What We Do
Clarity, Control and Traceability for High-Stakes Change
Lineage Advisory helps financial institutions deliver transformation across data, controls and regulatory reporting with confidence and precision.
The Challenge: When Systems Break Down Under Pressure
Financial institutions face mounting complexity as data flows from Front Office through Operations, Finance and Risk. Each handoff introduces potential breaks: misaligned definitions, silent transformations and missing audit trails that only surface during close or regulatory submission.
Traditional approaches focus on technology rather than meaning. The result? Systems that process data efficiently but fail to preserve its trustworthiness. Late-night reconciliations become the norm, regulatory deadlines create panic, and audit findings expose gaps that were invisible in daily operations.
The cost isn't merely operational inefficiency—it's regulatory risk, audit failures and erosion of confidence in critical outputs. When lineage breaks, trust breaks. When definitions drift, accuracy suffers. When controls lack evidence, compliance becomes guesswork.
Our Approach: Structure That Preserves Meaning
Lineage Advisory focuses on the structures that make systems trustworthy at scale. We don't just move data—we preserve its meaning, trace its transformations and build evidence that stands up to audit scrutiny.
Clear Definitions
Establishing precise, shared understanding of entities, grains and business rules across every stakeholder and system
Disciplined Transformations
Documenting every calculation, aggregation and mapping with transparent logic and consistent application
Traceable Lineage
Building complete audit trails from source data through every transformation to final regulatory outputs
Audit-Ready Evidence
Creating documentation and control frameworks that provide confidence during regulatory review and internal audit
The goal is simple yet profound: fewer breaks between critical functions, fewer surprises at month-end close and regulatory submission deadlines, and greater confidence that your numbers tell the truth.
What We Deliver
01
Data Platforms & Operating Models
We design and implement platforms that preserve meaning end-to-end, ensuring definitions remain consistent as data flows from trade capture through to regulatory reporting and risk analysis.
02
Controls & Reconciliations
Transform noise into signal with observability frameworks that detect anomalies early, reconciliation processes that identify breaks before they cascade, and control points that provide real-time assurance.
03
Regulatory Reporting Traceability
Build complete audit trails for regulatory submissions, ensuring every figure can be traced back to source data with documented transformations and clear ownership at every stage.
04
Front-to-Back Flow Alignment
Align trade capture, valuation, general ledger posting and risk reporting into coherent flows where handoffs are clean, definitions are shared and breaks are immediately visible.
05
Migration & Remediation
Execute system migrations and data remediation with dual-run testing, equivalence validation and clear cutover criteria that ensure continuity whilst eliminating legacy issues.
06
Prototyping & Productionisation
Rapidly prototype solutions to prove concepts, then productionise them into your chosen technology stack with automation, monitoring and operational runbooks built in from the start.
Front-to-Back Integration: Where Meaning Matters Most
The most critical challenge in financial institutions isn't technology—it's maintaining semantic consistency as data moves through organisational boundaries. A trade in the Front Office must mean the same thing when it becomes a valuation in Finance, a ledger entry in Operations and a risk exposure in regulatory reporting.
Trade Capture
Source data with clear business meaning and complete attributes
Valuation
Transparent calculations applied consistently across positions
General Ledger
Accurate posting with traceable mapping to source trades
Risk & Regulatory
Compliant outputs with complete audit trail to source
We align these flows by establishing shared definitions, documenting every transformation and building controls that detect semantic drift before it causes regulatory or financial reporting failures. The result is a system where trust is built in, not bolted on afterwards.
Our Working Method: Diagnostic, Design, Deliver
We begin every engagement with a short diagnostic phase to understand your current state. This isn't superficial discovery—we map actual data flows, identify the real owners of definitions and transformations, document where breaks occur and catalogue the gaps in your control framework.
The diagnostic produces a clear view of risk: which flows lack lineage, where definitions diverge, what controls are missing and where audit evidence is insufficient. This becomes the foundation for prioritised action.
