Jurisdictions and topics

Every scan is scoped in the same coordinate system: jurisdictions (the where), regulatory areas (the what), and a time horizon (the when), with an optional entity type hint (the who) to angle the analysis at your kind of firm. These coordinates are not just form fields — they are the axes every downstream reading is organised along. The Overview heatmap is literally areas × jurisdictions; the Timeline is the horizon drawn as a calendar; the Change Monitor only compares scans of the same scope — the same jurisdictions and areas. Understanding the axes is understanding the product’s geometry.

The mental model

Each item the analysis returns carries exactly one jurisdiction and one primary area, with its dates inside your window. That single-cell rule is what makes the readings composable: a heatmap cell, a timeline swimlane and a filtered detail list are all just different slices along the same axes. It is also why editing the where or the what resets change tracking — moving those axes changes the space itself, so comparisons across the edit would be geometrically meaningless (see What “changed” means). The horizon is the exception: it bounds the view rather than changing the ground, so re-running the same jurisdictions and areas with a longer horizon extends the same series.

Jurisdictions: the where

A jurisdiction is a country, region or supranational regulator-cluster. Picking one is shorthand for a set of regulators — choosing UK directs coverage across FCA, PRA, Bank of England, HM Treasury, PSR and ICO output without you naming any of them. The full platform vocabulary, with the regulators associated with each, is served by GET /v1/meta/jurisdictions:

All but two of these are one-click pills on the order form. China and South Korea are vocabulary without pills — they enter a scope through the APAC preset below, typed into Add custom…, or named directly in an API scan.

The order form also offers region presets — one click selects a footprint rather than individual pills:

Anywhere not on the list — South Africa, UAE, ASEAN, Cayman Islands — can be added as a custom jurisdiction: type it in and it becomes a first-class axis value, visually distinguished on the order form so you can see which parts of your scope are off the beaten path.

Areas and topics: the what

An area is a broad policy domain — a category of regulation, not a specific rule. The built-in areas (authoritative list at GET /v1/meta/areas):

• Banking / Prudential — capital, liquidity, stress testing, recovery and resolution
• Capital Markets — securities, market structure, investment management, conduct
• Digital Assets / Crypto — MiCA-style regimes, stablecoins, custody, tokenisation
• AML / KYC — anti-money-laundering, beneficial ownership, screening
• Payments — payment-services regimes, open banking, system oversight
• Data Privacy — GDPR and national equivalents, cross-border transfers
• Operational Resilience — third-party risk, ICT incidents, DORA-style regimes
• ESG / Sustainable Finance — disclosures, taxonomy, climate stress testing
• Sanctions — designated-persons regimes, secondary sanctions
• Research Bundling / Unbundling — research-payment regimes
• Consumer Protection — retail conduct and consumer-duty regimes

Ten of these are pills on the order form; Consumer Protection is in the API vocabulary but not a pill — add it as a custom area in the app, or name it directly in an API scan.

A topic is finer-grained than an area: AML / KYC is an area; beneficial-ownership transparency for trusts is a topic. The product deliberately has no separate topic field — you inject a topic by typing it as a custom area, where it joins the axis as a first-class value the analysis treats as its own category. This is a design choice worth understanding: because topics live on the same axis as areas, a custom topic gets its own heatmap row, its own filterable item set, and its own line of change tracking — exactly as if it had been built in.

The entity type hint (Global Asset Manager, Hedge Fund, Insurer, Payments / Fintech, Crypto / DeFi, and so on) does not change what is scanned — it angles the analysis’s judgement of impact and priority towards firms like yours.

Horizon: the when

The horizon is the forward window the analysis scans: 3, 6, 12, 18, 24 or 36 months. Items need dates inside the window, so the horizon is a genuine boundary, not a suggestion:

A wider horizon does not mean more noise, but it does shift the mix: the further out the window reaches, the more of it is Proposed- and Consultation-stage material, which is by nature less certain. You will see that reflected in the likelihood mix of the items that come back.

Why scope discipline pays

Every axis you widen multiplies what the analysis must read and dilutes the editorial focus of what it writes. The product is at its best when scope is curated: a footprint of jurisdictions you actually operate in, two to four areas, one or two custom topics, a 12-month window. Two patterns follow naturally:

• Pin one configuration and re-run it on a cadence. That produces a series with change tracking — the compounding payoff.
• Branch a copy for one-off questions. Re-scan with one axis changed (a new topic, an extra jurisdiction) as a separate scan, leaving the pinned series untouched.

Where to go next

• Your first scan — the order form walk-through of setting these coordinates.
• Scans and snapshots — what the coordinates fix in time.
• Meta endpoints — the authoritative live lists for API callers.