Procedures for transactions carrying significant accounting complexity, financial exposure or risk — including related party transactions, which are where a listing goes wrong quietly.
6 criteria · ICAEW §E
Strategic projects and initiatives
Oversight of the capital projects and initiatives with material financial consequences — appraisal, monitoring, tax, and getting them into the right accounting period.
8 criteria · ICAEW §F
Financial accounting and reporting
Compliance with IFRS and with the external reporting obligations of a listed company — including the market abuse machinery that has to work from day one.
7 criteria · 2 gate · ICAEW §G
IT environment
The systems, controls and infrastructure that produce FPP information — access, segregation of duties, resilience, and the third parties the group depends on.
8 criteria · ICAEW §H
Two tiers
The free scan tells you whether you would pass today. The diagnostic tells you what to do about it, in what order, and what each item costs in calendar time.
Free · self-serve
The FPPP self-scan
- 31 of the 72 criteria, all nine areas, every gate
- Contradiction check against your own answers
- Red-flag table and a PDF for the board
Paid · access issued per engagement
The FPPP diagnostic
- All 72 criteria
- Priority × effort grid and the two-axis RAG by area
- Sequencing: which findings are foundations others stand on
- Recommendation, effort and expected involvement per finding
- The exec-summary letter list, and the whole thing as a PDF
Asks for a username and password. We issue them with the engagement.
Get to your reporting accountant’s phase 2 with no surprises
This is a management tool, not an assurance opinion — the sponsor’s confirmation under UKLR 24.3.2R(5) can be given only by a sponsor, and the FPPP opinion only by an appointed reporting accountant. What it does is tell you what they will find, while there is still time to fix it.
Run the free scan — 31 questions, nothing storedFPPP v1 (UKLR, 2026) · rules current as of 2026-08-28