1
Diagnostic
Map flows, owners, breaks and definitions across your current landscape
2
Target Design
Define entities, grains, control points and evidence requirements for the future state
3
Incremental Delivery
Build in measured steps with clear outcomes, testing and validation at each stage
4
Handover
Transfer ownership with complete documentation, runbooks and trained teams
We then design the target structure—not just technology architecture, but semantic architecture: the entities, grains, control points and evidence frameworks that will make your systems trustworthy. Delivery happens in increments with measurable outcomes, and documentation, runbooks and ownership transfer are built into every phase, not added as an afterthought.
Why Documentation and Ownership Matter
"Documentation isn't overhead—it's evidence. Ownership isn't bureaucracy—it's accountability. Without both, transformation becomes technical change without lasting improvement."
Many transformation programmes treat documentation as a compliance checkbox and ownership as an organisational chart exercise. This is why so many implementations fail to achieve their goals: the technical changes succeed, but the knowledge transfer fails.
Living Documentation
We create documentation that serves operators, not just auditors. Every data lineage is mapped, every transformation is explained and every control point is described with clear business rationale and technical implementation details.
This documentation becomes a working reference that teams use daily—not a shelf-ware compliance artifact that's outdated before it's published.
Clear Ownership
We establish accountability for every definition, every transformation and every control. Ownership means someone who understands the business meaning, can explain the technical implementation and has authority to approve changes.
When ownership is clear, problems get solved quickly. When it's ambiguous, issues linger until they become crises.
Led by Stuart Simpson: Experience That Spans Decades
FCMA, CGMA
20+ Years Experience
Programme Manager & Data Architect
Stuart Simpson brings over twenty years of hands-on experience across banking, treasury, payments and regulatory delivery. As a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (FCMA, CGMA), he combines deep financial domain knowledge with technical architecture expertise.
His career spans major transformation programmes at leading financial institutions, where he's designed data platforms, built regulatory reporting systems and established control frameworks that operate under regulatory scrutiny. This isn't theoretical knowledge—it's battle-tested experience from delivering high-stakes change in complex, regulated environments.
Stuart's approach combines rigorous methodology with pragmatic delivery. He understands that financial institutions need solutions that work within existing constraints—legacy systems, regulatory deadlines, budget limitations and organisational complexity. His designs balance ambition with achievability, ensuring transformation delivers measurable value rather than technical elegance that can't be maintained.
Thought Leadership: Writing on What Actually Works
Stuart writes regularly on data lineage, financial semantics and regulatory architecture. His focus isn't on promoting vendor solutions or chasing trends—it's on examining how modern data platforms fail quietly in high-trust environments, and documenting how meaning, ownership and control can be restored.
Substack Essays
In-depth analysis of the structural problems in financial data systems, with practical approaches to solving them. Topics include semantic drift, control frameworks and regulatory architecture patterns.
Technical Demonstrations
Tool-agnostic, policy-aware implementations showing how lineage, controls and regulatory outputs can be built with transparency and auditability. Real code, real patterns, real solutions.
This writing serves two purposes. First, it helps organisations understand the deeper architectural challenges they face—the problems that can't be solved by switching vendors or adding more middleware. Second, it demonstrates the clarity of thinking and depth of expertise that Lineage Advisory brings to client engagements.
Ready to Build Trustworthy Systems?
If your organisation faces challenges with data lineage, regulatory reporting accuracy, front-to-back flow alignment or audit readiness, Lineage Advisory can help. We bring structure, clarity and traceability to transformation programmes where trust and evidence matter most.
Our approach combines deep domain expertise with pragmatic delivery—designing solutions that work within your constraints whilst addressing the fundamental issues that cause repeated failures. Whether you need a short diagnostic to understand current-state risks, target architecture for a major transformation or hands-on delivery of critical capabilities, we can help.
Read Our Thinking
Lineage Advisory: Delivering clarity, control and traceability for high-stakes financial transformation.
Lineage Advisory Limited
Restoring explainability in regulated data systems.
© 2026 Lineage Advisory Limited. All rights reserved.